POLS 3170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Tax Expenditure, State Ownership, Incrementalism
Document Summary
Week1: policymaking process and how to study public policy. Policy instruments: means that governments use to accomplish their objectives. Means that governments use to ensure compliance with their decisions which range from voluntary compliance to compulsory compliance; from least coercive to the most coercive means; Rationality as a technique of bureaucratic decision making. Past organizational experiences as a guiding principle to address the present problems. Cannot explain certain developments (such as establishing crown corporations). Synthesizing the most useful aspects of incrementalism and rationalism and overcoming the shortcomings of both. These models cannot explain why government chooses a particular alternative among a wide range of alternatives. 1- public policy study is not confined to the study of bureaucracy and public administration. In order to have a comprehensive understanding of politics, our study of public policy must be firmly rooted in policy theory. Linking study of public policy to the traditional concerns of political science (power, conflict and ideology)