POLS 443 Final - Arnold

What do legislators do to influence policy making

- Chose among policy proposals by estimating citizens' potential policy preferences - Estimating the likelihood the citizens will incorporate their policy preferences

What rule applies to policy effects?

- party Performance Rule - Incumbent Performance Rule

What are the 2 types of debate about cause and effect?

1. Prospective Evaluation 2. Retrospective Evaluation

What do legislatures anticipate on future opinions?

It can become a powerful constraint on their voting decisions.

What is a common complaint about Congress in regards to cost and benefits?

It frequently endorses programs that offer substantial group and geographic benefits but that promise relatively few general benefits.

What is prospective evaluation?

It involves estimating what consequences would follow if the gov't adopted and implemented a specific program.

What do legislators fear?

- Citizens might disagree w/ their positions and actions - Their disagreements might affect voters' choices in congressional elections.

What must legislators need to know?

- Conditions under which citizens might incorporate policy preferences into their decisions in subsequent congressional elections.

What are the actions Congress does due to citizens not paying attention to Congress?

- Erects trade barriers to protect specific industries - Creates an endless stream of special tax provisions - Maintains price supports for many agricultural commodities - Refuses to enact restrictions on the ownership of guns.

What do citizens do to influence policy making?

- Establish policy preferences by evaluating both policy proposals & policy effects - Choose among congressional candidates by evaluating the candidate's policy positions & their connection to policy efforts

What does estimating do for legislators?

- Estimating citizen's preferences -> provides legislators w/ half the information they need for prudent action. - Citizens might incorporate these policy preferences into their evaluation of congressional candidates.

What are additional factors that affect citizen's choices?

- How well they know the candidates - How much they trust them - How satisfied they have been when they have seen or communicated w/ one of the candidates - How accessible their representative seem to be - How successful their representative appears to be in providing district serves

What do challengers do to incumbents?

- Identify and expose any of an incumbent's past policy positions that might prove controversial.

What are potential preferences & their relations w/ legislators.

- Include all imaginable preferences - they adjust their decisions in anticipation of them.

What is intensity?

- Is not a symmetrical function - Greater for a given measure of costs that it is for the same measure of benefits.

What do legislators anticipate w/ roll call decisions?

- Legislators regularly attempt to anticipate how specific roll-call votes might be used against them. - Regularly adjust their votes in ways designed to forestall electoral problems.

What effects whether or not a citizens will perceive a cost/benefit?

- Magnitude of a specific cost or benefit that affects them. - Timing of a specific cost/benefit - Proximity, citizens to others who are similarly affected by the cost/benefit - Instigator, the availability of them to help reveal citizen's stake in an outcome

What must Legislators do in relations w/ presidential elections?

- Must acknowledge important issues in presidential election, it provides additional support for their potential importance in congressional election.

What do the 2 Retrospective voting rules allow citizens to do?

- Party Performance Rule & Incumbent Performance Rule - Allows them to monitor the performance of the gov't - Allows them to reward/punish those responsible for the performances. - Party Performance Rule is the simplest.

Which rule applies to policy positions?

- Party Position rule - Candidate Position Rule

What is the Simple Model of how citizen's acquire their preferences?

- People value many things that do not directly contribute to their own material welfare.

What do voters base their judgement on?

- Policy positions / Policy effects - Connect their policy evaluation either to the candidate directly/ to the party first.

What are the 2 debates of Casual chain

- Prospective & Retrospective

What is Arnold's aim?

- Theory is useful device for explaining the dynamics of policy decisions - is capable of explaining shift points in congressional decisions

Who are Ordinary Citizens?

- They acquire their views of cause and effect more hap-hazardly w/ little attempt at specialization.

Influence of citizens w/ no opinions about policy

- They are still being considered - Have a large impact on legislator's decisions, as long as legislators anticipate and respond to these citizens' potential preferences as if they already existed.

Coalition Leaders

- They define alternatives - Drawn from both inside and outside Congress -Know that their choices are constrained by the need to attract the support of a majority of legislators.

What must citizens know about their party?

- Where they stand on the issues - what the consequences would be if particular policies were enacted.

What should legislators be mindful of when make decisions

- Which alternative contributes more to their chances for reelection - Alternatives would yield different electoral consequences.

Do citizens employ something like policy position rule in congressional elections?

- Yes - Most voters identify w/ or lean toward one of the parties - Most of the voters support the congressional candidates of the party they favor.

What do Coalition leaders do to influence policy making?

-Anticipating legislators' electoral calculations - Estimate both citizens' potential policy preferences - Likelihood that citizens might incorporate these policy preferences into their choices among congressional candidates.

What do legislatures need to know before putting out a policy proposal?

1. Enacting a new proposal might generate a storm of protest that might endanger their political careers. 2. To anticipate whether some small part of a complex bill might eventually offend some of their constituents and diminish their political support. 3. Reorganize which proposal might become popular among their constituents so that they can position themselves accordingly.

Who are the 3 participants in the policy process?

1. Experts 2. Generalists 3. Ordinary Citizens

What are the 3 types of cost and benefits?

1. General 2. Group 3. Geographic

What are the 4 factors that affect the likelihood that a citizen will perceive a specific cost/benefit?

1. Magnitude 2. Timing 3. Proximity 3. Availability of an instigator

Which of the 4 basic rules available to citizens are Retrospective Rules?

1. Party Performance Rule 2. Incumbent Performance Rule

Which of the 4 basic rules available to citizens are Prospective Rules?

1. Party Position Rule 2. Candidate Position Rule

What are the 4 separate paths by which judgements about policy can influence citizen's choices in congressional elections?

1. Party Position Rule 2. Candidate Position Rule 3. Party Performance Rule 4. Incumbent Performance Rule

What does Arnold argue about preferences relation w/ policies?

1. The incidence of costs and benefits 2. Nature of the casual chain that links a policy instrument w/ policy effects.

How do Candidates display their policy position to citizens?

1. Their records in office 2. The statements they choose to make in campaigns.

What must citizens need to know when using Party Performance Rule?

1. Whether conditions in society are improving/deteriorating 2. Which party controls the gov't.

What is the incidences of costs and benefits?

1. Who would profit and who would pay under a proposed policy 2. How much beneficiaries would reap and the contributors would suffer 3. When the various beneficiaries would receive their benefits and the various contributors would suffer their losses.

What is Multi-stage policies?

A series of intermediate steps that must occur before the intended effects can be achieved.

What are General Costs?

Across-the-board tax increases, economic decline, inflation, health epidemics, and those losses of liberty

What are legislatures final decisions and choices influenced by?

Actions of both coalition leaders and citizens.

What type of costs and benefits do most policies include?

All 6, the relative proportions vary widely.

What must a successful Coalition leader anticipate?

Citizens' reaction in order to anticipate legislators' decisions.

Who does policy attributes influence?

Citizens, legislators & coalition leaders

Who are the 3 main group of actors?

Citizens, legislators, & coalition leaders

What is Perceptible Effects?

Conditions that a citizen notices on his own and that either stimulate a search for explanations or create an interesting explanations offered by others.

What is casual chain

Connects a congressional decision w/ actual changes in the incidence of costs and benefits.

What is General benefits?

Economic growth, stable prices, improved public health, and other collective goods that people value b/c they believe it profits everyone.

What is the main theory of the book?

Encourage legislators to produce particularistic policies and serve organized interests and the conditions that prompt legislators to serve more general interests.

What is Traceable effect?

If a citizen can plausibly trace an observed effect first back to a gov't action and then back to a representative's individual contribution.

What does Arnold argue?

Legislators are partly manipulated by the actions of coalition leaders, constrained by anticipating the actions of citizens in future election, partly free agents.

If reelection is a legislator's ultimate goal what will they reframe from doing?

Legislators will do nothing to advance their other goals if such activities threaten their principle goal.

Who are Generalists?

Legislators, presidents, bureaucrats, staff members, other who's specialize in policy making and policy evaluations but are not professionals trained in isolating cause and effect. - Take middle position b/w experts and ordinary citizens.

What are Geographic Costs and benefits?

Policy effects that accrue disproportionately to particular geographic areas.

What are Group Costs and Benefits?

Policy effects that accrue particular segments of society.

What are General Benefits & General Costs?

Policy effects that fall uniformly on members of society.

What do incumbents do to figure out public opinion?

Political Intuition - talking w/ constituents, reading mail, look for clues & salience.

What are experts?

Professional who investigate casual chains as part of their jobs. Specializes in small slices of the policy world.

What do lawmakers avoid doing?

Proposals that impose particular costs on their constituents b/c they believe that voters might blame them for those costs.

What is the dominant goal of legislators?

Reelection

What do the 2 prospective voting rules require from citizens.

Require citizens to acquire and process substantially more information than does the party performance rule.

What effect's legislators behavior in Washington?

Retrospective voting

What is retrospective evaluation?

Reverses the direction of analysis here the goal is to find the causes of known problems, conditions, or events.

What is Incumbent Performance Rule

States that a citizen chooses b/w the candidates by deciding whether the incumbent legislator deserves to be rewarded/punished for his connection w/ various pleasing or displeasing effects.

What is Candidate Position Rule?

States that a citizen chooses between the candidates by comparing their positions on the issues

What is Party Performance Rules?

States that a citizen first decides whether the party in power deserves to be rewarded/punished for the effects that it has produced and then selects the legislative candidate of the favored party.

What is Party Position Rule?

States that a citizens' first chooses a favorite party on the basis of the parties' position and then selects the candidate who wears the label of the favored party.

What is Arnold's basic argument?

The electoral quest can impel legislators to support policies that serve either particularistic or general interests.

What gets established when you identify and compare program's perceived cost and benefits?

The existence and the direction of citizens' potential policy preferences.

What happens when casual chain is long?

The incidence of late-order effects may be totally unknown.

What is the 2 prospective voting rule similar to?

The incumbent performance rule, as they all require citizens to have some understanding of the causes of policy effects.

What are the perceived incidence of costs and benefits partly a function of?

The length of the casual chain that links the policy instrument w/ the policy effects.

What are Perceived Costs and Benefits?

The notion of a citizen performing a miniature cost-benefit analysis for each policy proposal makes more sense.

What are 2 prospective voting rules?

The party position rule & candidate position rule

What must Legislator do to assess accurately the likelihood of electoral retribution?

They need to understand the ways in which policy preferences can affect citizens' electoral decisions.

What does Candidate Position Rule require from citizens?

To decide which candidate to support by comparing the candidates' position on the issues and then choosing the candidate w/ the most pleasing package of positions.

What are citizens more likely to chase?

Traceability chains when they incur perceptible costs than when they reap an equal measure of benefits

What are Group Costs and Benefits or Geographic costs and benefits?

When policy effects do not fall uniformly on members of society.

What is the puzzle of Congress?

When they approve proposals that promise to deliver substantial general benefits while imposing large group or geographic costs.