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| The Policy Game | ||
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Public policy can be described as a public response to public problems. Governmental legislation, programs, and controls are all mechanisms that public bodies utilize in an effort to improve the public welfare. Public policy has been defined in different ways by different observers. Peters defines policy as “the sum of government activities … [that have] an influence on the lives of citizens.”1 Lasswell points out that public policy determines “who gets what, when, and how.”2 Contemporary policy analysts might also include “why?” In a real-world context, public policy can be understood as public responses to perceived public problems.3 Policy actors are those individuals and groups, both formal and informal, who seek to influence the creation and implementation of these public responses.
Using the metaphor of game strategies, this chapter explores the function and influence of public policy in California. Beginning with an overview of the rules and strategies of the policy “game,” the chapter moves on to explore how entrepreneurial policy “players” exploit the points of vulnerability in that process. In doing so, the chapter reviews the policy actors, including the institutional actors—the governor and executive bureaucracy, the state legislature, and the courts—and the non-institutional actors—the media, parties, interest groups, and political consultants. Finally, the chapter explores California’s budget as a case study of policymaking in the state.
Several observers have described the public policy process as a game. The game metaphor is not intended to trivialize the process but rather to suggest that policy actors must utilize rational strategies to maximize their interests. Players will increase their chances of winning to the extent that they have knowledge of the policy bureaucracy (bureaucratic knowledge), access to individuals within the bureaucracy (network), citizen backing (size of constituency), money for political contributions, and resources to mount an effective public relations campaign (media). But these resources are only part of winning the policy game. It is also necessary to understand the rules and culture of the policy environment. The following discussion explores the context and environment of the policy game in California.
In The Prince4 Machiavelli presents a blueprint for the effective development and maintenance of power. Machiavelli’s notion of virtù—the ability to control political destiny—is based on the successful manipulation of human circumstances. The virtuous prince is good, merciful, and honest, as long as expediency dictates, yet he must be prepared to be cruel and deceptive. Control is the primary consideration, both of one’s populace and of one’s neighboring states. Ultimately, virtù requires successful strategies to maximize policy interests.
Murray Edelman5 similarly argues that those who seek to maximize their policy interests will use deceit and symbolism to manipulate the policy discourse. No one person can possibly experience the entire world. Yet everyone has an image or “picture” of the world. Burke suggests that however important that “sliver of reality each of us has experienced firsthand,” the overall picture is a “construct of symbolic systems.”6 This construct is based on political cognitions that Edelman suggests are “ambivalent and highly susceptible to symbolic cues.”7 Government, Edelman argues, influences behavior by shaping the cognitions of people in ambiguous situations. In this way, government, or policy, elites help engineer beliefs about what is “fact” and what is “proper.”
Maximizing policy strategies is critical for winning the policy game. Each player, regardless of his or her position in the policy environment, seeks to influence policy outcomes. The degree to which players utilize rational strategies— however creative, however slippery—will determine the degree to which policy success can be achieved. This is not to suggest that there are no ethical constraints on players; there are. Rather, the Machiavellian legacy in our political environment recognizes that strategy and cunning are acceptable and necessary components of the policy game.
Some suggest that democratic processes are dominated by the influence of economic elites—specifically, corporate elites. Domhoff argues that there is a social upper class that effectively operates as a ruling class by virtue of its dominance of economic resources. While there are other political resources—for example, expertise and bureaucratic knowledge—these other resources can and are purchased. Thus, as Domhoff8 points out, financial power is often the basis of policy influence. If it is true that policy influence requires requisite political resources, inequality in resource distribution is tantamount to inequality in political representation. Maximizing policy strategy, therefore, includes maximizing the ability to raise funds.
The policy process is significantly more subtle than many realize. While the state constitution provides for a legislature that makes laws, an executive that enforces laws, and a judiciary that interprets laws, the policy process has evolved into a confusing web of state departments, agencies, and committees that make up the institutional policy bureaucracy. And, unlike the federal level, California’s constitution requires that governmental authority be shared with voters through the initiative process, the recall, and the referendum. In addition, the vast network of organized citizen groups (parties, interest groups, and political action committees), as well as the rise of the electronic media, political consultants, and other image-making professionals, further complicates the process. The role each actor plays, in combination with the relationship between actors in policy bureaucracies, is ultimately what determines policy outcomes.
THE STATE LEGISLATURE. The legislature is the central institution in the policy process because of the powers given to it by the state constitution. Within the legislature, power is centralized in the committees. Committee chairs have a disproportionate influence over policy as a consequence of their power to determine committee agendas. Similarly, certain committees have more policy influence than others. The Assembly Rules Committee, for example, is responsible for determining which bills will be heard and in what order. The appropriation committees in both the assembly and senate are responsible for reviewing any legislation that requires funding. The power that members of such committees hold and the powers of committee chairs make them key players in the policy process.
Legislative staffers are another source of influence that is often overlooked. In The Power Game,9 Hedrick Smith describes staffers as “policy entrepreneurs.” Staffers are important in two areas. First, the increasing use of staff to service constituents in district offices strengthens the legislator’s stature among local voters, perhaps explaining in part the strength of incumbency. Second, staffers are the real expertise behind the legislator. With hundreds of bills introduced in an average session, legislators rely more and more on staff to analyze legislation, negotiate compromises, research issues, and meet with lobbyists. In their roles as legislative analysts and policy negotiators, as well as their role as political confidants and counselors, senior staffers have significant policy influence. And, with term limits now state law, staffers will have more experience than legislators, giving them even more power to influence.
THE GOVERNOR AND EXECUTIVE BUREAUCRACY. The governor is mandated by the California constitution as a partner in the policy process. But, unlike the legislature, the governor can only approve or disapprove legislation, he or she has no power to amend legislation. As we saw in Chapter 6, California’s constitution requires that the seven nongubernatorial executive officers be directly elected, an arrangement that dilutes the governor’s power further. Thus, the policy priorities of the governor cannot be directly imposed. Rather, governors must rely on legislative partners in both houses, and on, what Richard Neustadt calls the “power to persuade.”10 This persuasion comes as a result of several factors. Paul Light suggests that executive policy is a result of the “stream of people and ideas” that flow through the executive office.11 If public policy is a process of identifying problems, identifying solutions, and implementing those solutions, the identification of problems and solutions, Light argues, is tied to the assumptions held by players in that stream. The policy stream must accommodate the issues that percolate up through the systemic agenda, as well as those issues that may be on the executive agenda.
The implementation of gubernatorial policy objectives involves a different set of problems than those of the legislature. While the legislature makes laws, the governor can only recommend laws. Effective governors use the powers and perks of their office to maximize their policy agendas. Appointments are a major source of policy influence. By appointing individuals who share his or her political perspective and agenda, a governor is able to extend influence throughout the executive and judicial bureaucracies. Cabinet officers and heads of regulatory agencies establish policy priorities within their agencies. And, since most legislation allows for a significant measure of discretion among implementing and enforcement agencies, the cabinet officers and agency heads have wide latitude in defining, implementing, and enforcing policy.
The policy influence of regulatory agencies within the executive bureaucracy is substantial. Meier12 describes the regulatory process as a combination of regulatory bureaucracies (values, expertise, agency subculture, bureaucratic entrepreneurs) and public interaction (interest groups, economic issues, legislative committees and subcommittees). Regulatory outcomes are a consequence of subsystem interaction between all of these influences. Those who are best able to influence these subsystems are best able to maximize their interests. As a result, policy subsystems are major points of access for policy influence.
THE COURTS. The influence of judges in interpreting laws has a significant impact on policy. And this impact is not free of political influence. Unlike the federal system, state judges are vulnerable to political scrutiny. This was most dramatically demonstrated in the expulsion of Chief Justice Rose Bird and two of her colleagues in 1984. The policy role of the judiciary is not universally appreciated. The current debate over judicial activism and judicial restraint is only the most recent in a long discourse. In “Towards an Imperial Judiciary?”13 Nathan Glazer argues that judicial activism infringes on democratic policy institutions and that an activist court erodes the respect and trust people hold for the judiciary. Still, whether a court is active or passive, there are significant policy implications. Non-action is in itself a policy decision with substantial policy implications.
Public policy is not merely the result of independent policymaking institutions. Non-institutional actors also play a significant role: The public elects legislators and executives; the media influences policy through its inherent agenda-setting function; parties influence policy through their role of drafting and electing candidates; and organized interest groups lobby elected officials and non-elected policymakers (e.g., agency staff). Policy, then, is a result of institutional processes influenced by non-institutional actors.
THE MEDIA. The media are influential to policy outcomes because they help define social reality. The work of McCombs and Shaw14 suggests that the media influence the salience of issues. As Lippmann15 observed in 1922, perceptions of reality are based on a tiny sampling of the world around us. No one can be everywhere, no one can experience everything. Thus, to a greater or lesser extent, all of us rely on media portrayals of reality. Graber16 argues that the way people process information makes them especially vulnerable to media influence. First, people tend to pare down the scope of information they confront. Second, people tend to think schematically. When confronted with information, individuals will fit that information into pre-existing schema. Since news stories tend to lack background and context, schemata allow the individual to give the information meaning. In such a way, individuals re-create reality in their minds.
The data collected by Iyengar and Kinder17 show that television news, to a great extent, defines which problems the public considers most serious. Iyengar and Kinder refine the agenda-setting dynamic to include what they call “priming”—the selective coverage of only certain events and the selective way in which those events are covered. Because there is no way to cover all events or cover any event completely, selective decisions must be made. But, there are consequences:
By priming certain aspects of national life while ignoring others, television news sets the terms by which political judgements are rendered and political choices made.18
The implications for public policy are serious. If policy is a result of a problem-recognition model, then the problems that gain media recognition are much more likely to be addressed.
California politics relies on the media to distribute political messages. With 36 million people, it is not possible for policy advocates in California to truly meet the voters as they might in New Hampshire or Iowa. Television, radio, and newspapers allow politicians, candidates, and interest groups to cover more ground with less money. In the Los Angeles television market alone, for example, policy advocates can reach 10 million people at once. As we will see in Chapter 11, political parties and interest groups can translate their financial resources into air time to get their messages across.
POLITICAL PARTIES. Political parties are distinct from other citizen organizations. Rather than attempt to influence existing policymakers, parties seek to get their own members elected to policymaking positions. While interest groups seek influence on specific policy issues, parties seek influence on a wide spectrum of policy issues. Parties develop issue platforms, draft candidates, campaign on behalf of candidates, and mobilize voters. In short, parties work to bring citizens together under a common banner.
While most people may think of parties only during election cycles, party policy influence extends beyond campaigns. While the rise of the media over the past 40 years has deemphasized the power of parties in electoral politics, parties continue to play a dominant role in policy outcomes. Due to the institutional role parties play in the legislature and the grassroots role that parties play at the local and county level, the party that emerges dominant often determines the direction policy will take. The governor is responsible to the party that got him or her elected, and therefore must pursue at least some of the policy objectives articulated at the party convention. The legislature continues to distribute committee membership and chairmanships according to party affiliation. While negotiation and compromise are typically necessary, the general direction of legislative policy is directly tied to the ideology of the majority party. The strength of political parties has waned over the past three decades (see Chapter 11), but parties maintain policy influence in critical areas. Elections, patronage appointments, legislative committees, and policy discourses all reflect the influence of parties. In the 1920s Republicans outnumbered Democrats, but by 1934 the majority of Californians were registered Democrats. The Democratic Party has maintained its numeric advantage ever since. While the governor’s office has shifted between both parties, Democrats have maintained a legislative majority since 1970, with the exception of a Republican majority in the assembly from 1995 to 1996. As a consequence, California Democrats have defined the state’s legislative agenda for a generation.
INTEREST GROUPS. Interest groups are a fundamental partner in policymaking. Citizens participate in the policy process through communication with policymakers. Such communication takes place individually (e.g., letters to elected representatives) and collectively. Interest groups facilitate collective communication. James Madison recognized the propensity for individuals to factionalize in an effort to maximize political influence.19 Robert Dahl further refined the analysis of Madisonian democracy, arguing that in an open society all persons have the right to press their interests. To the extent others share these interests, collective pressure may allow greater policy influence. Indeed, Dahl argued, those issues that have greater salience have greater interest group representation.20
The interest group dynamic, however, is not so simple. While it may be true that many salient issues have interest group representation, the strength of that representation is not tied to the strength of the issue salience. Further, the salience itself may be a consequence of interest group action. When studying policy outcomes it is necessary to identify the policy actors and the political resources they use. Maximizing policy interests—winning the policy game—requires specific political resources. The most common resources include bureaucratic knowledge, a network of contacts, citizen backing (size of constituency), an ability to make political contributions, and an ability to mount a public relations (media) campaign. Clearly, no group utilizes all these resources. But the ability of an organized group to utilize one or more of these resources is critical for policy influence. Interest groups have been major players in the state’s election cycle through their independent expenditures on behalf of legislative candidates. While California voters elected to limit direct contributions to candidates to $3,600 per election in 2000’s Proposition 34, interest groups spent $100 million between 2000 and 2008 communicating directly with voters in their efforts to influence elections. Teachers’ unions, trial lawyers, prison guards, environmentalists, energy companies, and many other special interests actively work to influence the state’s political institutions.21
POLITICAL CONSULTANTS. Increasingly, political expertise is purchased by those who have the need and the resources. In reviewing the rise and structure of the political consulting industry, Sabato22 exposes the fragile relationship between articulating ideas in a political marketplace and manipulating public opinion. It is virtually impossible to win at the policy game without the marketing skills held by consultants and strategists. Like many other policy resources, political consultants are costly. As a consequence, those with greater economic resources enjoy a policy advantage.
The extremely competitive nature of California’s political environment has made political consulting a growth industry in the state. There are 14 major political consulting firms in the state, representing candidates at all levels of government.23 In addition, there are thousands of additional firms offering media consulting, public relations, survey research, direct mail, and fund raising. Critics argue that the selling of politics has become just as slick and self-interested as the selling of cars. Public policy has become just another commodity in a market environment. The implication, of course, is that the policy process may be less democratic as a consequence. It is often political consultants, rather than public-interested candidates, who are defining the political discourse in the state. Whether or not one perceives this as a problem might be related to an individual’s access to the financial resources needed to purchase these services.
The California state budget provides a good case study on the policy process. Because the budget defines fiscal allocations, it serves to define the state’s policy priorities for the following year. As such, the budget process brings both institutional and non-institutional actors into passionate political battle. Legally, the formal budget process plays out as follows:
• January 10: Governor submits his or her budget to both houses of the legislature.
• February: Legislative analyst publishes Analysis of the Governor’s Budget.
• March and April: Senate and assembly budget subcommittees hold hearings on each budget item.
• May: Governor submits the “May revision,” a revised estimate of revenues and expenditures. Subcommittee hearings end. Senate and assembly budget committees send bills to their full houses.
• June: Conference committee of both houses meets to reconcile differences between senate and assembly version of budget bills and ultimately sends recommendation to both houses for final vote.
• June 15: Budget goes to the governor for signature.24
While the process at first glance appears to include only the institutional policy actors, there are several points at which non-institutional actors become involved. Long before the governor’s budget is submitted in June, citizens, interest groups, corporations, and legislators lobby the governor’s office and each other in order to maximize the chances of receiving funding for policies they favor and for cutting funding for policies they are against. Once the governor’s budget is made public, these groups direct their attention to the senate and assembly budget committees and subcommittees, lobbying and testifying at budget hearings.
Simultaneously, those groups with the economic resources will begin to lobby the public through both paid and non-paid media. Political advertising can be used to cue public concern, which may cue public budgetary demands. Similarly, policy advocates may seek media coverage through news or public affairs programming. Not only is this type of publicity free, it places a mantle of objectivity on the policy objective. As opposed to a paid political advertisement, news coverage of an event held by an interest group will carry more weight with the public if the messenger is a reporter or commentator.
| Travels with Arnold | Gary Delsohn and Margaret Talev |
At 4 o’clock one autumn afternoon in the throes of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first bill-signing season, Gary Delsohn, a Sacramento Bee political reporter and coauthor of this article, answered the phone. The thick accent on the other end of the line was unmistakable.
It was Schwarzenegger, eager to chat at a time when he should have been too busy. Delsohn was working on a profile of Legislative Affairs Secretary Richard Costigan, Schwarzenegger’s point man on the hundreds of bills the state Legislature was sending his way in a last-minute crush. The profile could go in any number of directions. Costigan’s work ethic and intellect were respected across party lines, but Democrats were troubled by his background as a Chamber of Commerce lobbyist. The governor had decided the best way to influence the story’s tone was to step in himself—and turn on his trademark Hollywood charm.
Delsohn asked Schwarzenegger how he was doing. “Fantastic, now that I hear your voice,” Schwarzenegger said. “You really get me going.” Giggles trickled across the other end of the line. The Governor’s staff was with him in the room.
“So tell me,” Schwarzenegger said. “You guys know the slant you are going to take before you do any of the interviewing. Are you going to build him up or tear him down?” Delsohn played along. “Let’s tear him down.” “Well,” said the Schwarzenegger, “he’s a total waste. I can tell you that.” Then the governor spent another 15 minutes on the line effusively praising Costigan.
At 57, still one of the most glamorous, recognizable men in the world, still fit from his regular workouts, Schwarzenegger doesn’t so much interact with reporters as shadowbox with them. He flirts as easily with male reporters as with the women and revels in head games. We’ve been doing this dance since the summer of 2003, reading his books, watching his movies, studying lawsuits and financial disclosures and peeking into the parallel universe of bodybuilding. We’ve watched him with President Bush, interviewed his friends and business partners, his rivals and his admirers. We’ve also chased him across the globe (he does not take reporters with him on his private jets, so we fly commercial) on trips to Israel, Germany and Japan and back and forth across the United States.
Each trip features the same phenomena: stampedes of autograph-seeking fans and packs of awestruck local media. Would any other politician be chased, as Schwarzenegger was during a trade mission to Tokyo, by more than 100 Japanese reporters shouting at him to flex his muscles and imploring him to yell out movie lines such as “I’ll be back!” or “Hasta la vista, baby!”? And when the scrum of cameramen crowded in to record the start of a private meeting with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Koizumi looked a bit overwhelmed, telling Schwarzenegger, “You’re more popular than Bush.”
That popularity, which transcends anything enjoyed by any other modern politician, makes Schwarzenegger both a fascinating and frustrating governor to cover. The hard-hitting reporting that would give rise out of any other politician rarely elicits a reaction from the former actor, who is rich and famous enough not to care. So far, Schwarzenegger has done many of the things for which he criticized his bland predecessor, Democrat Gray Davis—taking millions of dollars in special-interest money and dodging tough budget choices—but stories about these contradictions have drawn little interest outside the state Capitol in Sacramento and California’s small community of political aficionados.
During Schwarzenegger’s first year in office, the California press corps and national reporters who regularly write about him developed a fuller picture of his political and ideological motivations. This immigrant from a small town in Austria, who came to the United States with only a physique and a dream, is one of politics’ greatest showmen. A socially liberal capitalist and serial exaggera-tor, he is an exceptional salesman with boundless energy who long ago traded in steroids for calcium supplements. He taps his persona with the moviegoing masses to leverage the fortunes of other politicians. But he hasn’t, at least by the time this story went to press, risked that popularity for any major policy initiatives.
While he often keeps a distance from the California press corps, Schwarzenegger made clear his sense of his relationship with the media in a January 2004 speech to the Sacramento Press Club. “I mean, think about it. When I first came over here, who the hell knew who Arnold Schwarzenschnitzel was, right? I mean, nobody.”
His press coverage in the 1970s made bodybuilding a main-stream sport, he said. That attention turned him into the highest paid actor in the business. “That doesn’t mean I always got great review. As a matter of fact, I got horrible reviews many times,” he said. “But that’s OK … I got a lot of publicity.” The same was true in his run for governor, he said. “It was really the press that helped me to get to the place where I am today.”
As he spoke, reporters at the press luncheon fiddled with their rolls, faces flushed, wondering whether he was trying to humiliate them, or was he serious, or what? “Here’s a big applause to all of you,” he said.
Later, he took questions, starting with one from Mike Montgomery, a public radio reporter. “Let’s start right here at the front, with this gentleman right here in the beautiful blue turtleneck sweater.” Before Montgomery could begin, Schwarzenegger told the audience that a California state senator had given him some advice: “Always compliment the journalist. Always make them feel like they look good, they look sexy.” Those who knew the state senator in question—a wry, somewhat shy conservative—also knew that Schwarzenegger had come up with that advice on his own.
Source: Gary Delsohn and Margaret Talev, “Travels with Arnold”, American Journalism Review, February/March 2005.
This chapter has explored the role and influence of actors in the policy process—both institutional (the legislature, the governor and executive bureaucracy, and the courts) and non-institutional (media, parties, interest groups, and political consultants). From the discussion it can be seen that policy outcomes are typically a result of institutional processes and non-institutional influence. As the previous chapters explain, California’s political culture and structure is quite complex, representing the diverse interests of 36 million Californians. The policy game, therefore, is important to understand. As Californians pilot the ship of state, there is little consensus as to who is at the helm. While the governor may be the captain, the crew are under little obligation to follow the governor’s course. With the multitude of destinations sought, it is little wonder that California politics are contentious and passionate. But that, after all, is what democracy is all about.
1. B. Guy Peters, American Public Policy: Promise and Performance, 3rd ed. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1993), p. 4.
2. Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988).
3. See Stella Theodoulou and Matthew Cahn, Public Policy: The Essential Readings (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995).
4. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, in Peter Bondanella and Mark Muse, eds., The Portable Machiavelli (New York: Penguin Books, 1983).
5. Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).
6. Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 5.
7. Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1971), p. 2.
8. G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America Now? (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1983).
9. Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988).
10. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1980).
11. Paul Light, “The Presidential Policy Stream,” in Michael Nelson, ed., The Presidency and the Political System (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1984).
12. Kenneth J. Meier, Regulation: Politics, Bureaucracy, and Economics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985).
13. Nathan Glazer, “Towards an Imperial Judiciary?” Public Interest 41 (Fall 1975): 104–123.
14. Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, The Emergence of American Political Issues: The Agenda Setting Function of the Press (Boston:West Publishing Company, 1977).
15. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: The Free Press, 1922).
16. Doris Graber, Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1988).
17. Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987).
18. Ibid., p. 4.
19. James Madison, “Federalist #10,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: New American Library, 1961).
20. Robert Dahl, Who Governs? (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1961).
21. “Special-Interest Spending Takes Off,” Sacramento Bee (October 16, 2008).
22. Larry J. Sabato, The Rise of Political Consultants: New Ways of Winning Elections (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
23. Ibid.
24. Adapted from California State Budget At-a-Glance, published by the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, July 1992.