{"id":771,"date":"2009-03-24T18:13:17","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T23:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=771"},"modified":"2009-03-24T18:13:39","modified_gmt":"2009-03-24T23:13:39","slug":"how-did-ethanol-go-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2009\/03\/24\/how-did-ethanol-go-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Shock and Awe Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On the eve of the president’s second news conference, he might want to take a look at John Kingdon’s<\/a> classic Agendas, Alterantives and Public Policy.\u00a0 Along with setting the record for most mixed-metaphors in a book (garbage cans, primeval soup, policy streams, policy windows), the study provides a key insight for understanding policy change.\u00a0 In a nutshell, Kingdon argues that if you can merge policy problems, the decision-making agenda, and policy solutions brought forth by policy entrepreneurs, a policy window opens up<\/em> (I know, the high school English teacher in you is cringing), that allows you to realize a policy agenda.<\/p>\n

Kingdon’s streams imply an order to the policy process…only a handful of problems and solutions can garner the attention of policy makers at any given point in time and only a certain set of solutions are acceptable to decision makers and the public. By contrast, the Obama administration’s new budget seems to be part of a “shock and awe” approach to the policy process…flood the public agenda with a number of simultaneous problems and solutions (health care, education, climate change, etc.) in the hope that the deluge will overwhelm members and result in mass policy change. <\/p>\n

It’s an interesting and maybe unprecedented public policy strategy. If it works, it may signal a new approach to policy change, albeit one at which the framers would cringe. Personally, I’m skeptical that we’ll get a budget that looks anything like it currently does. The Senate is already putting the brakes on the process. <\/p>\n

What do you think of a “shock and awe” approach to policy change?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the eve of the president’s second news conference, he might want to take a look at John Kingdon’s classic Agendas, Alterantives and Public Policy.\u00a0 Along with setting the record for most mixed-metaphors in a book (garbage cans, primeval soup, policy streams, policy windows), the study provides a key insight for understanding policy change.\u00a0 In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1227,194,371],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-kingdon","tag-obama","tag-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}