Prepared for the Virtual College of FHSU
by Arthur L. Morin, PhD
Department of Political Science and Justice Studies
Fort Hays State University
Office: Rarick Hall 315
Phone numbers: (785) 628-4467, -4425
email:
amorin@fhsu.edu
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In order to take this course, you must have computer with
spreadsheet, internet, e-mail, and e-mail attachment capability.
Please read the syllabus completely before you start any
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This is a demanding course. It has been designed
for graduate students. You will not be required to complete Section
Three of this course if you are an undergraduate student. The course
has three purposes. The first purpose is to provide a theoretical
introduction to the policy process at the national level of the U.S. government.
The second purpose is to help you gain some experience using several analytical
techiques helpful in planning, decision making, implementation, and analysis.
The third purpose is to provide you an opportunity to gain knowledge of
some substantive policy areas and to see how scholars use analytical techniques
to draw conclusions about how policies work and how to improve them.
The way policy in the United States is created and
carried out is an extremely complex process. It is important for
citizens to gain some understanding of the complexity of this process;
it is particularly important for those who plan a career in the public
sector to understand this process. James Anderson's book is a short
but excellent introduction to the policy process. It will provide
the foundation for the course.
Becoming a practitioner -- that is, becoming a policy
analyst -- requires a person to develop both political and analytical skills.
Patton and Sawicki's book helps on both accounts. You will also be
reading Weimer and Vining's book, which should help you appreciate the
analytical skills an economist would use. The purpose of many of
the assignments in this course is to help you learn how to use techniques
described in Patton and Sawicki's book. One assignment requires an
understanding of several important terms found in the Weimer and Vining
book.
Observing how analytical techniques are used by
others can help you in two ways. First, it can increase your knowledge
of a particular issue, policy, or program. Secondly, it can help
you understand how analytical techniques are used by practitioners, thus
increasing your ability to engage in policy analysis. The remainder
of the books required for this class have been selected with these benefits
in mind.
Required Books for Graduate and Undergraduate Students
James E. Anderson. 2000. Public Policymaking,
Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company.
Carl V. Patton and David S. Sawicki. 1993. Basic
Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning, Second Edition. Prentice Hall.
David L. Weimer and Aidan R. Vining. 1999. Policy
Analysis Concepts and Cases, Third Edition. Prentice Hall.
Required Books for Graduate Students
Robert H. Blank. 1999. Brain Policy How
the New Neuroscience Will Change our Lives and Our Politics. Georgetown
University Press.
Peter Dauvergne. 1997. Shadows in the Forest
Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia. The MIT Press.
Steven Murdock, Richard S. Krannich, and F. Larry
Lestritz. 1999. Hazardous Wastes in Rural America Impacts, Implications,
and Options for Rural Communities. Rowman and Littlefield.
Ira M. Schwartz and Gideon Fishman. 1999. Kids
Raised by the Government. Praeger Publishers.
Other Titles in Which You May Have an Interest:
Bruce Ackerman and Ann Alstott. 1999. The Stakeholder
Society. Yale University Press.
Eugene Bardach. 2000. A Practical Guide for Policy
Analysis The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving.
Chatham House.
Joel Blau. 1999. Illusions of Prosperity: America's
Working Class Families in an Age of Economic Insecurity. Oxford University
Press.
Biliana Cicin-Sain and Robert W. Knecht. 1999. The
Future of U.S. Ocean Policy Choices for the New Century. Island
Press.
Jeffrey E. Cohen. 2000. Politics and Economic
Policy in the United States, Second Edition. Houghton Mifflin.
Joel F. Handler and Yeheskel Hasenfeld. 1998. We
the Poor People: Work, Poverty and Welfare. Yale University Press.
Thomas Karier. 1999. Great Experiments in American
Economic Policy From Kennedy to Reagan. Praeger Publishers.
Suzanne Lamorey, Bryan E. Robinson, Bobbie H. Rowland,
and Mick Coleman. 1999. Latchkey Kids Unlocking Doors for Children
and Their Families, Second Edition. SAGE Publications.
Rhonda F. Levine, ed. 1998. Social Class and
Stratification Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates. Rowman
and Littlefield.
Theodore R. Marmor. 1999. The Politics of Medicare,
Second Edition. Aldine de Gruyter.
Ray Marshall, ed. 1999. Back to Shared Prosperity
The Growing Inequality of Wealth and Income in America. M.E Sharpe.
Rebecca Mayhard, ed. 1997. Kids Having Kids:
Economic Costs and Social Consequences. Urban Institute Press.
Deborah R. McFarlane and Kenneth J. Meier. 2000.
The Politics of Fertility Control. Chatham House.
Sonya Michel. 1999. Children's Interests/Mothers'
Rights The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy. Yale University
Press.
David F. Musto. 1999. The American Disease
Origins of Narcotic Control, Third Edition. Oxford University Press.
Richard P. Nathan. 1999. Social Science in Government
The Role of Policy Researchers. Brookings Institute Press.
Kant Patel and Mark E. Rushefsky. 1999. Health
Care Politics and Policy in America, Second Edition. M.E. Sharpe.
Melvy D. Read. 1996. The Politics of Tobacco
Policy Networks and The Cigarette Industry. Ashgate Publishing.
Daniel Sarewitz, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., and Radford
Byerly, Jr., eds. 2000. Prediction Science, Decision Making, and
the Future of Nature. Covelo, CA: Island Press.
Harry G. Shaffer. 1999. American Capitalism and
the Changing Role of Government. Praeger Publishers.
Zachary Smith. 2000. The Environmental Policy
Paradox, Third Edition. Prentice Hall.
Joseph E. Stiglitz. 2000. Economics of the Public
Sector, Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Lawrence Thompson. 1998. Older and Wiser: The
Economics of Public Benefits. Urban Institute Press.
John Wargo. 1996. Our Children's Toxic Legacy
How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides. Yale University
Press.
Celia Winkler. 2000. The Canary in the Coal Mine
Single Mothers and the Welfare State in the United States and Sweden.
Rowman and Littlefield.
Course Activities
Course activities are organized in three sections.
For graduate students, there are thirty assignments; a total of 7,675 points
is possible. If you are a graduate student, your grade in the course
will be based on the following scale:
6,900 points or more is an A
6,370 points up to (but not including) 6,900 points is a B
5,600 points up to (but not including) 6,370 points is a C
4,835 points up to (but not including) 5,600 points is a D
For undergraduate students, there are 5,875 points possible.
If you are an undergraduate student, your grade in the course will be based
on the following scale:
5,287 points or more is an A
4,700 points up to (but not including) 5,287 points is a B
4,112 points up to (but not including) 4,700 points is a C
3,525 points up to (but not including) 4,112 points is a D
Section One. Read the book by James Anderson.
Assignment 1: write a brief (three-to-four page)
summary and critique of the book, then send
it to me in the mail. The summary and critique
is worth 300 points. This assignment must arrive
in the mail by the end of the first week of the
two-month summer session. You will be required
to subscribe to the Virtual Discussion Group (VDG)
and participate in a discussion about
Anderson's book. Participation in the "virtual"
discussion group is worth 150 points.
Section Two. Read the Patton and Sawicki book and the Weimar and
Vining book.
Please use the regular mail to send me the assignments
from this section. If you have any
questions about any assignment, please do not hesitate
to use the Virtual Discussion Group
to ask others about the assignment. If you
are a graduate student, assignments from this
section must arrive in the mail by the
end of the fourth week of the summer session. If you
are an undergraduate student, these assignments
must arrive in the may by the end of the
seventh week of the summer session. Use spreadsheets
where appropriate. I would strongly
encourage each of you to use the Virtual Discussion
Group (see Section One) to correspond
with each other about the assignments in this section.
Feel free to share ideas and suggestions
about each assignment, though of course you much
each submit your own answers.
assignment 2: Clip news articles
as directed in number 2, page 20 in Patton and Sawicki.
Send me a very brief description of each article and indicate the
"central
decision criterion" for each one. 100 points.
assignment 3: Study the exercise
that begins on page 66 in Patton and Sawicki.
Write a very brief (no longer than four-page) analysis, using the six steps
described by the authors. Format your analysis in the form of bullet
points
(or an outline). Use only the data provided in the book; do not do
any
additional research. If you feel you need more information than provided,
explain what kind of information you need and how you would obtain it.
100 points.
assignment 4: Answer number 14 on page 145 in Patton and Sawicki. 25 points.
assignment 5: This assignment
was to be worth 50 points, but I have decided to
remove it from the syllabus. Thus, the number of points possible
listed above are off by 50.
assignment 6: Answer number 1 on page 179 in Patton and Sawicki. 100 points.
assignment 7: Answer number 4 on page 181 in Patton and Sawicki. 100 points.
assignment 8: Answer number
1 on page 222 in Patton and Sawicki, including only
those criteria you did not consider in technique assignment 2. 100
points.
assignment 9: Answer number 7 on pages 223 and 224 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 10: Answer number 1 on page 255 in Patton and Sawicki. 100 points.
assignment 11: Answer number 2 on page 255 in Patton and Sawicki. 100 points.
assignment 12: Answer number 16 on page 256 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 13: Answer number 17 on page 256 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 14: Answer number 1 on page 319 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 15: Answer number
3 on pages 319 and 320 in Patton and Sawicki.
200 points.
assignment 16: Answer number 21 on page 323 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 17: Compute the
internal rate of return for number 21 (see above).
200 points.
assignment 18: Answer number
25 on pages 324 and 325 in Patton and Sawicki.
400 points.
assignment 19: Answer number 27 on page 325 in Patton and Sawicki. 400 points.
assignment 20: Answer numbers
36 and 37 on page 327 in Patton and Sawicki.
300 points.
assignment 21: Answer number 1 on page 360 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 22: Answer number 8 on page 361 in Patton and Sawicki. 300 points.
assignment 23: Answer number 1 on page 395 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 24: Answer number 10 on page 397 in Patton and Sawicki. 200 points.
assignment 25: Provide a
brief definition of each of the following terms from Weimer
and Vining. 25 points each. Be sure to include
the page
number(s) where the definition is provided.
objective technician
capital market
client's advocate
existence value
issue advocate
social welfare function
declining marginal utility
utilitarianism
Pareto efficiency
the maximin principle
compensating variation
gross national product
public goods
the consumer price index
excludability
silent losers
congestibility
transitivity
externality
axiom of independence
natural monopoly
rent seeking
information assymetry
sunk cost
utility interdependence
agency loss
moral hazard
legalization
social marginal rate of time preference privatization
Pigovian tax solution
tariff
matching grant
tax expenditure
in-kind subsidy
voucher
commodity tax
price cap regulation
government corporation
special district
insurance
cushion
meta-analysis
substantive goal
Gresham's law
opportunity cost
contingent valuation survey
hedonic price model
social discount rate
the problem of horse & rabbit stew
Section Three. Read the remaining "required" books in alphabetical
order.
For each book,
(a) write a brief
explanation of the policy area covered;
(b) briefly describe
the techniques the author(s) used;
(c) discuss the appropriateness
of those techniques;
(d) critique the policy
recommendations offered by the author(s);
(e) participate in
the "virtual" discussion of each book.
assignment 26: assessment
of the book by Blank is due no later than the last day
of the 6th week of the semester. Worth 300 points. See the
note about
about assignment 30 for instructions regarding discussion of this book
using the Virtual Discussion Group (VDG).
assignment 27: assessment
of the book by Dauvergne is due no later than the last
day of the 7th week of the semester. Worth 300 points.
See the note about about assignment 30 for instructions regarding
discussion of this book using the VDG.
assignment 28: assessment
of the book by Murdock, et al is due no later than the
last day of the 7th week of the semester. Worth 300 points.
See the note about about assignment 30 for instructions regarding
discussion of this book using the VDG.
assignment 29: assessment
of the book by Schwartz and Fishman is due no later than
the last day of the 8th week of the semester. Worth 300 points.
See the note about about assignment 30 for instructions regarding
discussion of this book using the VDG.
assignment 30: Participate
in the VDG discussion about each book.
Discussion of each book is worth 150 points. In other words, in this
assignment there is a total of 600 points possible.