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Talking Notes: Public Policy and Democracy

Slide 1. Title page
The elephant in the corner is the wounded and sagging figure of
democracy. Democracy is big and in trouble, but public policy
research restricts it to the margins and mainly ignores it. We
know that in many of the countries we classify as democratic, the
voices of the privileged and well- regarded citizens are loud and
influential. We also know that ordinary citizens barely speak with
a whisper that is lost on the ears of inattentive policy makers in
these same countries.

Slide 2 Overview
Yet most public policy research does not even mention
democracy and certainly does not use it as a criterion for
evaluation of policy frameworks or particular policies. Today will
be different because we will spend this session on the
intersection of public policy and democracy. With hindsight that
extends backwards more than 50 years, I want to reflect upon the
roots and reasons for the neglect of democracy by policy
scholars. Then, I will talk about what I see as the greatest wound
crippling democracy today. At the end of what I have to say, as
senior scholars often claim the right to do, I will advise you all
what you should be doing in the future to drag democracy out of
the corner, look at it closely, and identify healing prescriptions.

Slide 3 Roots of neglect

First, what does democracy signify? Democracy is a kind of ‘love’
word to which we pay homage but take the meaning for granted.
For our purposes we must unpack the idea to some
fundamentals: democracy is a system of government where the
members of a community by and large participate, directly or
indirectly, in making decisions that affect them. In a democracy,
virtually all points of view are represented. Democratic public
policy involves, enables and inspires citizen participation.
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Policies do not consistently discriminate against and alienate

certain kinds of citizens. A few fine scholars employ these
principles in their work, such as Dryzek, deLeon, Fischer,
Fishkin, Mettler, Schneider, Smith, Soss, Morone and some others.
But, democracy is not a central concern in our field.

This neglect was certainly not meant to be at the birth of policy

studies as a separate enterprise in the 1940’s. Harold Lasswell
founded the field as the Policy Sciences of Democracy to provide
information that would clarify the processes of policy making
and supply data needed on policy questions. In Lasswell’s words,
the policy sciences of democracy were directed towards
knowledge to improve the practice of democracy. His interest was
in serving a democratic elite, but he envisioned the elite as
embracing the whole community. Unfortunately, when the
behavioral era began to dominate political science, the discipline
became overwhelmingly preoccupied with describing and
predicting how political processes work. Normative questions
were no longer asked. Public policy as a subject in political
science became nonexistent.

By the time I entered graduate school at Columbia University in

the Fall of 1959, the only courses offered with the word policy in
them were foreign policy. My dissertation was about the
influence of constituency on the process of legislation. I had a
hard time persuading my committee chair that my focus on how
housing policy was designed to serve real estate and banking
interests rather than the public was within the rubric of political
science. For the next few years after I got my degree, I wandered
in the wilderness with no comfortable academic identity. I tried
to pass as a legislative and administrative processes scholar. I
was immensely relieved that by the end of the ‘60s and early ‘70s
several things came together to legitimize studies of policy in
political science. Two important edited books by Austin Ranney
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and Ira Sharkansky gave cover to political scientists to do policy

research. The policy studies organization was established and its
executive director Stuart Nagel created multiple outlets for policy
publications. In 1973, I found a home among implementation
scholars with the publication of a landmark book on the topic by
Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky. In 1977, I wrote an article
entitled “Policy Implementation Through Bargaining” recently
republished by Guy Peter and Jon Pierre, in their reference book
on public administration for which I am grateful.

It was not until mid career that I fully understood why I had
experienced such problems pursuing subjects I really cared
about; and why policy studies were still considered out of the
mainstream in political science despite the growing numbers of
scholars in the subfield. Ted Lowi was a scholar I greatly admired.
I had used Lowi’s typology in my research, and so I attended his
Presidential Address to American Political Science Association in
1992. In his talk Lowi argued that political science and its major
subfields including public policy, were overlooking a big change
that was threatening democracy (Lowi called it a transformation
to a new republic). I want to revisit his arguments today to see if
his concerns persist and help explain why democracy is a
neglected topic twent-five years later. As we will see, we have
made progress but we still have some blinders on.

Slide 4. Lowi’s Complaints…..

In 1992, Lowi declared that economic thinking and analysis were
swallowing up the field. Economics was the new language of the
state, and policy analysis was serving the state very well with its
emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness. Now it can be said that
economics is still influential in policy studies, but so are many
disciplines including sociology, geography, planning, psychology,
history, communications and others. Moreover, many policy
scholars today have multiple disciplinary identities. Perhaps in
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response to Lowi’s consciousness -raising in 1992, I myself

sought affiliations besides political science in other colleges and
disciplines including engineering, planning, public
administration, law and social ecology. Another important
change is that publications outlets that publish policy research
have become more varied and prestigious, and journals like the
Journal of Public Policy have grown steadily in stature.

Lowi’s next criticism is easy to dismiss today. In 1992 Lowi said

that the field of public policy had become separated from that of
public administration, previously a mainstay of political science.
Now departments often combine public policy and public
administration and Guy Peters, the President of this organization,
is well known both as a public administration and public policy
scholar.

The next complaint remains partly pertinent. Lowi deplored the

brand of positivist science that dominated the political science
discipline and was very damaging to value-oriented scholarship
and robbed the discipline of its passion. Lowi’s said that science
dictated that analysis must be neutral, rational, and microscopic.
As a consequence, attention was drawn to the smallest unit, the
variable, about which it was difficult to be passionate and
relevant. I turn to a talk given by Deborah Stone to reinforce this
point. The title Deborah Stone chose for her keynote to the
Interpretive Policy Conference in 2013, ‘taking emotions
seriously’ suggests that we policy scholars are still neglecting
emotions. She stated, (quote)“We now know from cognitive
science that there is no such beast as pure rational thinking,
absent emotion. Everyone in the interpretive policy community
and many who aren’t, roundly rejects positivist science, the
rational/emotional dichotomy and the possibility of objectivity.”
(Close quote) She goes on to say, even post positivist interpretive
scholars are at pains to prove they are serious and scientific.
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Terms like rigorous, systematic, methodological, careful,

analytical, and dispassionate are buzzwords or what Stone calls
‘belonging words’ that we utter like secret passwords so we can
be admitted to the social science club and permitted to stay.

I agree with Deborah Stone that playing down the emotional

underpinnings of human political and policy behavior costs us
mightily in terms of insight. As a consequence, much of the best
work related to emotions comes from other study areas like
geopolitics and social psychology. Dominique Moisi argues that
the emotions of fear, humiliation and hope are reshaping the
world. Psychologists have revealed to us all that judgments are
emotion and affect- driven, with reason relegated to a secondary
role.

Yet, we are overcoming many of the troublesome constraints

Lowi thought science imposed. As Deborah Stone indicated, she
and many others of us are quite comfortable operating outside
the positivist tradition. Ethnographic methodologies are widely
embraced by those who base their work on interviews and
observation. Discourse analysis, that is the analysis of the
argumentative structure in documents and other written
statements, has a firm place in public policy studies and is well
represented on several panels at this meeting. Narrative policy
analysis, some of it within the positivist tradition and some not,
draw from work in the humanities. Many people embrace a
variety of methodologies, some that might be termed interpretive
and others not. The best of public policy work today adopts
multiple methodologies.

Slide 5. Lowi’s Charges Persist

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Lowi’s final and most damning criticism was that public policy
and the other hegemonic subfields were too slow to recognize
the fundamental changes afoot that were altering the nature of
American Democracy in 1992. Lowi argued that the failure to
address big issues rather than microscopic questions resulted in
a tendency to interpret each change as consistent with our
existing model of the political system taken by definition as
democratic. Researchers were blinded to the accumulation of
actions that fundamentally changed the regime. The dangerous
change Lowi thought had been missed was the growth and power
of bureaucracy in an administrative state where specialists and
experts made many of the decisions affecting citizens without
their participation and input. In my opinion the threats to
democracy existing today are different, but the topic of
democracy continues to be neglected by many policy scholars.

Slide 6 Cycle
So what big challenge to democracy worries me the most? In this
figure I have placed citizens at the center of a rough outline of the
policy cycle. In the degenerative policy contexts in which most
modern democracies function, especially the United States, some
people are strongly and successfully motivated by policy to
participate in politics. Others are negatively repelled and
marginalized by policy, and the democratic possibility of
mobilizing and demanding better treatment at the hands of
policy does not occur.

Theorists who study democracy have differing notions of what

the relationship between citizens and various stages of the policy
cycle should be. There are some who believe that people in a
democracy need protection from government. Others, that
government should liberate citizens to express their preferences
effectively. The first conception that Peter deLeon calls
Madisonian democracy, is intended to defend citizens from
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tyranny. Madison, one of the framers of the U. S. constitution,

feared the pernicious effects of political factions and domination
by the majority. The other, more recent conception holds that
people in a democracy should be able to engage in policy making,
and enact policy preferences. Some such scholars are focusing on
reforming policy governing election eligibility and voting rights.
They fashion and experiment with promising alternatives for
representation outside voting, such as discursive representation,
citizen forums and other mechanisms to increase meaningful
participation in policy. This kind of research is reflected in the
arrow connecting citizens to policy- making processes at the top
of the cycle. This work is important and meaningful, but I want
you to consider also the other relationships at the sides and
bottom of the circle, and that all the relationships work both
ways, with policy feed- back sending messages that are important
to democracy. I believe that the increasing role of labeling,
stereotyping and stigma of citizens that drives inequitable
policies and sends messages that discourages participation. Lets
see how that happens:

Slide 7 Increase in Labels…..

Democracy is built and torn down by the humble creation of

categories that carve out target groups in public policy. The
increasing role of labels, stereotypes and stigma in creating and
justifying categories and deciding who wins and who loses is
undermining democracy. Portrayals of target populations in the
policy cycle that are deceptive and discriminatory clearly breach
bedrock democratic principles of fairness and equal treatment.
Policies driven by emotionally based branding of particular
groups as deserving and undeserving inform some that their
interests are automatically consonant with the public interest,
while alienating and discoursing others. Throughout the policy
cycle, the discourse in policy debates, the provisions in legislation
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and rules, and the ways laws are implemented all carry powerful
messages about who matters, and whom government serves and
punishes. These messages teach citizens whether or not their
problems are public problems related to public welfare or are
their own to solve. It tells them whether they are to be treated
with respect, ignored or punished. They teach whether
participation matters or whether government is something to be
avoided. Of course, the allocation of benefits and burdens by
policy also affects the time and resources targets have to
participate in policy making.

There is no reason to replicate here the power/social

constructions matrix Anne Schneider and I, joined a decade ago
by Peter deLeon, developed to categorize different target
populations. The framework has been around for some time and
is included in recent edited collections by Chris Weible and Frank
Fischer and their colleagues. It is sufficient for our purposes
today to observe that some people with power and positive social
constructions always get benefits while others who are
powerless and not viewed so positively almost never do.
Consequently, the kind of equal and fair treatment we expect of
democracy is not taking place. Bad consequences flow from
policies that are too generous, too stingy or hide benefits. Equally
bad things happen when policies impose excessive costs, and
intrusive rules that demean the recipients of policies.

Slide 8 Policy Bias……

Excessive and irrational benefits to some are unfair, wasteful and
damaging to democracy. In the U. S., mortgage and tax benefits to
homeowners were once justified as building stable communities
but serve that purpose no longer. Most homeowners today treat
their houses as an investment, and do not hesitate to buy and sell
houses to build wealth. The cost of the tax benefits for owner-
occupied housing adds up to about $175 billion annually, with
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the mortgage-interest deduction alone costing the treasury

roughly $100 billion. The five-year costs of these tax benefits
total well over $1 trillion. To put this amount in perspective, one
year of tax benefits for owner-occupied housing costs more than
the discretionary budgets of the departments of Education,
Homeland Security, Energy, and Agriculture combined. Further,
these subsidies do not even increase the rate of home ownership,
and are highly skewed in favor of wealthier people in suburbs.
Not only is this unfair, but policies teach advantaged homeowners
that they are more deserving than renters, and that they should
make housing decisions based on provisions of the tax code.

Benefits that are too stingy to the disadvantaged send messages

that recipients’ needs are relatively unimportant to government.
More than 50 years after Lyndon Johnson declared war on
poverty, financial aid to the poor is insufficient to get to the root
of problems. Poverty emerged as an issue after John Kennedy
visited Appalachia in the 1960 Presidential primaries and was
shocked into consciousness by the poverty in the region. Last
year, after half a century of federal antipoverty efforts, the
poverty rate of families with children living in Appalachia is now
43% of the residents and the median annual family income is
only $22.000.

Hidden benefits, including regulatory relief to powerful clientele

with negative reputations teach them that influence peddling and
lobbying in obscure arenas pays off better than more democratic
above the board processes everyone can see. Suzanne Mettler
argues in her book The Submerged State that influential lobbies
are able to protect complicated tax breaks and regulatory lapses
benefitting the wealthy while ordinary citizens are left in the
dark. Without knowledge of who is winning and losing, ordinary
citizens are unable to mobilize against unfair policies. Much of
the complicated and generally invisible tax code tilts the scales to
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the well off. Banks were widely thought to culpable for the 2008-
9 financial meltdown. Excessive bonuses and other perverse
financial incentives encouraged banks to take risks lending to
unqualified borrowers. Yet, today, corrective action is weak. No
limit on executive pay has occurred, and regulatory reform is
being undercut in implementation. The Dodd-Frank banking
reform law requires regulators to write hundreds of rules and
conduct dozens of studies within agencies before the laws
reforms could be put in place. The result of all the nearly
invisible activity has been delays, weak rules and political
setbacks of rules that were supposed to restrain powerful but
irresponsible interests. Recent research on the power of the
economic elite to get their way in terms of legislation in the U. S.
is very strong while those of ordinary voters is negligible.

Costs including fines, incarceration, and negative regulations are

even more biased in allocation to politically powerless but
disliked groups. From the 1970s to the mid 1990s in the U. S. the
‘war on crime’ entailed mandatory sentences and long
incarceration for many offenses. As the costs of jails and prisons
climb, legislatures have responded by backing away somewhat
from more long-term sentencing. But, they have not relented
much when it comes to arrests and fines, barring access to
benefits, and breach and suspension of civil rights.

Terrorists are the quintessential example of a target group that is

subject to over allocation of costs. Elected leaders seem willing to
make very large expenditures to punish them. Today, 122
prisoners remain at Guantanamo despite the international
uproar and costs approaching 3 million dollars to jail each
prisoner for a year as compared with about $34,000 for other
federal prisoners. 57 of these have been approved for release,
but transfers are being blocked for a variety of reasons including
Congressional opposition based on stereotypes. Long time
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incarceration without trial or conviction tarnishes the nation’s

reputation as democratic. Policies against suspected terrorists in
many countries are increasingly excessive.

Stereotypes and stigma is especially strong directed against

young Black offenders, who are subjected to remarkably punitive
policies in the U. S. Approximately one forth of young Black men
between 16 and 24 who did not finish high school is incarcerated
in juvenile detention, jail or prison as compared with only 6
percent of Whites. Citizen encounters with the police feature
derogatory remarks, and bodily contact. In an APSR article
Weaver and Lerman reported that punitive encounters with the
state foster mistrust of political institutions and weak
attachments to the political process. Criminal justice policies
send consistent messages that prisoners are unworthy of equal
citizenship, and these policies create an enduring demarcation
between law-abiding citizens and those branded as deviants.

Intrusive and excessive rules imposed on the powerless demean

recipients and alienate them from government. Policies allowing
invasions of privacy and limitations on liberty are supposed to
promote democracy and good, responsible citizenship. There are
many examples. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings,
students and parents must sign a charter of Laicite, or a ban of
public exercise of religion such as the wearing of headscarves or
long skirts. To the larger French population, the laws and
regulations are essential to democracy. To Muslims, the rules
victimize them. As Dominique Moise remarked, “We don’t need
such things in the current situation. Laicite has become the first
religion of the Republic, and it requires obedience and belief. But,
I care more for democracy than for the republic. ”

Conditions placed on the receipts of welfare before they can get

their money are another example of excessive and intrusive rules.
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Welfare reform was supposed to get people off welfare and into
productive work, and the numbers on welfare have been reduced.
But reform in many states has gone beyond requiring work and
limiting the length of time a poor person can receive payments.
Many state legislatures are requiring drug testing of recipients
before they can receive many kinds of social benefits. In some
states, up to 20% reduction in welfare rolls are due to drug
testing. Research found that other problems like mental illness,
poor academic skills, and poor physical health are more
influential causes of poverty than addiction. Drug testing all of
the poor without cause or suspicion of drug use is demeaning
and alienating. Further, such policy portrays recipients as largely
responsible for their own problems and not worthy of sympathy.
The whole group gravitates from being powerless but worthy of
help toward the label of deviants deserving little if anything.
There is a widespread and false public perception that most
mothers on welfare are alcoholics and drug addicts.

Experience with policy is among the most significant influences

on identity of citizens and therefore participation in politics
including voting. On its face, the connection between policy
effects and participation would seem to be a no brainer since
government spending accounts for one-third to one half of the
gross domestic product of Western industrialized nations. In
addition to this spending, government regulations directly affect
the lives of workers, consumers, and community members. When
people have negative experience with policy they feel
marginalized and that their participation in politics is useless. A
majority of welfare clients in the U. S. report feeling humiliated
and vulnerable in their encounters with the welfare agencies that
they have come to see as pervasive threats in their lives. The
national elections study found that welfare recipients have
considerably lower levels of political efficacy than the rest of the
population. Moreover, welfare recipients are deeply estranged
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from one another. Welfare recipients buy into the negative

stereotypes directed toward their group and want to separate
themselves as much as possible from interaction with others who
they think deserve the label while they do not. Such alienation
from their fellows makes them extremely difficult to mobilize.

Contact with the criminal justice system in the U. S. has quite

negative impact on political participation including turning out to
vote, involvement in civic groups and trusting the government.
This is true not just for young Black men who are incarcerated in
large numbers, but also the general young adult population. But
what about the other side of the coin? Can policies designed
without the biases we have talk about engage and inspire
participation?
Slide 9 Policies Can Engage and Inspire

People are likely to be more positive about government and 
participate in politics more if the policies directed towards them 
provide benefits that are portrayed as deserved (not handouts or 
charity). Social security benefits have clearly increased the voting 
and participation of the elderly. Veterans, particularly of World War 
II when benefits were generous and distributed widely, have been 
especially good citizens.  Suzanne Mettler (2007) found that benefits
helped returning veterans earn college degrees, train for vocations,
support young families, and purchase homes, farms and businesses.
Beneficiaries also became more engaged citizens. Compared to
veterans who did not use education and training benefits, recipients
reported involvements in 50 percent more civic associations and
became significantly more politically active. Veteran’s benefits were 
portrayed as fair and justified, and signaled that recipients were 
valued citizens. The way agencies implement policies is also 
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important. Treating recipients of benefits as deserving appears to be 
critical to sending messages that reinforce democracy.  For instance, 
research has found that the demanding criteria for obtaining 
disability benefits in the U. S. does not suppress participation 
because once obtained beneficiaries are treated with respect by 
agency implementers.  

Policies that engage recipients and encourage them to voice their 
concerns send democratic messages.  Joe Soss found that mothers 
whose children are in head start programs and participate in the 
programs education and decision­making, have a more positive 
orientation towards government. We need much more research on 
how certain policy designs can counteract stigma and stereotypes, 
and how such policies can send democratic and participatory 
resources and messages. For instance, we would profit from knowing
whether the Affordable Care Act increases the likelihood of people 
previously without insurance to vote and participate to protect their 
gains.  That leads me to the last section of the talk about what is next.

Slide 10 What is Next? Table…..

Some of Lowi’s criticisms still need to be addressed in the future.
Much of our field has yet to embrace emotions as a part of our
analysis. Deference to narrow ideas of the scientific method still
drive many to a microscopic focus in their studies, believing science
progresses one tiny contribution at a time. For me, this is like putting
band-aids on the elephant while ignoring systematic illnesses. The
failure to address larger normative questions causes policy scholars
to be blind to and uncritical about big changes. The big change I
have emphasized is the increasing role of stereotypes and stigma in
fashioning policy. Unless we consider a more inclusive level of
discourse, rise above the microscopic, and consider cumulative
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policy impacts, we will continue to ignore the elephant in the corner.

We need to conduct our studies in ways that move to the right of the
table. Are there examples of the kinds of things public policy
scholars should be studying to address the democracy gap in which
people who have the most to gain or lose participate the least?

Slide 11 Study What and How?

We should do more studies that consider policy from the
perspective of policy recipients. Deciding whether or not to vote
is not just a self- interested act but also an expression of identity.
Policies socially construct target groups as deserving or undeserving,
and those treated as undeserving are not likely to identify themselves
with government. Since multiple policies send the same kinds of
messages to those with similar power and social image, multiple
policies must change if positive identification with government and
participation is to increase among those who are not engaged but
have a lot at stake. To see how multiple policies reinforce messages
damaging to democracy we must look at citizens’ experiences and
the lessons they draw.

Several recent studies are exemplary of what kinds of work might be

done that takes the viewpoint on those at the receiving end of policy.
Alice Goffman’s fine book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an
American City, looks at how problems with the law affect every
aspect of the lives of a group of poor, uneducated, young, urban
black men in Philadelphia, with whom she was embedded for
over six years doing her research. She documents how every
aspect of the young men’s lives including education, health,
housing, employment, friendships, partnerships, family and race
relations are ruled by the omnipresence of a repressive regime of
interlinked policies. The young men Goffman studies are
sometimes small time drug dealers, but most are just ordinary
guys dealing with limited choices. The operative police
assumption of criminality is built on the very associations and
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friendships that make up a life. Even the mainly law-abiding are

caught up in a web of warrants and surveillance that is nearly
impossible to escape. Goffman recounts the pleasures of
summer-evenings with her friends sitting on the stoop of a
neighborhood building, only to have the enjoyment shattered by
a car full of cops swooping in to serve a warrant. She tells how
teenagers teach their younger siblings and cousins how to run
from the police, and how to stay away from their network of
friends and family so that the police will not trace them. The
result is a heavy toll on families and the neighborhood as men go
on the run or to prison rather than to work to support their
families. In the book, Goffman concentrates on policing policies,
but her study demonstrates that many others including welfare,
food stamps, housing, job training, minimum wage and education
are implicated. Similar research that imbeds researchers with
policy recipients and traces the effects of policies on peoples’
lives and futures is badly needed.

Robert Putnam’s latest book, Our Kids: The American Dream in

Crisis, is another study that looks at life experiences from the
perspective of those doing the living. He treats the growing gap
between the universes the rich and poor inhabit. With the
hollowing out of the middle class in America, Putnam documents
how a gulf has developed between those who prosper in America
and participate in politics and those who fail and have no voice.
What does citizenship mean for people who are consistently
subjected to labeling and stereotyping by policy? Not
surprisingly, apathy and alienation are common. For instance,
here is an excerpt from an interview with a young woman:
.
Q: Are you involved in political stuff or community
stuff?
A: Not Really.
Q: Are you interested in watching the news?
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A: It gets old after a while. Somebody shoots

somebody or somebody robbed
somebody. I’m not that interested
Q. Are you excited about the election coming up? Do
you think you will vote?
A: Nah. I don’t care.
Q. Do you have a party that you like?
A: They all kinda suck.
Q: Are your parents involved in politics at all?
A: Not really.
Like Goffman, Putnam sees the estrangement from politics of
non-voters as the product of many factors developing over
decades, including family structure, schools, child development
and parenting and communities. He offers a number of
suggestions for improvements, interestingly many of which
require policy change. Maddeningly, however, he does not
implicate the specific policies that have had a large role in
breaking up families, communities, educational institutions, and
unions as well as destroying economic and job opportunities for
those far down on the economic ladder. Policy scholars need to
do many additional studies to understand better the legacy of
multiple policies and how they interact to send messages
destructive of democracy and participation.

Slide 12 Final Slide.

I have two final bits of advice for the future. Serving democracy
by finding better answers is a fundamental obligation of policy
researchers. From the beginning Lasswell made serving
democracy a core responsibility by informing, enlightening, and
inspiring citizens and policy makers. Of course we all write for
our colleagues, hoping our ideas and findings will attract
scholarly attention. But we must also serve more fundamental
and less personal values. It is time for us to collectively move the
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elephant to the center of the room, examine it closely, and see

what can be done to improve the health of democracy through
better- informed public policy. Public Policy scholars of the future
need to work at levels of analysis and discourse worthy of the
jumbo subject of democracy.