Crosby B.C., Bryson J.M. - Leadership for the Common Good (2005)(en)

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signed to yield enough information to assess whether key decision makers will favor or oppose the final proposal. The more that stakeholders are openly and actively involved in the informal review sessions in this phase, the more difficult it will be for them to raise objections later.

Second, decide whether the proposal should be pressed in court rather than in an arena. The courts may be the best setting for adopting the proposal if it is justified by principles and mandates that guide the courts. On the other hand, even when you view the courts as more favorable to your cause than arenas are, you may still want to present the proposal in an arena to fan public interest and accumulate gains that might influence the courts.

Summary

In the fourth phase of the policy change cycle, policy entrepreneurs should prepare and review a policy proposal that is ready for formal review and adoption by key decision makers in the fifth phase. The proposal should therefore be a technically and administratively workable, politically acceptable, and legally and ethically defensible response to the public need that prompted the change effort in the first place. It should incorporate the vision that guides the work of the coalition formed around it. Indeed, an essential outcome of this phase is a winning coalition that can be counted on to engage in political leadership in the next phase.

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phase so that the issue at hand can be addressed effectively during the sixth phase, implementation.

Policy entrepreneurs seek a number of outcomes in this phase:

•Widely shared agreement with their proposal

•A decision in the relevant arena(s) to adopt the proposal and proceed with implementation

•If needed, a decision in relevant courts to require or facilitate proposal adoption

•Provision of necessary guidance and resources for implementation

•Support of those who can strongly affect implementation success

•A widely shared sense of excitement about the new policy and its implementation

•A persistent supportive coalition that will monitor implementation

•Respectful, if not cordial relationships, among participants

Widely Shared Agreement

Ideally, some of the official policy makers are already part of the coalition that has developed the policy proposal. In this phase, policy entrepreneurs work to bring enough additional policy makers on board to obtain formal approval in the relevant arena. They seek to make their idea one whose time has come through astute use of such processes as the bandwagon effect, signing up, and exploiting a window of opportunity. These processes contribute to what John Kingdon (1995) has called “coupling,” in which a public problem, solutions, and a favorable political climate come together. Kingdon has studied this process in legislative arenas; Carl Van Horn and his colleagues also emphasize the importance of coupling in decision making within corporations, public bureaucracies, and offices of an elected chief executive (Van Horn, Baumer, and Gormley, 2001). Although much of this chapter focuses on the legislative arena, policy entrepreneurs also should attempt to influence relevant executive and administrative policy makers. For example, chief executives may be able to make a significant change on their own, and they also can be powerful allies in persuading a legislative body to act.

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Additionally, a chief administrator can make some important policy decisions and may have considerable sway with legislators.

The Bandwagon Effect

By playing up the strengths of their proposal, emphasizing the magnitude of support for it, and attracting favorable coverage in relevant media, policy entrepreneurs seek to generate a bandwagon, or multiplier, effect (Benveniste, 1989; Kingdon, 1995). Nonsupporters may sense that the proposal is a sure winner and decide to hop on the bandwagon so they can be part of a winning coalition.

Perception of the credibility and certainty of adoption is likely to grow as a consequence of threefold knowledge, regarding (1) the technical and administrative feasibility of the proposed change,

(2)extensive support for the change among key stakeholders, and

(3)the degree to which authoritative decision makers specifically support the change (Benveniste, 1989). Policy entrepreneurs should strive to increase and publicize all three kinds of knowledge.

A powerful bandwagon effect can make a proposal virtually unstoppable and is particularly important for a major policy change, which is unlikely to happen without strong and widespread support. Although previous phases should be designed to enhance the possibility of a bandwagon effect, policy entrepreneurs want it to peak at the point of a proposal-adoption decision. Once policy entrepreneurs detect this peak, they should quickly press for adoption of their proposal; otherwise crafty opponents may be able to upset the bandwagon. As John Kingdon has noted, “The really big steps are taken quickly or not at all” (1995, p. 170).

Signing Up

The softening-up process described in Chapter Nine prepares the way for building a substantial coalition and creating the bandwagon effect. Softening up, however, is different from signing up. In the softening-up process, policy entrepreneurs attempt to persuade stakeholders that policy change is needed. In the signing-up process, entrepreneurs find specific inducements to prompt specific stakeholders to support the proposal. Both the softening-up argument and the signing-up inducements must be geared to the stakeholder’s interpretive schemes, values, and interests, because

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people choose whether or not to support a change in light of how they think it will affect what they care about.

The signing-up process often involves an interesting twist on the normal notion of costs and benefits. Policy makers may be prone to sign onto a big, pricey proposal because the high costs are actually expected to produce big benefits (Kingdon, 1995). In voting for the proposal, they position themselves to take credit for distributing those benefits or building a successful program, project, or product. Support for a very expensive proposal is more likely if it is widely perceived to be “good” policy. In 2003, the Bush administration and the U.S. Congress approved billions of dollars for the global battle against HIV/AIDS. Fighting AIDS is now widely seen as a gargantuan public problem and an issue of compassion. Small appropriations are laughable; indeed, the Bush administration was criticized for backing off its initial promise of much more generous funding. The pricey Medicare bill passed in 2003 is a similar example. The new law is a tremendous, costly expansion of Medicare benefits and payments to health care providers. It passed because Medicare is a widely supported program, and because a large number of older adults, pharmaceutical companies, and health maintenance organizations will benefit from the new policies.

Development of policy makers’ support for a proposal requires cultivating networks. This is especially true in the legislative arena, but also important in the corporate or nonprofit boardroom, the executive cabinet, and administrative offices. The focus here is on the legislative arena because it is crucial in adopting policies that have general application and spur decision making in other arenas.

Policy entrepreneurs should remember that legislators must often make decisions under time pressure and without extensive knowledge. It is wise to assume that legislators know little about any bill other than one they have introduced. Legislators also are unlikely to be interested in a bill that does not relate directly to something they care about (what they likely care about is getting reelected, securing passage of one of their bills, and setting up a useful relationship). Legislative floor debate rarely sways votes. Rather, relationships (especially friendships and political connections) are critical; legislators look to these relationships and the messages conveyed through them for cues about how to vote.

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Change advocates must find a way to cultivate these friendship and political networks. The networks may include factions within a legislature, but also people outside—other elected officials, civic leaders, party officials, lobbyists, and corporate executives. When a legislature shares power with an elected executive (president, governor, mayor), policy entrepreneurs should seek to win the support of the executive, since he or she has considerable power to activate the network in which legislators participate.

Legislators essentially engage in reciprocity-based decision making, in which they rely on each other and their staff members for information and support. The reciprocity may be tacit; the legislator who agrees to vote a colleague’s way today may have the implicit expectation that the colleague will support her bill tomorrow. A more direct exchange is “logrolling,” which James Anderson describes as “a way of gaining support from those who are indifferent or have little interest in a matter, [and which] usually encompasses a straightforward mutual exchange of support on two different topics” (1990, p. 128). Pork barrel legislation is the classic example, in which legislators vote for each other’s home district projects so that everyone can bring home the bacon.

More explicit reciprocity occurs through compromise, when a legislator at odds with a colleague over the content of a bill agrees to give up something in order to obtain at least part of what he or she wants. A less savory form of explicit reciprocity (usually occurring behind closed doors) is the use of side payments, in which one legislator offers goodies—a desired committee assignment, or office space—in exchange for another’s vote.

As a result of vote trading, the press of time, and the numerous details that must be addressed in major legislation, the actual legislation passed might bear little resemblance to wise public policy. As Otto von Bismarck allegedly said, “There are two things one should never see made: sausage and legislation.” Therefore policy entrepreneurs must be attentive to overall legislative strategy and the details of execution; otherwise, the solutions developed in the forums of the previous phases can be lost in the legislative arena. These entrepreneurs also must not forget the desirability of finding an all-gain solution, in which all sides get what they want.

In sum, policy entrepreneurs must be wise and creative in formulating arguments and inducements to give policy makers rea-

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sons to say yes. They should cultivate relationships with and among legislators or other key decision makers, and then supply the sympathetic ones with research data, public opinion surveys, and moral and practical arguments through written and oral testimony, conversation, and printed materials. These advocates should be continuously alert to finding, inventing, or trading options for mutual gain. Policy entrepreneurs may also get involved in a campaign that decides who the policy makers will be. In a political election, they may volunteer for a particular candidate or make financial contributions to that campaign.

Similarly, when resort to formal courts is part of the change strategy, advocates should help judges say yes in light of the judges’ interpretive schemes, values, and interests. Policy entrepreneurs often seek court decisions that put pressure on arenas to enact the proposals that the entrepreneurs are supporting.

Exploiting a Window of Opportunity

A window of opportunity is a time span or occasion when conditions are highly propitious for a policy proposal. A window can be opened by a growing public conviction that a problem is significant and urgent, by a political shift, or by a decision point—a time when official bodies are authorized and empowered to act. Some decision points are predictable, while others are not; regardless, policy entrepreneurs should be prepared to take advantage of them. Predictable decision points include those tied to regular reports and addresses, such as the State of the Union or State of the State; a corporation’s or nonprofit’s annual report; the annual or biennial budget cycle of governments, organizations, and networks; and the scheduled renewal of laws or programs. An unpredictable decision point can arise from a crisis, a sudden change in official leadership or public opinion, or an unexpected opportunity. Policy entrepreneurs make sure that at least the predictable decision points are included in the plan developed in previous phases and that the plan is also flexible enough to take advantage of unpredictable decision points. For example, U.S. advocates of safer beef slaughtering and processing pressed their case through the normal process of congressional hearings in recent years but were defeated by beef industry lobbyists. They also sued in federal court to stop the use of “downer” animals for food, but government

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lawyers argued against them. A decision to dismiss the suit was under appeal, when a case of mad cow disease was reported in late 2003. The widespread news coverage of the case heightened citizen concern about slaughtering practices, revealed the impact of industry lobbyists, and opened the door for food safety advocates to press their cause in a much more favorable atmosphere.

In two similar instances, advocates of reforming the financing of U.S. election campaigns, and participants in the global anticorruption campaign, were making minor headway in recent years until, in the first case, highly visible scandals involving corporate givers emerged, and in the second case terrorist activity (prominently the September 11 attacks) caused national policy makers to insist on greater openness in financial transactions.

Decision to Adopt and Implement the Proposal

Even if problems, solutions, and politics are coupled, an advocacy coalition may still be defeated during formal adoption sessions by shrewd opponents who find a way to split the coalition or use the formal decision rules of the relevant arena to stop what otherwise would be a sure winner. In these sessions, knowledge of heresthetics— the name William Riker (1986) gives to the art of political manip- ulation—is essential. Heresthetics might also be depicted as a political martial art in which advocates and their opponents attempt to parry each other’s moves with a variety of weapons (committee rules, voting procedures, calling in debts, releasing or withholding information, negative publicity).

Riker highlights three components of political manipulation: agenda control, strategic voting, and manipulation of the dimensions of an issue. Agenda control is a basic design element of arenas. Exercised mainly by positional leaders such as committee chairs, agenda control involves determining which items, proposals, options, or amendments will come up for consideration by the official decision-making body and at what time. In its most powerful form, agenda control can defeat what is, on paper, a certain winner, purely for procedural reasons.

Strategic voting is a practice in which individual members of a policy-making body use their voting power to accomplish long-term objectives. This practice often takes the form of “voting contrary

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to one’s immediate tastes in order to obtain an advantage in the long run” (Riker, 1986, p. 78).

Issue dimensions can be expanded or narrowed in order to alter the composition of an advocacy coalition (Stone, 2002). Issue expansion is often a desirable option for policy entrepreneurs. For example, as the framing of AIDS in the United States expanded from a disease that affected gay men to a disease that could affect children of drug addicts, users of blood transfusions, and finally just about everyone, the coalition advocating a massive public prevention and treatment campaign expanded tremendously. Sometimes, however, expanding the dimensions of an issue can cause people to drop out of a coalition. For example, the death penalty, when framed as a deterrent to serious crime, may attract the support of many stakeholder groups that place high value on law and order. When it is reframed as state-sanctioned killing, the issue boundaries overlap with right-to-life concerns. Some of those stakeholders then may rethink their support because they have a religious conviction that life is to be preserved.

Usually, narrowing the dimensions of an issue restricts conflict and favors organized interests. Restricted conflict plays out in political subsystems, where the organized are likely to dominate the unorganized, especially those who are not even aware of the conflict. As Richard Neustadt has observed, “One never should underestimate the public’s power to ignore, to acquiesce, and to forget, especially when the proceedings seem incalculable or remote from private life” (1990, p. 82). A recent example was how the danger of mad cow disease was handled in the United States before the first documented case was publicized in 2003. Before then, the issue of how to ward off the disease was dealt with largely out of the public eye by the Food and Drug Administration and congressional committees. Republicans and Democrats alike were persuaded by lobbyists for the beef industry that no major changes were needed in monitoring beef slaughter and processing. A number of nonprofit food safety groups lobbied for the changes and some beef processors and retailers altered their practices, but the conflict did not become a widespread public concern. At that juncture, the issue was effectively framed as one of economic security for beef growers and processors and for those they employed. Once the first actual case of mad cow disease emerged, the danger

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was reframed by press reports and by food safety groups (who suddenly had the ear of the public) as a serious public health threat. This reframing broadened the conflict and also cast the previous inaction of Congress in a new light; the failure to adopt recommended changes was now widely seen as pandering to corporate interests. As illustrated by this example, expanding conflict can improve the prospects of the weak and relatively unorganized, as well as foster greater consideration of the broader public interest, because of increased media attention to the circumstances of the affected parties and their advocates.

Another way of manipulating the dimensions of an issue is through what Deborah Stone (2002) calls strategic release of information: announcing research findings, issuing a report, or making a decision under conditions that bolster one’s favorite policies or render it hard for opponents to respond. For example, President Bush gave the green light to the highly disputed construction of more roads in the Tongas wilderness area of Alaska during the holiday rush two days before Christmas 2003, when a majority of citizens could be counted on to be preoccupied with other matters.

In sum, policy entrepreneurs must be attentive to opportunities for agenda control, strategic voting, and manipulation of issue dimensions and information. They have to be on guard and maintain the “ability to shift from moment to moment, poking and pushing the world until it favors [their] cause” (Riker, 1986, p. 51).

Policy entrepreneurs should also remember that one arena might be overruled by another higher in the government hierarchy, or by popular referenda. Thus, if change advocates lose in a local arena, they may try again at a higher level.

Decision in Court to Require or Facilitate Adoption

Action by an arena can be shaped or overruled by a court. Throughout this phase, as in the previous phase, policy entrepreneurs make sure that changes in their proposal will stand up under scrutiny in the relevant courts. In some cases, administrative courts are extremely important, since they oversee development and application of rules and regulations designed to implement the proposed policy. Additionally, policy entrepreneurs may ask a formal court to overturn a law previously enacted by an arena, or they may seek