Earthly Donnie
  • Meet Earthly Donnie
  • Resources

Environmental Impressions For All

​To educate the public about individual impacts and macro-scale impacts to the environment. To empower young people of color and non traditional backgrounds of their importance in environmental fields. To provide a history of environmental leaders of color and nontraditional backgrounds. To present current world problems through the environmental lens.

Policy Dynamics 101

1/16/2020

0 Comments

 
A helpful guide to gear your conversations about the Layzer’s explanation of the Dynamics of the Policy Process within the United States.

Major Actors:
● Inside: adjusting tactics to be consistent with institutions
● Outside: Adjusting tactics to be consistent with institutions
  • Successful if: Media covers the issue and with expert support simultaneously.
Government Decision Makers:
- National Environmental Policy-Making Process
a. President
b. Congress
c. Executive Branch
d. Judges

Legislative Actors
  1. Congress
    1. Override veto with enough votes
    2. Impeachment Process
    3. Approve presidential nominations
  2. President
    1. Sign legislation
    2. Veto Legislation
Two Camps:
Environmentalist: “Support more environmentally protective policies” pg 15
Cornucopian: “Endorse less restrictive environmental policies” pg 15

Fact about legislative leaders, according to Layzer:
“Legislative leaders have not only the motivation but political resources to bring about policy change: they can enhance a bill’s prospects by forging legislative coalitions and orchestrating negotiations as well as by mobilizing the public.” Pg. 11

Primary Constraints on Legislative Actors:
  1. Salience: “the extent to which the public cares about.”
    1. Likely not to expend resources unless the public perceives the policy as necessary.
  2. Rank and File
    1. Composed of ordinary senators
      1. Use polling evidence as an indicator for salience
      2. Polling can be a poor indicator because 1) internal contradictions 2) words of questions and their order can yield accurate responses 3) Rarely available on district and state levels 4) studies have difficulty detecting how much people care about the environment and environmental problems.
    2. Politicians rely on these indicators to decide salience:
      1. Media Coverage
      2. Rallies and Protest
      3. Phoning
      4. Writing Letters
      5. Sending Emails
      6. Posting questions on social media

​Administrators
● Implement the laws passed by Congress.
  • Crafts them by choosing the scientific and economic models and projections that underpin administrative regulations.
● Substantial Discretion:
  • Modify policy goals
■ Political resources
■ Longevity
■ Expertise
■ Established resources with organized interested and members of congress
● Administration Institutional Constraints:
1. Flexible organizational cultures and mission
A. These are the norms and standards for operating
● Administrators do not follow the agency's goals.
  • ​The president and his political appointees give preference also circumscribe bureaucratic choices.
Judiciary
● Federal Courts
  • ​Authority to review agency decisions to determine consistency with the congressional intent and, in this way, we can circumscribe environmental policies.
● Administrative Procedures Act (APA)
  • It allows the courts to invalidate decisions that lack “substantial evidence” or are “arbitrary and capricious.”
● Judicial Institutional Constraints
  • They must base their reasoning on precedent as well as on the actual wording and legislative history of a statute.
  • Document and comprehensible justification
Federalism and State and Local Decision Makers
● Issues need to be addressed differently because they have distinctive characteristics and roles.
● For example, in-text:
  • Environmental feel disadvantaged at the state and local levels due to the influence of industry.
  • The idea of Place-based solutions
  • Generating salience by putting the policy on a local or state ballot.


Actors Outside of Government
  • All three interact to create policy as a series of stages:
  1. Advocacy organizations
  2. Experts
  3. Media
  • Stages:
a. Agenda setting
b. Alternative formulation
c. Decision making
d. Implementation
e. Evaluation

dynamics_of_the_policy_process.docx
File Size: 9 kb
File Type: docx
Download File

est_pp1.pdf
File Size: 10232 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Donnella Monk is an undergraduate researcher at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. 

    Archives

    January 2021
    October 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019

    Categories

    All
    African American
    Black
    Cancer
    Environmental Justice
    Environmental Studies
    Health

    RSS Feed


© COPYRIGHT 2019-2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Environmental Impressions For All
  • Meet Earthly Donnie
  • Resources