PUBLICS:

PARTICIPANTS, STAKEHOLDERS
& ACTORS

Prof. Sherwin William A. Cuasay, PhD, EnP, LPT

University of Batangas
CONTENTS
 Policy Defined
 Basic Considerations
 Inside Government
 The Administration: President, Presidential Staff &
Appointees
 Civil Servants
 Congress: Members & Staff
 Outside Government
 Academics, Researchers & Consultants
 Media
 Election-Related Participants
 Conclusion
POLICY
 A general definition of policy according to
Merriam-Webster (1997) is “a definite course or
method of action selected to guide & determine
present & future decisions”
 As such, it can refer to law, rules & regulations,
issuances, orders & promulgations, etc. as well
as the various processes they may entail
 Such a process could look like this: 1) Publics—
2) Discourse/Consultation—3) Consensus—4)
Policy—5) Management of Public Affairs
BASIC CONSIDERATIONS
 Importance of each participant
 Ways each one is important (whether each affects
agendas, alternatives, or both)
 Resources available & incentives that appeal to each
participant
 Look inside & outside government (national & also
local, formal & informal)
INSIDE GOVERNMENT, STARTING
WITH
THE ADMINISTRATION
 President

 Executive staff that is responsible to the

President
 Political appointees in departments & agencies
who are responsible to the President
THE PRESIDENT
 Doesn’t totally control the policy agenda; many events beyond
his control impinge on the agendas of various participants &
even on his own agenda
 May be able to dominate & even determine the policy agenda,
but is unable to dominate the alternatives that are seriously
considered, & is unable to determine the final outcome
 Reasons for the President’s preeminent position in agenda
setting:
 Institutional: Prerogative to hire people who reflect his thinking & fire
those who don’t; also, can resort to veto
 Organizational: Relative to Congress, executive branch is a more unitary
decision-making entity
 Commands public attention at any time which can be converted into
pressure on the other government officials to adopt the President’s
agenda
 Extent of his involvement determines the impact
PRESIDENTIAL STAFF
 Staffers are more important in working on alternatives
than in setting the agenda
 President & top advisors, including Cabinet officials,
generally establish a tone, which means setting the
administration’s agenda & deciding a few fundamental
issues
 Then the staff engages in the detailed negotiations—
with the departments, Congress & the major interest
groups—that will produce the administration’s
proposals & clarify its bargaining positions as the
proposals move through the legislative process
POLITICAL APPOINTEES
 Set of officials in departments & agencies
appointed by the President (Cabinet secretaries
down to the director level)
 Frequently become captured by their agencies
even if they are appointed by the President
 Even when they don’t originate an idea, they still
play a large part in placing it on the agendas of
important people, both within & outside of their
agencies
 Have limited or short tenure so they must make
their mark quickly
CIVIL SERVANTS
 With respect to agenda setting, top-down model of the
executive branch is accurate: the President can
dominate his political appointees, & the appointees in
turn can dominate their career civil servants
 Implementation is one major preoccupation of career
bureaucrats: most are administering existing programs,
not focusing on new agenda items
 However, line bureaucrats are particularly preoccupied
with administering programs while staff people have
more time to concentrate on policy changes
(alternative specification—i.e. drafting proposals)
BUREAUCRATS’ RESOURCES
 Longevity of careerists implies that they can
capture the political appointees (make them
“turn native”)
 Expertise (technical, coordination)
 Set of relationships with people in Congress &
interest groups
 An agency has a clientele they service &
congressional committees with which they deal (in
the U.S. where institutions are strong, “Iron Triangle”
phenomenon consisting of bureaucrats, committees &
interest groups can be observed)
CONGRESSIONAL RESOURCES
 Legal authority
 Formidable publicity
 Legislators hold hearings, introduce bills & make speeches, all of
which can be covered in the press & communicated to other publics
 One reason for such publicity is that the Congress, particularly the
Senate, is a major breeding ground of presidential candidates
 Blended information
 Mix of substantive & political information (in “free form quality”),
not the detailed, specialized & technical information usually found
among the academe, bureaucracy & pressure groups
 Longevity
 Parallel to the civil servants’ advantage & contrary to the short time
an administration is in office
 Seniority of members & staffers
WHY PEOPLE IN CONGRESS ENGAGE
IN AGENDA-SETTING ACTIVITIES
Kingdon, p. 38--
“Publicity is essential, & one way to get publicity is to
push for new policy initiatives.”
“Congress exists to do things. There isn’t much mileage in
doing nothing.”
“But it’s not in the nature of the legislative animal to get
out there in front. They’re quite conservative in that
sense, & they don’t go out & lead their public a whole
lot.”

Policy goals of legislators: satisfy constituents, reputation

building & also the sincere pursuit of the policy close to
their heart)
CONGRESSIONAL STAFF
 Senators & House members are simply spread
very thin.
 It is generally up to committee staff to draft
legislation, negotiate the details of agreements
among the interested parties, arrange for hearing
witness lists, & write speeches & briefing
materials for the members.
 Staffers do all of these things within the limits
that are set by the legislators who hire & can fire
them.
OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT,
STARTING WITH INTEREST
GROUPS
 Business & industry, professional, labor, consumers &
environmentalists, & government officials as lobbyists
 Rule of thumb: When the public isn’t that involved in an
issue, the more you have to deal with vested interests.
 Generally, the lower the partisanship, ideological cast, &
campaign visibility of the issues in a policy domain, the
greater the importance of interest groups
 “Self-interested” versus “public interest” groups
 “Positive promotion” versus “negative blocking”
 Includes “agit-prop” (mobilizing allies, sending
delegations, writing letters & using media)
INTEREST GROUPS CONT.
 Even if an interest group is able to raise an issue, it doesn’t
necessarily control the debate (in other words, a particular
actor can sometimes get an issue on the agenda, but then can
dominate neither the alternatives considered nor the outcome)
 Also try to insert their preferred alternatives into a discussion
once the agenda is already set by some other process or
participant
 Group resources—
 Electoral advantages/disadvantages: geographical dispersion, ability to
mobilize members & sympathizers, numbers, status or wealth
 Cohesion in affecting the governmental agenda, from policymaking to
implementation
 “Organized interests” versus “unorganized interests”
(Discourse Theory)
 ACADEMICS, RESEARCHERS &
CONSULTANTS
 Not all are researchers; most are valued for their
political acumen as well as substantive expertise
 Academics in particular affect the alternatives more
than the governmental agendas (Even if immediate or
short term impact of academic work is not discernible,
its long term impact might be considerable)
 Researchers in particular contribute significantly to the
development of ideas
 Both academics & researchers build “inner-outer”
careers in which they travel between academia &
government
MEDIA
 Powerful agenda setters that clearly affect the public
opinion agenda but tendency of the press is to cover a
story for a short period of time & then turn to the next
story, thus diluting its impact
 Much more common is the instance of intensive period
of sensational coverage, with the policy community
riding above the media storm (Active policy makers
often express their disdain for media sensationalism)
 Media informs but doesn’t necessarily educate
 Stories usually come toward the end of a policy
making process rather than at the beginning
MEDIA CONT.
 In either case, the agenda was set much earlier &
by processes not affected by the media
 But media is nonetheless important for the
following reasons:
 Act as a communicator within a policy community
 Magnifies the movements or dynamics that have
already started elsewhere as opposed to originating
those movements
 Aside from calling attention to issues, also provides
recall/reference
 Provides those outside the policy process to grab
some of the attention
ELECTION-RELATED
PARTICIPANTS
 Elections may affect policy agendas considerably
because they produce the officials who make the
important decisions in government
 A change in administration would change agendas,
alternatives & approaches to policy problems
 Politicians make many promises during campaigns &
political parties take positions in platforms; these
commitments could form an agenda for them once in
office
 But then, elections, campaigns & political parties are
not particularly prominent
ELECTION-RELATED CONT.
 Campaigners
 Candidates usually promise action on many policy fronts
 But there is an implicit exchange involved—support for the
candidate in return for action on the promises
 There is nothing automatic about campaign pledges finding
their way into public policy; in order to gain policy agenda
status, necessary is a firm commitment on the part of the
candidate or a constituency to push the idea & hold the
candidate to his promise
 Political Parties
 Affect the agenda more than they affect the detailed
alternatives considered by policy makers
 In RP: rather than platforms, personalities & numbers still
rule
ELECTION-RELATED CONT.
 Public Opinion
 Can have positive or negative effect; might thrust some items onto
the governmental agenda because vast number of people interested
in the issue makes it popular for vote-seeking politicians
 Effects of negative public opinion may sometimes direct
government to do something, but it more often constrains
government from doing something because of real limits to the
public’s acceptance (ex. Anti-smoking campaigns)
 Concept of intensity: majority of the mass public may favor one
priority, but a smaller number of people with different preferences
of greater intensity may affect government priorities more
 Question: Who affects who, government or public?
CONCLUSION
 There are two clusters of publics: visible & hidden
 Visible cluster sets the agenda
 Hidden cluster generates the alternatives
 Some publics, particularly interest groups & members of
Congress, are involved in both agenda setting & alternative
specification (but even with these actors, the distinction between
visible & hidden activities is useful)
 Visible participants try to affect agendas, & then turn to
specialists in the less visible policy community for the
alternatives from which an authoritative choice can be made
 Question: Why does agenda setting tend to be identified with
a visible cluster of participants, & alternative specification
with a hidden cluster?
END