AP Gov. Comments?

2. • Costs and benefits are involved with any change of policy, and are distributed
differently according to the four different kinds of policy:
– Majoritarian, Interest Group, Client, and Entrepreneurial
• The government‟s attempts to regulate business reflect the four kinds of policy-
making processes. For example,
– anti-trust legislation in the 1890s came from “ideological convictions of the public”
(Majoritarian).
– Entrepreneurial politics = The Jungle and the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

3. , .
• How people perceive costs and benefits will affect them in turn affects
politics.
• Interest groups and others pursuing policy change frame their issues in
ways that make their ideas look better, with higher benefits and lower costs.
Interest-group politics try to make their ideas look Majoritarian, and
opponents make them look like Client Politics.
• Values and what people think will be good for the country affect policy-
making.

4. • The political agenda determines which issues will
receive consideration in formulating new policy
• Costs and benefits determine who supports a
policy, who opposes it, and the coalitions that form
to compete over a policy
• Business regulation is an excellent case study of
the different types of policies and policy-making.
• Perceptions, beliefs, interests, and values all play
a critical role in the policy-making process.

5. • client politics: some identifiable, often small group will benefit, but a large part of
society will pay the price.
• costs and benefits: costs = burdens people must bear from the policy. Benefits = any
satisfaction that people expect to receive from the policy.
• entrepreneurial politics: large part of society benefits greatly from a policy that costs
an unidentifiable, small group a great deal.

6. , .
• interest group politics: policy benefit a small, relatively unidentifiable group, and will
cost other small, unidentifiable groups.
• majoritarian politics: policy that benefits a large groups of people with a large cost to
a lot of the same people.
• policy entrepreneurs: public entrepreneurs who, from outside the formal positions of
government, introduce, translate, and help implement new ideas into public practice.
• political agenda: determines which issues will receive consideration in forming new
policy. It can change because of shifts in popular attitudes, elite interest, critical
events, or government actions.

8. • Pit the general public against itself, as it considers or
reconsiders programs with broadly distributed costs
and benefits.
• Majoritarian politics are fought out through broad
public debate. They address basic ideological beliefs
and occur in the visible institutions of governments,
particularly elections and legislative debates.
• Ex. Social Security and Military Defense

9. • Pit special interest against special interest.
• Interest-group politics take place quot;behind the scenes,quot; in
executive agencies and legislative committees. They stimulate
the organization of client groups to promote programs, and are
characterized by changing alliances as issues and influence
shift.
• Ex. Bills requiring business firms to give benefits to labor
unions

10. • Pit special interests against the general public by distributing costs and concentrating
benefits. They typically support health programs benefiting special groups and
financed by general taxes.
• Client politics, like special-interest politics, are behind the scenes.
• A crucial aspect of client politics is the extent to which the relevant executive branch
agency is captured by the interest groups (as in some pollution control), which may
squeeze out the health interests (as was the case in tobacco policy).
• Ex. Regulated milk process benefit dairy farmers but increase the cost of milk to
consumers.

11. • Pit the general public against special interests by distributing benefits widely while
more narrowly concentrating the costs.
• Entrepreneurial politics are the reverse of client politics
• Entrepreneurial politics are occasional, short lived, facilitated by mass media, and
involve political entrepreneurs who identify and exploit an opportunity.
• Ex. Antipollution and safety requirements for automobiles, proposed as ways of
improving the health and well-being of all people but at the expense of the
automobile manufacturers.

13. • Restricts the ability of civil service, or federal, employees to participate in partisan
political life
• Goal was to ensure that civil service would remain politically neutral. Many believed
that it infringed upon federal employees rights.
• Recent amendments give government employees the rights to speak, organize, and
act peacefully to carry out their own personal political views. All while at the same
time ensuring that the public administration of government is carried out in an
efficient and neutral manner.

14. Forbids discrimination against
those with disabilities.
3 Parts:

15. • No entity that is covered shall discriminate against a qualified with a
disability because of said disability. This applies when the qualified disabled
person is in the job application process, hiring, advancement, or
termination. Also included is job training, employee compensation, and
other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.

16. • Any individual that has a
disability cannot be excluded
from benefits of the services,
programs, or activities of a
specific public entity because
of said disability.

17. • No individual can be discriminated against on the basis of their
disability when being applied to the enjoyment of the goods,
services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of
any place that is public. This applies regardless of whether or not
the person owns, leases (or leases to), or operates the public place.

18. • The purpose of this act is to strengthen the partnership between the
Federal, state, and local governments.
• It‟s also used to assist Congress in its consideration of proposed legislation
that is establishing or revising Federal programs that contain Federal
mandates that affect State, and local governments.

19. • Federal law to help improve the education for all children
by holding the schools responsible for results
• Gives the parents more choices and promotes better
teaching methods.

20. • Way to ban „soft money‟ given to candidates for
campaigning.
• Soft money is money given to the political party rather
than the candidate it represents.