PAPM 2000 Chapter Notes - Chapter N/A: Anthony Downs, Postpositivism

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Public Affairs and Policy Management
• Course: PAPM 2000
• Professor: Vlasios Melessanakis

Document Summary

Agenda setting is perhaps the most important stage in policy making cycle. Agenda is comprised of the issues that get the most attention. Objective construction of policy problems: the role of social conditions and structures. This section discusses the development of the various scholarly approaches to political science and the study of public policy. Convergence thesis suggests that as countries industrialize, they tend to converge on the same policy mix. In this view agenda setting is a virtually automatic process occurring as a result of the stresses and strains placed on government by industrialization and economic modernization. Thesis was disputed by critics: oversimplified policy process. Resource dependency model argued that industrialization creates a need for programs such as social security and process of urbanization that usually accompany economic modernization. Political business cycle economy has its own internal dynamics which on occasion are altered by political interference. The subjective construction of policy problems: the role of policy actors and paradigms.