Dominant Single Pattern In The Policymaking Environment example essay topic

The President and Congress: Collaboration and Combat in National Policymaking by LeLoup and Shull discusses the President and Congress and each one's role in creation of policy. The authors base their new edition of the book on two writers: Mark Peterson and his "tandem institutions approach" and Charles Jones and the "separations perspective". (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 7) LeLoup and Shull view the Congress and the President as coequal partners and believe that the "shared governance" perspective is much closer to reality than a president-centered approach. (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 7) The authors based their book on four major themes, which are: first, the authors argue that the presidency-centered approach to this subject, which focuses on the president as the main initiator of policymaker, does not accurately reflect policymaking as it stands currently. Secondly, it is more evident than there is no dominant single pattern in the policymaking environment. In the book, the authors identify four patterns of policymaking, which permeate the relationship between Congress and the president.

These patterns include: presidential leadership, congressional leadership, consensus / cooperation, and deadlock / extraordinary resolution. LeLoup and Shull believe that no single pattern characterizes presidential-congressional policymaking. The examples that LeLoup and Shull use is that of presidential leadership on trade policy, congressional leadership on cutting taxes, banning gay marriage, which drew a consensus, cooperation on welfare reform, and deadlock in healthcare reform and campaign finance reform. No pattern appeared to be dominant in their research. The third theme states, although divided or unified party control of government matters in many ways, it neither precludes nor ensures effective policymaking.

Finally, the authors state that the political / historical context can either constrain or present opportunity for presidential or congressional leadership in policymaking. Although the four patterns of presidential-congressional policymaking are based on which branch shapes policy, LeLoup and Shull adopted presidential leadership and congressional leadership instead of dominance because today so few occasions arise where one branch is dominant over the other. (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 4) The authors use the framework of the U.S. Constitution and separation of powers and intermingling of power between branches to support their argument, following Neustadt's example. They state that since both the executive and legislative were assigned powers by the Constitution to be involved in policymaking, it is only logical that a perspective from a single branch (presidential approach or Congressional approach) is not adequate to explain policymaking as it stands today.

(LeLoup and Shull, pg. 5) Therefore, their basis of looking at how policy is created takes root in the "shared governance" approach. (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 8) LeLoup and Shull go on to detail how partisanship and divided government, due to weakening of voters' ties to political parties, affect the contents of legislation and at time lead to deadlock. Furthermore, divided government leads to "greater reliance on extraordinary means of resolving deadlocks, outside normal procedures of the legislative process". (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 10) The authors base policy creation on a few major stages: agenda setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, and results. Although policymaking often has no clear beginning or end, policies often overlap, and the stages are often blurred, the pattern for policymaking seems to follow the above-mentioned stages. (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 11) What tends to effect the creation of agenda the most depends on how much inter branch conflict there is and which branch shapes the policy.

The patterns of policymaking: presidential leadership, congressional leadership, cooperation / consensus, and deadlock / extraordinary resolution, mainly shape the authors' discussion of how no single pattern dominates the process. LeLoup and Shull note the determinants of policymaking patterns which in their opinion include the political environment that is shaped by public demand or expectations for change, presidential popularity, public approval of Congress, mass media and interest groups, as well as election results, party composition, and policy references (including the ability of the president to claim electoral mandate). The consequences of presidential-congressional policymaking that LeLoup and Shull consider are the timeliness and responsiveness, representativeness, symbolism or substantive ness, accountability, nature of benefits, consistency and coherency, and effectiveness of policies produced. If the reader has not been convinced that the authors cover every loophole possible for criticism, LeLoup and Shull add that none of their analysis is meant to imply that "each pattern is equally prevalent across policy areas" (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 27) which in their analysis include: foreign and defense policy, civil rights, economic and budgetary issues, and social welfare. In addition, the writers include ways of how the shared governance approach can be improved. They discuss two ways of solving deadlock that results from the separation of powers: changing the basic structure of the Constitution (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 228) and proposal to restructure and strengthen political parties.

(LeLoup and Shull, pg. 229) LeLoup and Shull, however, reject both solutions as unreasonable or impractical due to the historical context of the times. They state that collaborative policymaking is required because the Congress over the past 30 years has greatly enhanced its capacity to shape policy agenda and has been able to negotiate with the president as an equal partner. (LeLoup and Shull, pg. 230) Albeit, it may appear that the authors manage to incorporate most of issues concerning congressional and presidential influence when it comes to policymaking, some mistakes are prominent. When speaking of the book's second theme, I would argue first, that whoever can set the agenda is the power broker in Washington and, thus, is in charge of policy-setting. Secondly, following the above logic, we know that the president sets the agenda in his address to the nation in the inauguration speech.

Therefore, the president brings most of the policies to Congress for discussion but allows Congress to do the dirty work of fine-tuning the details of the policy which could split his administration and make it appear weak. In terms of patterns of policymaking I would argue that in some instances presidential leadership happens more often than not. Presidents tend to win more often on foreign policy than domestic policy when one looks at conflictual roll call votes in the House and Senate. (Fleisher and Bond, pg. 291) In fact, as Wildavsky argued, there is a two-presidencies phenomenon which LeLoup and Shull briefly mention. However, James M. Lindsay and Randall B. Ripley argue that Congress has taken a renewed interest in foreign policy and defense since the Vietnam War up to the 1990's. Although, they expressed doubt by stating that is it only clear today that Congress wishes to exert its constitutional power of drafting legislation with minimal presidential pressure.

(Lindsay and Ripley, pg. 417) In terms of foreign and defense policy making, it is clear, as James M. McCormick and Eugene R. Wittkopf point out that "presidents prevail about 70% of the time... compared with 40% in the domestic sphere". (Wildavsky, pg. 273) The research of McCormick and Wittkopf (McCormick and Wittkopf, pg. 1077) seems to support Wldavsky's theory. Moreover, if one looks at divided government it is clear that it has affected policymaking and consensus in many issues. A fair amount of authors point out that bipartisanship existed prior to the Vietnam War when it came to issues of foreign policy, thus it was easier for the president to get the desired policy passed. (Meernik, pg. 569) However, they argue that era has ended, and the parties that been split by partisan and ideological factors. I.M. Dest ler, Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake (1984) also describe the emergence of bipartisanship in the immediate postwar years (after WWII), but they outline its demise following the onset of Vietnam. Furthermore, amoung the conclusions Jeffrey Cohen offers is that the "development of the modern presidency had fundamentally altered the relationship between the president and the Congress".

(Cohen, pg. 515) This is further substantiated in the concept of the administrative presidency by Terry Moe. Moe stated that modern presidents have expanded the institution of presidency and currently, presidents use all powers available to them to get their agenda through Congress. (Moe, pg. 132) Another issue which I believe Leloup and Shull overlook in the importance of bureaucracy in policymaking. Since the bureaucracy is in charge of policy implementation they may to able to shape agenda to their liking. Due to the short terms of the presidents and congressmen and an average of 18 years on the job of a bureaucracy, the institution of bureaucracy may be able to shape policy to their preferences. This is due to their experience in policymaking and the inexperience of congressmen and presidents as well as the fact that on average, senior civil service official are also more educated.

To sum up, although Leloup and Shull manage to include much of the issues and problems regarding the benefits and drawbacks of presidential-congressional approach, due to a congressional and a presidential scholar getting together, the end result is a theory attempting to cover all loopholes. In my view it is a nice way to stand in the middle of the road, but realistically speaking, some patterns of policymaking are dominated by the president and others by Congress due to the nature of the way the two branches are elected. The president is very concerned about the large issues which affect his popularity, and thus his reelection. Likewise, the congressmen focus on more local issues which their constituencies care about most. And since it is every politicians objective to first of all get reelected, the patterns which follow such logic will dominate.

If a particular program in not popular with the people, but may be good for the nation as a whole, it is unlikely that the president or congress will push for it.

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