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PLSC490:

PL SC 490: Public Policy-Making and Evaluation (3): Advanced analysis of public policy, emphasizing policy evaluation and the factors that determine policy success and failure. Prerequisites: PL SC 001, PL SC 002, or PUBPL 304W

Overview

Public policy affects the lives of all citizens of organized societies. Therefore, PLSC 490 provides an in-depth study of the public policy-making and evaluation processes. The course is designed to provide the organizational context in which public policy is made including the processes of public policy formulation, implementation, evaluation, and modification. Since virtually all government goods and services are products of public policies their resulting impact on society is a crucial component of policy analysis and evaluation. This course provides a detailed discussion of the various institutions and actors involved in the policy-making process thereby providing an analytical perspective upon which to evaluate what government does, why it does it, and what difference it makes, if any. Students will employ the rational comprehensive analytical technique using the process model as a representative framework for discussion and evaluation: problem identification, agenda setting, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, policy evaluation, and policy change or termination. At the same time, students will be introduced to the substantive and theoretical limits of the rational comprehensive analytical technique via introduction the bounded-rationality perspective, and satisficing. Students will focus on the policy actors, institutions, and instruments with the objective of providing policy relevant information that can be used to solve complex public policy problems. Additionally, the student will develop an understanding of the ethical and professional standards that a policy analyst should maintain. Critical analysis and evaluation of public policies can have a significant effect on the outcome and impact of these policies. Acquiring the knowledge and skills involved in analyzing and evaluating public policies gives the policy analyst a better understanding of why some policies succeed while others fail. The methods of teaching used in this course consist of an online study guide and individual student readings. Assessments are performed throughout the course and consist of bi-weekly policy lesson papers, due at the end of each lesson, and one major course policy analysis paper due on the first day of the last lesson of the course. Students will be introduced to and extensively use the Policy Agendas Project data (http://www.policyagendas.org/) as a tool to empirically examine and substantively add to the theoretical knowledge obtained and developed throughout this course.

Course Objectives

By the time you complete this course, you should have learned about the following:

• Understand the nature, structure, and division of political power of American Federalism.
• Understand how and why public policies are made.
• Understand the policy-making process.
• Develop a familiarity with the rational policy analysis process.
• Understand how and why public policies need to be analyzed and evaluated.
• Develop an understanding of the various value and ethical decisions involved throughout the 7 stage public policy-making process.
• Improve existing study, research, writing, and presentation skills.

Required Course Materials

Most World Campus courses require that students purchase materials (e.g., textbooks, specific software, etc.). To learn about how to order materials, please see the Course Materials page. You should check LionPATH approximately 3–4 weeks before the course begins for a list of required materials.

Library Resources

Many of the University Libraries resources can be utilized from a distance. Through the Libraries website, you can

• access magazine, journal, and newspaper articles online using library databases;
• borrow materials and have them delivered to your doorstep—or even your desktop;
• get research help via email, chat, or phone using the Ask a Librarian service; and
• much more. 

You must have an active Penn State Access Account to take full advantage of the Libraries' resources and service.  The Off-Campus Users page has additional information about these free services.

Technical Specifications

If you need technical assistance at any point during the course, please contact the Service Desk.

For registration, advising, disability services, help with materials, exams, general problem solving, visit World Campus Student Services!

Course Requirements

Assigned Readings:

Students are expected to read the online Content material and each assigned reading as provided in the course outline. Also, students should get into the habit of reading a daily newspaper and/or weekly news magazines and scholarly journals since many of the course assignments will relate to contemporary issues.

Individual Lesson Policy Papers:

Every two weeks you will be asked to submit a short (2-4 page) paper, most of which require the use of the Policy Agendas Project (see below) and is informed by course material. These short papers are designed to move you through the policy process, and afford you a deep understanding of a particular policy area. You should select a policy area from the list on the POLICY AGENDAS PROJECT website. You will follow this through the semester, and will complete a final policy project focusing on that policy area.

You can find the project at http://www.policyagendas.org/.

Most of your assignments, due every two weeks, will incorporate information you glean from the POLICY AGENDAS PROJECT, which has been developed over the course of many years by political scientists Bryan Jones (now of the University of Texas) and Frank Baumgartner (now of University of North Carolina, formerly of Penn State!). This website incorporates an incredible amount of data, and is often used by professional political and other social scientists to conduct their own research. See http://www.policyagendas.org/biblio for a partial list of professional work accomplished in whole or in part using the data collected there. You too will get a chance to cull data and do real policy analysis using this site.

First things first: go to http://www.policyagendas.org/sitehelp and go through the tutorials. This is a work in progress, but generally you will get the idea.

Next, there is nothing like getting in and getting your hands dirty. My guess is that most of your work will be accomplished using Trend Analysis. Let’s work through an exercise. Suppose you wanted to see how the unemployment rate fared as a public policy issue. Go to the main site, and then click on Trend Analysis. Once there, look at the left hand side of the page. Click on New York Times Index (you could choose almost any of these, but let’s do our example with the New York Times. This is an oft-used measure that indicates policy salience, i.e. how much the public was exposed to various issues in a given year or years). You’ll notice on the right hand side that the policy agendas project defines public policy in terms of more than twenty discrete categories (e.g. Macroeconomics; Civil Rights; etc.). If you click on the down arrow associated with each policy category, you’ll see a number of subcategories. Overall, the policy agendas project defines 22 major categories and more than 200 subcategories. For your assignments, particularly the initial ones, I highly recommend choosing from among the major categories. You can always use the minor categories later on.

Okay, so how do we get started? Here is a quick example (as the semester goes on, you can do some of your own digging and playing around in the data—for your assignments you can be creative with the website, but from time to time I will assign projects that require specific instructions, which I will give at that time).

1. Click the box next to Macroeconomics, and then click again on the Unemployment Rate.
2. Look to the top and you’ll see the area that says Graph.
   1. You can play around with the years you want, and over to the right you can set the graph to whatever metric you think appropriate (the default is “count” which is simply the number of stories that dealt with that area in a given year, but you can look at percent, percent change, etc.).
   2. Go ahead and keep the default “count” and then push graph.
3. You’ll see a graph that shows variation in years in which stories appeared dealing with this.
   1. You can easily add a second Y axis that charts things like congressional hearings (thus comparing public attention with congressional or governmental action). Look beneath the graph and you’ll see a tab entitled “Drilldown.” If you click that, you’ll see the raw data, and you can click on each node to see what is included in the articles (though not the articles themselves), etc. Just play around with it, and feel free to be creative!
4. Go up to the top right of the graph, and click on the little box. That will activate a dropdown menu. From this you can download and copy the graphs themselves.

This just gives you a quick idea of how to use the website. There is a lot more—again, just go in and dig around. But be careful—if you like politics or policy at all, it might be easy to get lost.

You will use this website for your bi-weekly papers, and your final policy project (though most of the preliminary work for the final project will have been done in the bi-weekly papers).

Please spend a little time going through the website, concentrating on how to use it, and if necessary, you can get a hold of the technicians, who are generally very friendly and willing to help with any problem.

FINAL PROJECT

For your final project, you will once again be asked to use the Policy Agendas Project (http://www.policyagendas.org/). You will be asked to do research on that area of interest to you and write a 10 page paper/policy analysis. As noted in your syllabus and in the bi-weekly assignments, you will choose and work on one policy throughout the semester, and this policy will also be the subject of your final project. (There will be one opportunity toward the end of the course to go into some depth on a second policy)

Students will prepare a policy paper analyzing the development of policy within an approved policy area. The paper must use a theoretical perspective discussed in the class to develop an understanding of the history and recent developments of a particular public policy, and will rely on the Policy Agendas Datasets and other web-based material as well as traditional library resources.

The paper should be 10-12 pages in length, with proper citations (you may use whichever style is most familiar to you, but it must be correct, and it must be consistent throughout the paper). Writing style and clarity of presentation are important. The paper must be thematic in development, and must incorporate many of the ideas developed in the course. IF YOU ARE DILIGENT IN THE BI-WEEKLY PAPERS, YOU WILL HAVE DONE MOST OF THE ANALYTICAL WORK FOR THE POLICY PAPER. The paper must include a one-paragraph abstract, an introductory section introducing the theme of the paper, a body developing the evidence, and a concluding statement drawing the linkages between the policy, the theme of the paper, and the evidence developed.

Students must e-mail their proposed topic to the instructor at the end of Lesson 1 no later than the date listed in the course schedule for approval. The paper is due NO LATER than the first day of the last lesson.

The paper will be worth 300 points.

Course Schedule

Formal instruction will end on the last day of class. Provided that you have an active Penn State Access Account user ID and password, you will continue to be able to access the course materials for one year, starting from the end date of the academic semester in which the course was offered (with the exception of library reserves and other external resources that may have a shorter archival period). After one year, you might be able to access the course based on the policies of the program or department offering the course material, up to a maximum of three years from the end date of the academic semester in which the course was offered. For more information, please review the University Course Archival Policy.

Grading

Each student’s semester grade will be based on the following:

Letter grades will be assigned according to the following rubric:

The World Campus follows the same grading system as the Penn State resident program. The grades of A, B, C, D, and F indicate the following qualities of academic performance:

A = (Excellent) Indicates exceptional achievement
B = (Good) Indicates extensive achievement
C = (Satisfactory) Indicates acceptable achievement
D = (Poor) Indicates only minimal achievement
F = (Failure) Indicates inadequate achievement necessitating a repetition of the course in order to secure credit

Please refer to the University Registrar's information about University grading policies.

If, for reasons beyond the student's control, a student is prevented from completing a course within the prescribed time, the grade in that course may be deferred with the concurrence of the instructor. The symbol DF appears on the student's transcript until the course has been completed. Non-emergency permission for filing a deferred grade must be requested by the student before the beginning of the final examination period. In an emergency situation, an instructor can approve a deferred grade after the final exam period has started. Under emergency conditions during which the instructor is unavailable, authorization is required from one of the following: the dean of the college in which the candidate is enrolled; the executive director of the Division of Undergraduate Studies if the student is enrolled in that division or is a provisional student; or the campus chancellor of the student's associated Penn State campus.

For additional information please refer to the Deferring a Grade page.

Note: If you are planning to graduate this semester, please communicate your intent to graduate to your instructor. This will alert your instructor to the need to submit your final grade in time to meet the published graduation deadlines. For more information about graduation policies and deadlines, please refer to Graduation at the Chaiken Center for Student Success.

Academic Integrity

Accommodating Disabilities

Additional Policies

Disclaimer: Please note that the specifics of this Course Syllabus are subject to change, and you will be responsible for abiding by any such changes. Your instructor will notify you of any changes.