Observations on a distributive theory of policy-making: Two American expenditure programs compared

Abstract

Why government policies take the form they do is a question that has long interested political scientists and is currently the focus of widespread research efforts (Heclo, 1972; Tribe, 1972; and Bauer and Jergen, 1969). There are essentially three basic approaches to this question: the environmental, the structural, and a combination of these two approaches. The first, evidenced in other papers in this volume, attempts to explain government outputs without discussing the structure of government decision-making. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that governmental decision-makers respond directly, whether rationally or like billiard balls, to environmental influences. The second approach would explain outputs only in terms of government decision-making. The implicit assumption in this approach is that decision-makers can produce outputs that differ from those imposed upon them by their environment. The third approach attempts to explain the outputs of government as a function of both government structure and environmental influences. This approach assumes that if decision-making were organized differently, different influences in the government's environment would be able to affect policy decisions, and consequently government policy would take a different form. This paper takes a prevalent theory following from this third approach and examines it in the light of data on two expenditure programs.

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