The powers of problem definition: The case of government paperwork

Problem definition is a package of ideas that includes, at least implicitly, an account of the causes and consequences of undesirable circumstances and a theory about how to improve them. As such, it serves as the overture to policymaking, as an integral part of the process of policymaking, and as a policy outcome. In each of these roles it seems to exert influence on government action. Distinguishing among the roles clarifies the nature of that influence. A case study examines the transition from one problem definition to another in the domain of information collection by the federal government. The rise of the Paperwork Reduction definition illustrates the variety of ways in which problem definition has powerful consequences.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45448/1/11077_2004_Article_BF00141381.pd

Going Federal: The Launch of Medicare Part D Compared to SSI

This essay compares early experience with implementing two strongly centralizing acts in the field of social welfare, one the Supplemental Security Income program in 1974 and the other Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program for the aged and disabled, in 2006. It contrasts the administrative chaos that characterized the launch of SSI with a smoother transition in Part D, arguing that there was less dislocation in the assignment of key administrative responsibilities in the later case. The main findings for federalism are common to the cases: both culminated in a residual, purely supplemental role for the state governments, which the federal government treated as "subordinately useful." Yet, individual state governments were able to negotiate successfully with federal administrative agencies for favorable treatment within the new regime. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

The Future of Social Security

Social security has been the most, perhaps the only, popular social welfare program in the United States. Until recently it has steadily expanded in coverage, beneficiaries, and costs with little fanfare or notice. Since the mid-1970s that expansion has begun to threaten its financial soundness. Literal bankruptcy has become a short-run possibility as expenditures continually outrun receipts. Worse, in some respect, is the realistic possibility that the retirement costs of the baby-boom generation in the twenty-first century may be too great a burden for future workers to bear. How well social security has done, is doing, and is projected to do are analyzed in terms of the system's twin goals of adequacy and individual equity. Options for change are severely limited by our stumbling economy and the high costs of a mature pension system. It is not likely that the traditional groups and alliances that played important roles in the expansion of social security will play predictable roles in its retrenchment.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67528/2/10.1177_000271628547900106.pd

Competition Policy Trends and Economic Growth: Cross‐National Empirical Evidence

Abstract Motivated by the general lack of empirical scholarship concerning the cross‐national environment for competition policy, I present measures here of the overall resources dedicated to competition policy and the merger policy work‐load for thirty‐two antitrust jurisdictions over the 1992–2007 period. The data allow a number of perceived trends in competition policy over the last two decades to be analysed, and allow the generation of some factual insights concerning these trends: e.g. the budgetary commitment to competition policy in the cross‐national environment for antitrust has substantially increased over this period; budgetary increases appear to be commensurate with increased antitrust workloads, and yet, the role of economics does not appear to have substantially increased relative to the role of law. Moreover, I am also able to provide some evidence that budgetary commitments to antitrust institutions yield economic benefits in terms of improved economic growth: i.e. higher budgetary commitments to competition policy are associated with higher levels per‐capita GDP growth.Growth, Antitrust, Competition Policy, Trends, L40, K21, O40, C23,