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Alternatives for Delivering Public Services: Toward Improved Performance, edited by E. S. Sa vas
Inside the Bureaucracy: The View from the Assistant Secretarys Desk, Thomas P. Murphy, Donald E. Nuechterlein, and Ronald J. Stupak
Life Cycle Costing: A Better Method of Government Procurement, M. Robert Seldon
Technology Transfer to Cities: Processes of Choice at the Local Level, W. Henry Lambright
The President, the Budget, and Congress: Impoundment and the 1974 Budget Act, James P. Pfifffner
Valuing Life: Public Policy Dilemmas, edited by Steven E. Rhoads
National Planning in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography, David E. Wilson
The National Planning Idea in U.S. Public Policy: Five Alternative Approaches, David E. Wilson
Westview Special Studies in Public Policy and Public Systems Management
Rhetoric and Reality: Presidential Commissions and the Making of Public Policy
Terrence R. Tutchings
Since 1945, the role of the president in shaping domestic and foreign policy has changed dramatically. Though the prodigious growth of the federal bureaucracy under the Executive Branch reflects much of this change, bureaucratic response to the major issues of the past three decades has been ineffective or nonexistent, and a notable parallel development has been the increasing use of public commissions in the policymaking process.
Dr. Tutchings studies more than 100 public commissions using a model of the policymaking process that includes demands, decision and information costs, and policy results and outcomes. Reviewing the results of the commissions as reflected in presidential support of recommendations (via proposed legislation) and in congressional response, he notes that their membership has typically been dominated by government/corporate elites: as this membership has become more pluralistic, there has been a sharp decline in the contributions of the commissions to the policymaking process.
Perhaps the most significant contribution of the book is its detailed development of the concept of rhetorical policy as a first step in the policymaking process.
Terrence R. Tutchings is adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and executive associate at the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.
First published 1979 by Westview Press
Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tutchings, Terrence R.
Rhetoric and reality.
(Westview special studies in public policy and public systems management)
Bibliography: p.
1. Executive advisory bodiesUnited States.
I. Title.
JK468.C7T87 353.093 79-12891
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28603-3 (hbk)
This book is intended for the use of those teachers and learners who have an interest in the nonroutine workings of the American political system. It does not deal with the hard quantitative measures of dollars and programs, nor with the delayed effects of policy impacts. It does attempt to address some of the personalities, processes, and rhetoric of policy formulators in ways that can predict subsequent actions in the forms of programs and dollars. The goals of the book are to describe presidential advisory commissionsthe structure, processes, and resultswhile emphasizing some differences compared with the more routine policymaking entities; to suggest possible functions of commissions in the American political system; to relate the personalities, processes, and outcomes of these commissions to policies actually put into operation; and to explore the applicability of general models of policymaking in this special case. In no small sense, the present effort seeks to bridge the gap between the rhetoric of promises and the reality of policy that finds its way into action. Hopefully, the book will find an audience with everyone who has an interest in the American political system. Realistically, it is aimed at scholars in the fields of American politics, American society, elites, public administration, political sociology, and those exciting, interdisciplinary efforts made in hope of understandingand survivingthe American experience.
The role of the president in shaping national policy is certainly powerful and perplexing. Along with the powers granted to that office by the Constitution must surely rank the personal and political powers of the officeholder. Constitutional, political, and personal powers clash head-on in that area of national policy concerned with the allocation of scarce resources, the area of public policy. The needs of the public, balanced with the limited capability of the government to provide for those needs, compete for the scarce resources in the public policy arena.
Paradoxically, the scarce resources have come to include things that are much less tangible than the use of the word resources would imply: human dignity, law and order, and educational opportunity are quite difficult to measure in the commonly used dollar measures of policy analysis. Time is yet another resource that is scarce when the persistent need for social equity is met with a deliberate legislative process that often seems to exacerbate problems in seeking their solutions. The increasing scale and complexity of the governmental establishment has seen a parallel development in the increasing use of advisory commissions by presidents during the last three decades. To many observers, these commissions represent yet another dilatory mechanism impeding the timely solution of problems. To others, commissions suggest a usurpation of the legislative process by the executive branch. Still others see commissions as a promising, public way to arrive at the goal of public well-being. In the exercise of his powers, the president can bring together disparate groups of prestigious elite members to undertake far-reaching studies of issues of national importance. In the microcosm of a presidential advisory commission can be found all of the elements of the overarching political processes and legislative processesthe articulation of demands by constituency groups, deliberation of and search for alternative policies, compromise, coalition, and public policy actions.
As the work for this book began, Robert L. Sutherland, although terminally ill, gave me inspiration and encouragement. His contribution to my philosophy of the way things should be goes far beyond anything I might be able to put down on paper. And, as these words are written, my colleagues and I mourn the death of Lou Schneider, short weeks ago. Not even the memory of Lous booming voice expounding the function of mourning as an aid in the redintegration of the community can convince me that our community of scholars and friends will ever be the same without him and Bob Sutherland.
