American Government / Unit 10 Gov 475 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Tracing a Policy
The idea
A policy is traced by walking its five stages and naming, at each stage, the machinery this course has already numbered.
In practice
Take a food-safety rule, the anchor's own lineage. Stage one, agenda setting: muckraking journalism puts contaminated meat in public view — Gov 253's mechanism, run by Gov 252's watchdogs. Stage two, formulation: committees draft and mark up options — Gov 324 — with lobbying on both sides, Gov 272. Stage three, adoption: the bill walks Gov 340's five gates to a signature. Stage four, implementation: the statute's general command becomes enforceable specifics through agency rulemaking — Gov 389 — and courts resolve the challenges, remembering Gov 430's limit. Stage five, evaluation: oversight hearings, Gov 316, records demanded under Gov 390's citizen tools, and the media's scoreboard again. Then notice the loop: evaluation feeds the next agenda, and the stages run again. One policy, five stages, and nearly the whole course's machinery visible in a single pass.
Where people slip
The stage model is a map, not a schedule — real policies skip, stall, and loop, but the map still names what happened.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for American Government