Domestic and Foreign Policy

This is Unit Ten of American Government: domestic and foreign policy. The capstone calls policy the outputs of government — the point where all the machinery this course has described finally produces something. Every institution in the previous nine units exists to generate what this unit describes. The most useful idea here is a classification with a prediction attached. Sort a policy by where its costs fall and where its benefits fall, and you can predict who will organise against it — which follows directly from the collective action logic in the unit on interest groups. Two error entries, and both are about numbers people get wrong by large factors. One confuses an annual shortfall with an accumulated total. The other concerns a spending category the public consistently estimates at many times its real size. By the end you will be able to do five things. One: say why choosing not to act is a policy choice. Two: sort a policy by where its costs and benefits fall. Three: tell mandatory spending from discretionary. Four: tell the deficit from the debt. Five: trace a policy through five stages.

Two entries. A definition containing something easy to overlook — that declining to act is itself a decision with authors — and a five-stage model whose stages all belong to machinery this course has already covered.

The definition.

Gov 451 Public Policy

What government chooses to do, or not to do, about public problems. Choosing not to act is a policy choice with authors and with consequences — not the absence of one.

The five stages.

Gov 452 The Policy Stages

Getting onto the agenda, being drafted, being adopted, being carried out, and being assessed. Each stage belongs to institutions this course has already covered — the model is a route through machinery you know.

Three entries with real predictive power. Sort a policy by where the costs land and where the benefits land, and you can say in advance who will organise to oppose it — which follows from the collective action logic in Unit Six.

The first kind.

Gov 453 Distributive Policy

Payments collected widely with benefits going to relatively few. Costs spread thin draw little resistance, because no individual payer has much reason to fight.

The second.

Gov 454 Regulatory Policy

Costs on a few with benefits spread across everyone. Concentrated costs organise opposition — the small-group logic from Unit Six predicts exactly that, and it is why this kind is fought hardest per beneficiary.

And the third.

Gov 455 Redistributive Policy

Shifting resources from some groups to others. This is the most conflictual category, because both sides of the transfer are visible and identifiable.

Two spending categories, and the distinction determines what the power of the purse actually reaches in a given year. One category flows without anybody voting on it — because a previous law already said it would.

The first category.

Gov 456 Entitlements

Benefits guaranteed to members of a defined group, paid by formula rather than by annual appropriation. It is called mandatory because existing law rather than this year's Congress commits the money.

The second.

Gov 457 Discretionary Spending

Spending Congress must pass legislation to authorise annually. The yearly power of the purse operates on this share only — which is a good deal less than the whole budget.

Two entries on a pair of terms swapped constantly in public discussion. They measure different things over different time spans, and the figures differ by orders of magnitude — so exchanging them is not a small imprecision.

The two.

Gov 458 The Deficit and the Debt

The deficit is how much one year's spending exceeded that year's revenue. The debt is the accumulated total owed across all years. The budget balanced only briefly, at the end of the nineteen-nineties.

And the error.

Gov 459 ERROR: "The Deficit and the Debt Are the Same"

They are not the same. One is a single year's shortfall, the other every year's shortfalls added together. The two numbers differ enormously, so using one word for the other misstates the situation by a very large factor.

One entry on two instruments, and the institutional point matters more than the definitions. One lever is held by elected officials and the other deliberately is not.

The two levers.

Gov 460 Fiscal and Monetary Policy

Taxing and spending set by Congress and the president; interest rates and money supply managed by the central bank. That bank's independence means elected officials do not set rates — which is the design, not an oversight.

The unit's second half. Foreign policy, the instruments carrying it out — two of which this course has already supplied the rules for — and an error entry about a number the public estimates dramatically wrong.

The subject.

Gov 461 Foreign Policy

A government's goals and actions aimed beyond its own borders. Foreign and domestic priorities trade against each other, because one budget funds both.

The instruments.

Gov 462 The Instruments

Diplomacy, foreign aid, agreements and treaties, sanctions, and military force. The rules for the paper instruments were covered in the unit on the presidency.

And the error.

Gov 463 ERROR: "Foreign Aid Is a Large Share of Federal Spending"

Foreign aid is not a large share of federal spending — it has run near one percent of the budget. The entry marks that figure as of its recording, which is the right way to state a number that moves.

Four entries. Two ways of exercising influence, two stances on whether to exercise it abroad at all, and a pair of lenses the course presents as lenses rather than as findings.

Two kinds of power.

Gov 464 Hard and Soft Power

Influence through diplomacy and attraction, against influence through military force and its threat. The two pair with the two lenses at the end of this topic.

The first stance.

Gov 465 Isolationism

Staying out of foreign entanglements. This dominated American policy from the Revolution into the early twentieth century — it is the older position, not a fringe one.

The second.

Gov 466 Liberal Internationalism

Active involvement in world affairs, with democracies cooperating through shared structures. Note the vocabulary — engagement and entanglement describe the same facts, and which word gets used is the argument.

And the two lenses.

Gov 467 Idealism and Realism

One assumes countries can run the world cooperatively; the other assumes interests and power decide whatever anyone says. Both are offered as lenses — the course looks through each rather than adopting one.

One procedure, and its caveat is what keeps it honest. The five-stage model is a map of where to look, not a description of how policies actually move — real ones skip stages, stall, and go backwards.

Tracing a policy.

Gov 475 Tracing a Policy

Walk the five stages and name, at each one, the institution this course already covered doing that work. The model orders the search — actual policies skip stages, stall, and repeat them.

The unit closes by placing itself relative to everything before it — and then names what politics substantively is about, which the course again declines to settle.

The capstone. The outputs.

Gov 476 The Outputs of Government

Policy as the point where the system's machinery finally produces something — the outputs, domestic and foreign, that everything else exists to generate. Which outputs it should produce is the substance of politics, and the course maps rather than answers it.

Five things you can now do. You can say why choosing not to act is a policy choice — one with authors and consequences, rather than the absence of a decision. You can sort a policy by where its costs and benefits fall, and predict the politics: diffuse costs draw little resistance, and concentrated costs organise. You can tell mandatory spending from discretionary, and say that the annual power of the purse reaches only the second. You can tell the deficit from the debt — one year's shortfall against every year's added together — and the two differ by orders of magnitude. And you can trace a policy through five stages, naming the machinery at each, while remembering the model is a map rather than a schedule.