Social Sciences and History / Unit 8 SSH 0737 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Distributive, Regulatory, Redistributive: Naming a Policy
The idea
The exam describes a policy and asks its type, and the anchor sorts by how costs and benefits are concentrated or diffused. Distributive policy collects payments broadly but concentrates direct benefits on relatively few. Regulatory policy focuses costs on one group while benefiting larger society, regulating companies to protect the public. Redistributive policy shares the wealth and income of some groups with others; the anchor's key term puts costs on a relatively small number and benefits on a different group. The anchor also sorts goods: private goods, excludable by price, which free-market economists say need no regulation; and what it calls public goods, air, water, wildlife and forests that no one owns, which most agree government must regulate.
In practice
Given "a subsidy for one crop paid from general revenue", distributive. Given "emission limits on power plants", regulatory. Given "a tax on high incomes funding benefits for low ones", redistributive. Given "a water project for one valley", distributive. Ask who pays and who gains, and whether either is many or few.
Where people slip
The trap is calling any spending redistributive; distributive spending is paid by all and enjoyed by few without moving income between groups. The second trap is the anchor's public goods: air and forests are common goods in unit 07's and unit 13's terms, since use exhausts them, and this chapter uses the phrase loosely.
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