Public Policy and Public Administration M.A. Exam - Fall 2014

Public Policy and Public Administration M.A.
Exam – Fall 2014
Directions
Submit a cover page with your responses that lists the following: ID number, type of exam
completed (e.g., M.A. major, M.A. minor), and examination area. Indicate also the semester the
examination is taken. DO NOT WRITE YOUR NAME ANYWHERE ON THE EXAMINATION.
You have 48 hours to prepare your answers to these questions. Budget your time carefully,
including time to think and organize, as well as rest, while preparing and writing the answers.
Focus on preparing coherent, well-organized, analytic essays that not only demonstrate your
mastery of the literature but which also indicate how that literature expands our collective
knowledge. Be sure to answer the question or questions that are asked of you. Answers should
range from five to eight (5-8) double-spaced pages per question. Please do not write more than
ten (10) pages on any individual question. Number your pages consecutively for the entire
examination.
Clearly label each answer with the number of the question you are answering.
Cite sources throughout your examination using a standard format and provide a bibliography
that covers all materials used in preparing your answers.
 MA Minors: Please answer one question from each of the three sections for a total of
three (3) answers.
 MA Majors: Please answer a total of four (4) questions. At least one question must be
answered from each of the three sections.
I. Theoretical Approaches
A. An endemic problem in democracies is how a society handles common pool resource

(CPR) problems. One perspective is Garrett Hardin’s. He suggests that without
government interference and top-down coercion, the commons will be depleted. Do you
agree or not with Hardin’s approach? Explain your conclusion. Please use at least two
empirical examples and three sources in responding.
B. Some argue that policy theories are better at explaining policy stability than policy
change. Discuss this claim with respect to at least three prominent theories of the policy
process.
C. Discuss the role of ideas versus material interests in the policy process and in major policy
theories.
D. What impact do governing institutions have on policy process and implementation? Use
three examples in your answer, and pay particular attention to one or more stages of the
policy process. Explain how institutions relate to the stage or stages of the policy process
in the examples you select. Are there alternative (non-institutional) explanations for the
result?
E. Various scholars attend to the interaction between politics and markets to explain the
way welfare states undertake social provision, including providing for education (aka
“human capital acquisition”), providing welfare benefits, work-family policies, and more.
Take two or more such analyses and explain with some care how political and market-
based approaches help us understand how social policies develop. Which approaches do
you find most resonant to your own thinking, and why?
F. Problem definition and agenda setting are central concepts in public policy theory and
applied policy analysis. Drawing from the core literature, apply these concepts to a
specific policy arena of your choice. Explain how these concepts shape the policy process,
including their effects on the policy discourse, the likelihood of attention by policymakers
and, ultimately, the policy outcomes. To what extent can the dynamics of problem
definition and agenda setting explain policy processes and outcomes relative to factors
such as institutional design and rules?
G. Discuss the relative leverage that rational choice, punctuated equilibrium, and multiple
streams as theoretical frameworks have in helping us understand the policy process.
Compare and contrast them taking note as you do as to how and in what ways they may
complement one another and how and in what ways they are mutually exclusive as
explanations of policymaking.
II. Policy Research
A. What are some important and distinctive ethical challenges for scholars doing policy
research, and how should policy researchers respond to those challenges?
B. Discuss the value of comparative approaches to policy research. Articulate the value that
comparative research brings to the study of policy. Note also, however, some of the
central problems that are associated with comparative research.
C. Policy researchers often focus on how political factors affect policy choice and,
alternatively, they sometimes attend to how policies shape politics. How do these two
causal relationships work, and what challenges do they present for doing policy research?
Support your argument with pertinent examples from the policy literature.
D. The role of policy analysis is to let evidence speak louder than convictions. Discuss both
the strengths and limits of policy analysis and the durability and intensity of convictions.
To what extent is policy analysis a science? And does it inject uncertainty as much as
reducing it?
E. What is the appropriate role of the public in the creation and implementation of public
policy? Be sure to consider both the advantages and disadvantages of a greater degree of
public involvement in such policy making. Discuss the appropriate role of the public in the
creation and implementation of public policy in a specific policy domain, for example,
environmental or social policy among others.
III. Substantive Policies
A. What accounts for the mix of state and market in the provision of work-family
reconciliation policies in three contrasting OECD countries? Describe what the policies are
and explain why the states you discuss have adopted the approaches they have.
B. Why has major health care reform been so difficult to achieve in the United States?
Consider the following perspectives and discuss how they may have affected the fate of
so many proposals. (1) political institutions; (2) the role of race; (3) the problem of Pareto
optimization or even Pareto improvement, i.e., gains to some cannot be had without
losses to others; and (4) path dependence.
C. Scientific information plays an important role in informing environmental policy. Some

believe scientists have been too silent in expressing their opinions about policy
alternatives, particularly with respect to climate change, while others argue that scientists
have overstepped their role and have engaged in too much policy debate. Discuss the pros
and cons of an “activist” scientific community engaged in the climate change policy
debates, particularly as they relate to Pielke’s “The Honest Broker” and Nordhaus and
Schellenberger’s “The Death of Environmentalism”.
D. How can public policy improve or impede political representation for historically
marginalized and excluded groups such as women or African Americans in the United
States? Provide an example of how policy either improves or impedes representation (or
perhaps both) of these groups and explain why it does so.
E. With respect to recent literature on the welfare state, many scholars explicitly or
implicitly react to the “convergence thesis” which stipulates that in the face of
globalization and domestic fiscal crises since the late 1970s pressures for welfare state
reform will eliminate the diversity of welfare states and result instead in a convergence
around neo-liberal approaches. First, assess the evidence supporting this thesis. Second,
what theoretical perspectives have scholars developed as alternatives to convergence?
Third, what are the arguments that diverse approaches to politics, states, firms, labor
markets, protest, and other phenomena have sustained diverse approaches to providing
welfare needs?

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Public Policy and Public Administration M.A.

Exam – Fall 2014

A. An endemic problem in democracies is how a society handles common pool resource

II. Policy Research

C. Scientific information plays an important role in informing environmental policy. Some

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