Chapter 33 — Self-Check Quiz
Twelve multiple-choice questions and four short-answer questions. Answers and brief explanations follow at the end.
Multiple choice
1. John Kingdon's streams model identifies three streams that must couple for a policy window to open. They are:
(a) Federal, state, and local. (b) Problem, policy, and political. (c) Legislative, executive, and judicial. (d) Liberal, conservative, and libertarian.
2. The classic stages model of the policy process is best described as:
(a) An accurate temporal sequence of how policy actually moves. (b) A list of components, each of which must occur, but not necessarily in order. (c) A normative model of how policy should ideally proceed. (d) A model that assumes a single decision-maker at each stage.
3. The "garbage-can" model of organizational decision-making (Cohen, March, Olsen 1972) emphasizes:
(a) That problems generate solutions in a deterministic way. (b) That solutions, problems, and decision opportunities couple opportunistically. (c) That bureaucratic waste is unavoidable in complex organizations. (d) That most policy proposals come from elected officials.
4. Pressman and Wildavsky's Implementation (1973) found that successful policy implementation is hard because:
(a) Bureaucrats are inherently lazy. (b) Most policies are designed to fail by their drafters. (c) Each non-trivial policy depends on a chain of institutional acts, each of which has some probability of failure. (d) Federal money is rarely available in sufficient quantities.
5. Tsebelis's veto-players framework predicts that a political system with more veto players will produce:
(a) More frequent policy change. (b) More partisan policy outputs. (c) More status-quo bias. (d) More efficient policy outputs.
6. Reconciliation in the U.S. Senate is significant for policy-making because:
(a) It allows the House to bypass the Senate entirely. (b) It allows fiscal legislation to pass with a simple majority, bypassing the filibuster. (c) It is required for all major legislation. (d) It allows the president to bypass Congress.
7. The major-questions doctrine, articulated in West Virginia v. EPA (2022), holds that:
(a) Agencies cannot regulate pollution. (b) Agencies must point to clear congressional authorization for actions of vast economic and political significance. (c) Courts must defer to all agency interpretations of statutes. (d) Congress must approve every regulation in advance.
8. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) is significant because it:
(a) Created the major-questions doctrine. (b) Overruled Chevron deference, shifting statutory interpretation from agencies to courts. (c) Eliminated the filibuster. (d) Required all federal regulations to be approved by the Supreme Court.
9. Suzanne Mettler's concept of policy feedback emphasizes that:
(a) Policies are determined by public opinion polls. (b) Policies create constituencies and political dynamics that shape future policy. (c) Policy outcomes are usually unpredictable. (d) Bureaucracies cannot evaluate their own programs.
10. Of the following, which is the best example of the "laboratories of democracy" pathway to federal policy?
(a) The 1965 Voting Rights Act. (b) The 2010 Affordable Care Act, building on the 2006 Massachusetts health-reform law. (c) The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. (d) The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
11. Comprehensive immigration reform has failed in 2007, 2013, and 2024 in part because:
(a) Most Americans oppose any immigration reform. (b) The political stream has repeatedly collapsed even when the policy and problem streams aligned. (c) Immigration policy is constitutionally reserved to the states. (d) The Supreme Court has struck down all proposed reforms.
12. Which of the following best describes the "permanent campaign" thesis (Frances Lee, Hugh Heclo)?
(a) Members of Congress are constantly campaigning, leaving little space for substantive policy negotiation. (b) Campaigns are now permanently funded by federal taxpayers. (c) The presidential campaign never ends. (d) Members of Congress always seek bipartisan compromise.
Short answer (3–5 sentences each)
13. Explain the difference between the stages model and Kingdon's streams model. Why is the streams model better at explaining when policy windows open?
14. Identify three veto points that prevented or shaped a recent major piece of legislation (your choice). Explain what each veto point did.
15. What does Pressman and Wildavsky's implementation analysis predict about the implementation success of a policy whose execution requires twenty separate state-level decisions, each with an 85 percent probability of cooperation?
16. Steel-man both the case for and the case against eliminating the Senate filibuster.
Answer key
1. (b) Problem, policy, and political.
2. (b) A list of components. The temporal-sequence assumption is the model's main weakness.
3. (b) Solutions, problems, and decision opportunities couple opportunistically. (a) is the deterministic alternative the garbage-can model rejects.
4. (c) Each policy depends on a chain of institutional acts. (a) and (b) are pejorative caricatures; the structural argument is the real Pressman/Wildavsky finding.
5. (c) More status-quo bias. More veto players = harder policy change.
6. (b) Reconciliation allows fiscal legislation to pass with a simple majority. The Byrd Rule constrains what can be in a reconciliation bill, but for fiscal items reconciliation bypasses the filibuster.
7. (b) Agencies must show clear congressional authorization for actions of vast economic and political significance. (a) is too broad; agencies still regulate pollution within statutory authority.
8. (b) Overruled Chevron deference. Loper Bright did not create the major-questions doctrine; that came from earlier cases including West Virginia v. EPA.
9. (b) Policies create constituencies and political dynamics. The classic example: Social Security creating senior voters who then mobilize to defend it.
10. (b) The ACA built on the 2006 Massachusetts law, which built on a Heritage Foundation framework. State-level innovation produced the federal policy framework.
11. (b) The political stream has collapsed even when the other two aligned. The 2024 Lankford-Sinema-Murphy bill is a vivid recent case: the policy was ready, the problem was recognized, and the political stream collapsed when presidential candidate Trump opposed the deal.
12. (a) Members of Congress are constantly campaigning. This has narrowed the space for substantive negotiation.
13. The stages model lists components (problem definition, formulation, adoption, implementation, evaluation, feedback) but assumes a sequence. Kingdon's streams model treats the components as parallel processes that couple opportunistically. The streams model better explains why timing matters: a window opens when problem, policy, and political streams align, not when stages reach a particular point.
14. Sample answer using the 2017 ACA repeal effort: The Senate filibuster forced reconciliation; the Byrd Rule limited what could be included; three Republican senators (McCain, Collins, Murkowski) defected within reconciliation. Three veto players (three senators) blocked unified party control.
15. The success probability is 0.85^20 = 0.039, or about 4 percent. The Pressman/Wildavsky implication is that success depends either on increasing per-decision probability (clearer authority, more capacity, less veto density) or on reducing the number of decision points. State-level Medicaid expansion under the ACA is a real-world example with this structure.
16. For elimination: The filibuster was not in the Founders' design (the original Senate operated by majority rule); it has shifted from a rare instrument to a routine 60-vote requirement that prevents most legislation; it disproportionately empowers small-state senators representing a minority of the population; and it concentrates legislative power in fiscal frameworks because reconciliation alone bypasses it. Against elimination: The filibuster forces consensus and prevents whipsaw policy when control shifts; it protects minority voices in a chamber already malapportioned; eliminating it would not solve underlying polarization and would make policy more volatile; and the resulting policy whiplash would harm long-term planning across many domains. Both positions have empirical support and serious theoretical grounding.