Stupid Public Policies and Other Political Myths

American public policy is cloaked in many myths. Encompassing such issues as public subsidies to sports stadia, enterprise zones, and welfare migration, there are many ideas recycled from government to government over time with little thought given to the evidence supporting their empirical assumptions or their prospects for success. In light of the Obama administration’s plans to develop an economic stimulus package for states to implement, this paper looks ten policy myths and bad ideas. The argument is that before states spend money they need to be more attentive to what social science research says regarding what types of programs are effective. Introduction President elect Barack Obama’s plan to spend $700 billion or more to stimulate the American economy raises a host of interesting question about how to spend that money in order to achieve the proverbial “biggest bang for the biggest buck. ” In contemplating this stimulus plan for the economy significant talk has centered on perhaps giving this money to states for them to spend on “shovel ready” projects that could potentially generate up to 2.5 million jobs. But the spending of this money and giving authority to the states to decide which projects to spend them on raises two questions. First, how good are states in spending money to encourage economic development or engaging in good policy making? Second, are some types of projects better than others to help the economy? States often are viewed favorably as innovators in public policy. Justice Louis Brandeis’ famous and often repeated quote in New State Ice Company v. Liebman, 285 U.S. 262 (1932), described states as laboratories of democracy where “a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. ” Similarly, Carl E. Van Horn, in lauding the perceived [re]newed capacity of states to innovate and experiment in public policy, asserts that: “Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, state governments are at the cutting edge of political and public policy reform” (VanHorn 2006: 1). In an era when devolution and federalism are the buzzwords among some policy makers, and at a time when others views lawmakers in Washington as hopelessly deadlocked in partisan battles, it is no surprise that the attention has shifted back to states to drive the policy process. Yet while states by default or design may be forced to drive policy making, questions about 2 their capacity to innovate and implement are still open to debate. In particular, even though Elazar (1984) has asserted that states have different political and legal cultures that affect how their institutions are set up and operate, and Putnam (2000) has argued that the levels of social capital across the country demonstrate contrasting capacity perform, one can still question whether states truly are the laboratories of democracy that Brandeis waxed over. When states make policy, the reality may demonstrate more often than not that they are less laboratories of democracy and more factories of replication. For example, many state legislatures are not professional or full time, or they lack extensive research staff to undertake policy work (Rosenthal 1998). The reality may be that often the practice one state adopts when seeking to make policy is to ask if another has already enacted it. If so, often that policy becomes adopted subject to minor modifications. Additionally, states may find out about legislation at conferences, such as the National Council of State Legislatures, where they hear about or see programs that have been adopted elsewhere. The point here is that states may be creatures of “me tooism,” repeating and replicating policy initiatives found in other states, often adopting them without asking if in fact they work. One of the darker or unfortunate sides to this policy replication is that ideas adopted in one state that do not work might also be adopted elsewhere, only to reproduce policy failures across boarders. This paper examines state and local governments borrowing ideas from one another, producing what shall be called “stupid public policy. ” American public policy is cloaked in many myths. Encompassing such issues as public subsidies to sports stadia, enterprise zones, and welfare migration, there are many ideas recycled from government to government over time with little thought given to the evidence supporting their empirical assumptions or their prospects for success.