尋洋之南。躬耕之境

Theodore Lowi developed his theoretical typology of distribution, redistribution and regulation based on the congressional reality where different types of decision-making processes exist. The major problem of applying that model to the policymaking process, in the context of the executive branch, is that this model ignores the difference between the essences of the legislative branch and the executive branch.

First, policymakers in the executive branch can be altogether viewed as one entity, even though different levels and departments of policymakers are expected to be accountable for different types of policymaking. Compared with legislators of different partisan backgrounds, public employees, even though they might compete against each other for resources, in general cooperate with one another. The relationship between congressmen or their associations, committees or subcommittees, are horizontal when these congressmen make decision; there are hierarchical or vertical structures in the executive context where many “departmental heads” approve or make final decisions.

Due to the difference described above, the lawmaking process in the legislature is the consequence of reaching a compromise among different partisan and constituent interests; the policymaking in the execute branch is a matter of decisions that need to be made along the institutional goals to a significant extent set by elected politicians. If an agriculture related interest group lobbies for their own interest, the success of their lobby is dependent on wining the support simultaneously from several congressmen.

If the same interest group tries to influence the policy output of an agricultural department, it stills need to deal with several departmental heads; but the interest group exerts its influence on a series of hierarchical agents.

The analysis above implies that, in Lowi's scheme, none of the three models, regulation, distribution and redistribution, theoretically spells out the “internal structure,” either hierarchical or horizontal, of the policymakers. What these three models do is merely to show how resource distributors, presumably congressmen, allocate resources among recipients, presumably interest groups; these three models also show how those recipients strategically form types of groups in order to win resources and what kinds of power relationships between those recipients are established. What has happened to the internal structure of policymakers was largely left out in Lowi’s discussion.

The internal structure of policymakers seems to be a group of harmonious agents with a one-dimensional will. Not only legislatures has no such group of harmonious policy-makers but also Executive often generates self-contradiction where, for example, Home Land Security would have difficulty efficiently collecting national guards in New Orleans where Hurricane Katrina displaced many poor people since it is in the interest of the US department of Defense to keep those national guards in Iraq. Thus I suggest that Lowi’s typology take into account the internal structure of policymakers or lawmakers if his typologies want to be applicable at least in the legislature and executive contexts.

Second, Lowi’s typology overemphasizes the “iron triangle” relationship where only interest groups, legislatures and bureaucracies play roles. Media to a large extent represents the public opinion that in electoral politics has been influential regarding lawmaking or policymaking. This kind of influence is frequently invisible, just as a congressman’s “perception” that what kind of bill proposed by a certain interest group corresponds to the interest of that congressman’s constituencies.

If considered in Lowi’s typology, the influence of media or public opinion would be a significant predictor of legislature lawmaking or executive policymaking. This argument leads to my third criticism of Lowi’s typology, that is, if legislators do not perceive themselves to be “delegates,” why would they react to interest groups or even their constituencies?

In Lowi’s typology, why a legislator in committees or on the floor would vote along with the benefit of certain interest groups remains unclear. The problem of Lowi’s typology is its theoretical dependence on the microeconomic assumption. But even worse than that, whether legislative actors in Lowi’s typology behave in a rational way is not explicitly assumed. Why wouldn’t a diehard religious conservative Republican congressman support a pro-life bill if he or she still risks losing the supports of some liberal voters in the next election? Why would an interest group consisting of several anti-death penalties non-profit organizations bother to spend lots of money in influencing those congressmen who support death penalties?

Are they irrational if they indeed exist in reality? No, they are not since ideology and perception, rather than money, motivates their political behavior. This is actually the contribution of the studies on moral politics since they can add the factors of ideology and perception into Lowi's typology. Lowi's typology fails to explain how these strongly ideological congressmen or interest groups will compete or cooperate with each other in different legislature contexts.