Policy Analysis and Evaluation.

Repond to 2 fellow classmated post on Policy Analysis and Evaluation’POST 1 Termination of a government program may occur because “the need for the program might disappear, or the political atmosphere may no longer support a government program” (Rushefsky, 2013). One reason government programs are seldom terminated is due to the lack of incentives involved with terminating a program (Edwards, 2015). James Madison wrote that the 3 motives for legislators seeking office include (1) ambition, (2) personal interest, and (3) public good, with emphasis on the first two motives (Edwards, 2015). This is important to note because legislators tend to be most concerned with their reputation. It is not popular to admit that they favored a failing program, or to create enemies by terminating a public favored program. Therefore, it is often avoided, and obsolete programs tend to accumulate (Edwards, 2015).“The longer an institution exists, the more resilient it becomes” (Zhang, 2009). This is another reason why government programs are seldom terminated. Many programs are created with the intention to survive and adapt to changes. When they are threatened with termination, they often experience amendments first in attempt to slow down the process of termination (Zhang, 2009). It is much easier to follow through with marginal program changes versus complete program termination. It is also rare that a whole program is evaluated in any year. Therefore, making it much more difficult for government program termination.One last reason terminating government programs is difficult and seldomly accomplished is because of pressure from public opinion and influence of interest groups (Zhang, 2009). “Public opinion establishes the basic scope and direction of public policy” (Zhang, 2009 citing Anderson, 1984), and interest groups promote policy that will benefit their interests. When attempting to terminate a policy or program that is favored by public opinion or interest groups, it encounters extreme resistance and often fails.One program that should have been terminated is the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program which costs approximately $304 million a year (Ditch, 2019). COPS is “responsible for advancing the practice of community policing by the nation’s state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies through information and grant resources” (About the COPS office, n.d.). As we know, the public currently believes that many cops have failed to build a trust or gain mutual respect within their communities, which is the opposite of COPS intention. I do believe the intent of this program is great, but it has not been successful enough to continue being funded at such a large number. The best success would be to terminate this program and create a new one that is efficient at deterring crime and promoting a trust between cops and the public. Although many people are chanting “defund the police” now, so termination of this program might be popular amongst extreme leftists. However, unfortunately, I am not sure a new program would be as supported.References:About the COPS office. (n.d.). Community Oriented Policing Services. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://cops.usdoj.gov/aboutcops.Ditch, D. (2019, June 19). These wasteful government programs need to go. The Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/these-wasteful-government-programs-need-go.Edwards, C. (2015, September 1). Congressional incentives and government failure. Downsizing the Federal Government. https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/congressional-failure.Rushefsky, M. E. (2013, July 3). Public Policy in the United States. Routledge. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=1900011#.Zhang, L. (2009, December). Study on obstacles to policy termination. Journal of Politics and Law. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.675.3493&rep=rep1&type=pdf.post 2Class, Good morning, class I hope everyone is having a great week Anne looking forward to the next endeavor. Government programs or policies are generally enacted due to several reasons, some of them maybe for political gains or most often designed and implemented for a specific reason or goal in mind, to say help a certain group or stature of people living in the United States. These policies are guided to fruition by significant events or needs and wants or lobbying by large corporations. When these policies are drafted and agreed upon by the some of the participants it’s easy to get these policies past and enacted. One of the reasons why these government programs are seldom terminated is that the initiating policy representatives or groups they represent have a large stake or share in this policy. Secondly these programs are very rarely terminated because the cost to terminate or replace with a similar policy is just too great on the taxpayer. Thirdly the corporations or lobbyists that push to get said policy into motion are too highly invested into the program. In all three cases if the current policy is terminated then a great deal of research and development is needed to either reform the policy or create an entirely new policy with such benefits. Another variable is the amount of time and or people that are affected by this policy, if this policy has been around for two decades then most likely it will be very difficult to change or remove due to the amount of generational participation. To answer the second question in this forum post I will touch lightly on the policy of welfare in our society. The policy of welfare aid was never intended to be a long-term program, it was intended for a short period of time until the worker could become healthy again in order to return to workforce. This policy has continued to survive, and we now have a generational program that has no end in sight. Contributing to this never-ending policy, there has not been much reform due to the number of stakeholders that are in this program. The current amount of people living off the welfare program in this country is exhausting and it looks like if we continue down this road, the only policy reform that I see is for the country to start changing it into a universal income policy.JonReferenceDye, T. R. (2011). Understanding public policy. Boston, MA: Longman.Kraft, M. E., & Furlong, S. R. (2018). Public policy: Politics, analysis, and alternatives. Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, an imprint of SAGE Publications.