Policy Outputs and Bureaucracy

Abstract

One of the most significant findings of past policy research is that policy outputs are largely determined by environmental pressures rather than by any structural features of the policymaking unit itself. Yet this conclusion is problematic because it is limited in two major respects. First, there are serious problems with the measurement of concepts basic to all policy output studies. Second, past research has focused almost exclusively on the policymaking activities of legislative bodies, neglecting the increasingly important role that bureaucracies play in the policy process. This article overcomes these limitations through a bureaucratic-level analysis of policy outputs that circumvents the measurement problems of previous research. Using data on the noise abatement policies of public airport departments in the United States, two models of outputs are developed: one emphasizing the effects of environmental factors on the adoption of noise abatement policies, and the other emphasizing the effects of the structure of the airport agency. The ability of these models to explain policy responsiveness is also examined.