Political Strategies for Regulatory Policy Making: Exercising Power in the Federal Rule-Making Process for Higher Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: The Role and Influence of Policy Actors in Higher Education Policy

Abstract

Policy actors routinely employ a number of strategies to influence higher education rulemaking, a policymaking process that develops regulations implementing statutory policies. But little research has been conducted to analyze the various types of strategies that have been used and which actors tend to employ which types of strategies. This paper constructs a typology of the political strategies employed by policy actors in attempts to influence the higher education rulemaking process. This paper also characterizes such strategies as attempts at exercising power, and applies the power framework of Steven Lukes (2005) to determine which actors attempt to exercise different kinds of power in the higher education rulemaking process.

Author

• Rebecca S. Natow, Teachers College, Columbia University