The Many Angles of Policy Feedback

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The political consequences of public policies are central to any debate about accountability and quality of governance. Policy feedback in its different forms, or lack thereof, shapes incentives facing governments and bureaucracies and affects policy design. The papers in this panel explore policy feedback from several different angles, both as an explanatory factor and as a phenomenon to be explained. Bueno and Zucco examine concurrently different short-term feedback channels for the same housing policy; McArthur and Gingrich concentrate how feedback from different education system affects beliefs in the longer run; Vega, in contrast, examines the extent to which expectations about policy feedback shape government's policy choices, while McMurry and Tsai test whether different attempts to increase the flow of information between bureaucracies and the public improves governance. The panel is varied in terms of approaches as it geographically. The papers employ process tracing, field experiments, as well a quasi-experimental and observational approaches; their empirical settings span Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. We learn that expectations about feedback matter for policy diffusion, that the most obvious feedback channels are not necessarily the most important or even particularly relevant, and that attempts to increase feedback can backfire.

Sub Unit

• Division 25: Public Policy

Chair

• Wendy Hunter University of Texas, Austin

Discussant

• Ernesto F. Calvo University of Maryland

Individual Presentations

• Beyond Beneficiaries: Donors, the Electorate, and the Returns of Policies - Natalia Salgado Bueno, Emory University; Cesar Zucco, Getulio Vargas Foundation

• How Policy Feedback from Educational Opportunity Shapes Fairness Perceptions - Daniel McArthur, University of Oxford; Jane R. Gingrich, University of Oxford

• Tidal-Waves and Trickle-Flows: Presidents’ Expectations and Policy Diffusion - Diego Vega, The University of Texas at Austin

• Better Together? The Effect of Civic Education on Responsiveness and Engagement - Nina McMurry, WZB Berlin Social Science Center; Lily L. Tsai, Massachusetts Institute of Technology