Policy subsystems and the idea whose time has come.

摘要

To better understand the role of ideas in the public policy process, this study seeks to clarify how policy actors translate a policy idea into a policy-in-fact. The case study focuses on the 1987-1991 policy subsystem that shaped the Intermodal Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), and draws on archival documents prepared between 1988 and 1991; and on 33 personal interviews conducted between 1992 and 1994.;An interpretive approach is applied in this case study to analyze the "idea-in-use" adopted by actors--the idea of flexible federal transportation policies--to frame transportation program design issues.;Two factors precipitating an issue-framing consensus within the subsystem were: the imminent end of the long, federally-dominated Interstate-building period--a period characterized by rigid federal transportation program rules; and a broad agreement among subsystem actors that the post-Interstate program should afford state and local transportation officials greater decision making latitude than was the case during the Interstate-building era.;The idea of flexible transportation policies manifested itself in a two-step process. First, during the decades preceding the formation of ISTEA policy subsystem, the idea was adopted on a limited scale and gradually accepted by transformation community actors as a legitimate policy end-goal. Then, with the formation of the ISTEA policy subsystem, individual actors and groups of actors across the subsystem used the idea as an issue-framing tool to shape program design issues to fit their worldviews. In this way the actors translated the idea of policy flexibility, and end-goal, into a policy-in-fact.