Preliminary Exam Questions

November 26, 1998

NOTE: Six of these questions will be on the final exam. You will be asked to answer three. Be sure to refer to class readings in formulating your answers.

1. Salamon describes the "tools approach" to the study of public policy as a distinct approach within the policy sciences. Outline his arguments and assess this claim.
2. Hood uses a scheme based on the different resources available to governments to classify various types of policy instruments. Critically assess this scheme, its merits and demerits.
3. Why have procedural instruments become the focus of study in recent years. Utilizing the readings from the course, discuss the relationship existing between procedural instruments and modern governance.
4. What is a policy subsystem or policy network? How can governments manage network activities and interactions. What policy tools can be used for these purposes?
5. How are policy instruments related to policy change?
6. Assess the merits of utilizing the concept of legitimacy and de-legitimation to provide a model of procedural policy instrument choice.
7. Discuss the nature and origins of government support for interest group activities in Canada. How does this differ from the situation in the United States?
8. Provide examples of the use of authority to create a substantive policy instrument and a procedural one. How do the two types of tools, based on the use of the same governing resource, differ?
9. Outline the manner in which government re-organizations can affect policy processes. Provide at least two examples of such activities in Canada to illustrate your answer.
10. What is the difference between a subsidy and a tax expenditure. What factors lead governments to choose between these categories? Why has the use of tax expenditures grown in recent decades?
11. Discuss the issues surrounding the use of information campaigns to alter public opinion. Why has government use of this tool grown so rapidly over the past two decades?
12. How can Royal Commissions be classified as policy instruments. In your answer, be sure to address the general issues involved in arriving at a classification of a policy tool.