Governmental Influence on Cultural Society | Teen Ink

Governmental Influence on Cultural Society

May 6, 2014
By Anonymous

Out of the eight major subfields of political policy, public policy stood out because it deals with a set of decisions that shape the way the country is run. The study of public policy examines why governments are necessary and how they can be made more effective. We look at how governments make policy, how the public sector is run and the political dimensions of public sector decision-making. I believe that the most important public policy concerning what many Americans are facing today is racial discrimination. This has been a factor in the lives of African-Americans and their families since the institution of our American political system. To get to the heart of this disease that seems to inflict the hapless without notice, one would have to ascertain the causes at root level.

The term “social construction” is such a powerful form of control, a metaphorically moral way of stating how the public policy of governmental intervention has installed a false sense of gathering. It represents to me an invisible fence of slavery meant to contain the minds of the masses with eyes closed. Young females dwelling in impoverish societies find themselves bombarded with mundane images of familiarity, possibly of a parental figure depending on social assistance to survive thus depicting their own futures, forcing the stereotypical way of bearing children without a way of sustaining them. It is long known there exists in this socially constructed environment a governmentally controlled social giving of aid cover their basic needs. Although not completely foreign to lands of affluence this service seems to mainly target areas of the poor. It had seemed the government’s public policy was to aid in abstaining rather than instrumenting new tactics to influence growth.

In days of old the pattern seemed to be, “give’m a little bit to keep going without enough for advancement” mentality. That was the way until the overused system fell short of its mental containment when the population grew in vast numbers which nearly bleed the system to a fatal end that the government instituted a new public policy of, “welfare to work” program. This is but just one example of how public policy under the political system intervened to create solutions to a very public problem facing mainly the poor. Because of racial inequalities that existed in the education sector that infiltrated the employment world – many young African-American men and women played pawn to being racial discrimination, sort of- “give them a high school education and set them free mentality.” C. Robert Lieberman, Social Construction (The American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, No. 2. Jun., 1995), pp. 437-441.

Social constructions are political in the sense that they are related to public discourse and are manipulated through hortatory and symbolic language generally regarded as political. Understanding social construction of target populations helps to explain how elected officials behave and why, in some circumstances, officials will support policy provisions that distribute benefits at odds with their apparent self-interest, as determined by their assessment of interest group and constituency opinion. Concern with social constructions of target populations amplifies the justification for political scientists to study policies and strengthens their credentials as policy analysts. Social construction of targets contributes to an increasingly rich elaboration of the characteristics or elements of policy and their effects, which go beyond earlier preoccupation with costs and benefits to include messages about citizenship and government. The impact of policies upon target populations' perceptions of democracy, inclination toward participation, and willingness to comply with policy directives is clearly an appropriate subject for political science analysis

The levels of public support for laws and how that support is distributed, whether or not large uncertainties exist about the nature of the problem being addressed, and whether agents and targets are unwilling or unable to act in concert with policy objectives, are key contextual concerns in statutory design. This article has argued that statutory designs should be tailored to fit different contexts, rather than attempting to develop a set of rules or principles of statutory design. In some policy situations there is agreement about goals and knowledge of who must do what to reach goals, but agents and targets lack either the motivation or the capacity to do what needs to be done. This type of policy context is sometimes found when changes in public values and priorities occur rapidly, making obsolete existing bureaucratic machinery and relationships. Under these circumstances, strong statutory designs with clear and thorough policy logic are most likely to lead to successful implementation.



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