Policy Making and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act 2004

I.  Pick a policy area & a specific proposal (e.g.  the 2002 McCain-Feingold Bipartisan- Campaign Reform Act; the 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act; the Respect for- America’s Fallen Heroes Act of 2006; the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; the S-CHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) enactment in 2002 or the conflict over its expansion in 2007-2009; the 2013 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act; the 2014 Farm Bill; the 2014 two-year federal budget agreement; are all good possible topics).  A good place to begin looking for a topic is in the indexes of the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports (available on-line, for free, through our library web-site.  The Congressional Quarterly Weekly web-site will not give you full-text articles without paying a large membership fee.  There is a tutorial posted on Titanium that will assist you in navigating the CSUF library’s CQ Weekly database.

II. Clearly identify the community problem the proposal was intended to address and how the government’s agenda was set.  Identifying how the agenda was set is not always easy and in many cases you may have to rely on the public statements of policy advocates (in newspapers or election campaign news coverage).   Some policy proposals will have very obvious "triggering events" (e.g. the creation of the Dept. of- Homeland Security in 2002 or the enactment of the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act- Amendments, for example).  Other policy proposals will require more creativity, research, or a discussion with me during my office hours. Our discussions should give you some guidance in this aspect of your paper.  Elections, party agendas (articulated in their party platforms, revised at their national convention every four years), presidential priorities and major events that highlight some social problem often set Congress’s agenda.    Describe what the policy would do and clearly identify which national government institution (s) you are writing about (Congress, president, judiciary, interest groups, media, parties etc.).  Remember:  This paper must be about national policymaking and politics (Congress, President or the Supreme Court): Not politics or government in the State of California or any other single state, exclusively. Identify the political players involved in the political process you're writing about (e.g. the president, key members of Congress, interest groups and political parties).  Identify the most important proponents & opponents of the policy proposal. Describe what proponents & opponents of the proposal did to try to enact or block the policy proposal (This should be the heart of your paper).   Proponents and opponents include government officeholders, private interest groups and political parties which try to influence the outcome of the public policymaking process. Resolution: Did the policy proposal become law, or did it die somewhere in the policymaking process.  Most importantly, how did it happen? (Sometimes seeing how policy proposals are defeated is more interesting than seeing how they become law). Summary/Conclusion: Summarize in a paragraph or two how the institution you studied operated and articulate any conclusions you may have arrived at with respect to your policy area, the government, the political institutions you studied or the policymaking process in general.