Scholars and practitioners use various criteria to analyze policy options, including effectiveness, efficiency, equity, liberty, social acceptability, political feasibility, legal feasibility, administrative feasibility, technical feasibility, stigmatization, and target efficiency. We will generally focus on the first seven of these criteria and are particularly interested in the ideas of effectiveness, equity, social acceptability, and legal feasibility. Following are brief descriptions of these criteria.
Effectiveness assesses the likelihood that the policy option will achieve the policy goals. Of course, to assess this criterion, the policy goals must be understood. Sometimes, people pursuing conflicting policy options have a shared policy goal, but different opinions on how best to achieve that goal. For example, almost everyone wants to reduce the number of mass shootings, but people disagree on which options would be most effective. More often, however, people pursuing conflicting policy options have different policy goals. For example, some people’s primary goal is to minimize the number of abortions, while other people’s primary goal is to maximize the ability of women to make their own health care decisions. Unfortunately (because it complicates the analysis), this situation occurs frequently in social policy. When it does, we will acknowledge that fact and consider all goals when assessing effectiveness.
Efficiency assesses the benefits that are likely to be achieved by a policy option in comparison to the costs of the option. Both the benefits and the costs are typically monetized for this comparison, which is often expressed as a benefit-to-cost ratio, a net present value, or a rate of return. This criterion is often less useful in social policy, because it is difficult to monetize the benefits and costs of policy options. Therefore, we will generally focus more on effectiveness than on efficiency.
Equity assesses how fairly the expected benefits and costs (and risks of costs) are distributed across different population subgroups. This idea is particularly important for us, because we focus on identifying policy options with majority support across partisan groups. But that requirement may not be sufficient to protect the interests of subgroups that do not form a majority of any partisan group. Requiring a policy option to be legally feasible sometimes helps to protect minority subgroups, as options that discriminate against certain subgroups may violate constitutional or statutory provisions, but even this requirement is often insufficient. Indeed, some policy options may broadly satisfy all other criteria, but unfairly impose disproportionate costs or risks of costs on particular subgroups, so it is important to explicitly assess equity.
Liberty assesses the impact of a policy option on individual rights and freedoms. We will generally rely on the legal feasibility requirement to protect against infringements upon liberty, as many of our most important rights and freedoms are constitutionally protected. However, not all rights and freedoms that we care about are constitutionally protected, so it is sometimes important to separately assess liberty. For example, a public assistance program may either provide cash that can be spent however the recipient chooses, a voucher that can be spent on a range of goods from which the recipient can choose, or the goods themselves, with few or no options for the recipient. There is no constitutional right to receive benefits from the government in a particular form, but we may still believe that it is important to give recipients some choices.
Social acceptability assesses public support for the policy option. We will pay close attention to this criterion and will always consider support not just among the public as a whole, but among each partisan group. Our goal is to identify options that are supported by majorities of Democrats and Republicans and, when data are available, by a majority of Independents. We will rely almost entirely on publicly available survey data to assess this support and will generally try to consider surveys conducted by different organizations at different times with differently worded questions, because responses to survey questions on social policy issues are often sensitive to these factors.
Political feasibility assesses the likelihood that a policy option would be adopted by the relevant elected officials. Clearly, this is a critical criterion. However, it is also often an unsurmountable obstacle, at least in the short term, because federal and state elected officials tend to be much more extreme than their constituents, because of gerrymandering, partisan primaries, and unlimited “soft money” contributions to campaigns. Therefore, we will not reject policy options for lacking political feasibility. Indeed, our hope is that, by highlighting moderate policy options that satisfy other criteria such as effectiveness, equity, and social acceptability, we may help to improve the political feasibility of those options.
Legal feasibility assesses whether a policy option would conflict with applicable constitutional and statutory provisions and, if it would, the difficulty of amending those provisions. The U.S. Constitution is particularly difficult to amend, so we generally will not recommend any options that are likely to conflict with it. Most state constitutions are more easily amended, so conflicts with those documents may not be insurmountable obstacles.
Administrative feasibility assesses the ability of the relevant government agencies or departments to implement a policy option. This criterion is typically a shorter-term consideration, because if that capacity is not present initially, it can usually be developed. Because we are almost always interested in the longer term, we will not generally focus on this criterion.
Technical feasibility assesses the availability of technology needed to implement a policy option. This criterion is related to administrative feasibility and is sometimes considered as part of that criterion. As with administrative feasibility, we will not generally focus on this criterion as it is rarely a significant obstacle for social policy proposals.
Stigmatization assesses whether a policy option carries negative connotations for its recipients, as with some public assistance programs. Stigmatization can be a significant obstacle to the success of some programs, because it prevents people from taking up programs for which they qualify. However, we will not generally focus separately on this criterion, because these issues can typically be considered as part of assessing a policy option’s effectiveness.
Target efficiency assesses the extent to which the benefits of a program flow to the intended recipients and address the intended social problem. As with stigmatization, these issues can generally be considered in effectiveness discussions, so we will not usually consider this criterion separately.
In addition to the criteria discussed above, we will always assess whether the policy option is proposed at the appropriate level of government. Some social policy issues require a uniform national policy, while others are better addressed by state or local governments. For example, because guns can be easily transported from state to state and city to city, policies regulating the types of guns and ammunition that can be purchased should be adopted at the federal level. However, because it is easy to verify state residency, policies about who can purchase guns and ammunition can be adopted by each state to suit state needs and preferences. And policies about where and how guns can be carried can vary by city to suit city needs and preferences. When the best governmental level for a policy is unclear, we will generally favor state or local policies over federal policies, so more Americans can have the policies that they prefer.