Tiebout Case Study

Pollution continues to pose an enormous threat to residents of urban cities worldwide. In the August 2008 Monthly Update, it is stated that approximately 800,000 deaths each year can be attributed to outdoor air pollution, making pollution the single most harmful environmental hazard to human health in urban areas (Kallman). The fact that pollution kills hundreds of thousands of people each year alone portrays just how dangerous living in these conditions can be. Kallman writes about a study which proves an increase in upper respiratory diseases, cardiovascular mortality, respiratory mortality, and low birth weights when exposed to air pollutants (August 2008: Monthly Update). These can be very serious diseases and complications which, when contracted, can lead to death or very serious illnesses. There

Linkage institutions can be defined as institutions that connect citizens with the government. Examples of linkage institutions include elections, political parties, interest groups, and the media. Elections specifically are supposed to encourage public participation in the selection of governmental officials. Unfortunately, low voter turnout has proved that elections are an imperfect linkage institution. Elections depend on voters to be successful, and some factors that relate to the likelihood of voting include age, education, and race. Although some people underestimate the power of the vote, voter turnout is

The first theme of this book is Plunkitt’s use of patronage. He openly discusses quid pro quo: he gives people jobs, opportunities, and welfare services in exchange for their political allegiance. For example, he talks about giving young men opportunities to play in the baseball club or sing in the glee club. In exchange, they vote the way he tells them to. Plunkitt also supports his voters in other

Deborah Stone begins her book, Policy Paradox, by stating, “a theory of policy politics must start with a simple model of political society, just as economics starts with a simple model of economic society.” Deborah Stone examines two policy-making models to describe the paradox’s of the process model for public policy. The two models include: the market (rational model) and the Polis (community) model. Stone states she contrasts these two models to “illuminate some ways the market model distorts political life.” As discussed in class, the market model follows five steps:

The Funnel of Causality model describes voting behaviour in terms of socio-demographics, party identification, issues, and candidates. In this essay I will focus on issues because they can be compared between countries. An issue is essentially a problem that is perceived to be important, and there is an actor with “ownership” of the issue, meaning that there is someone who is thought to be “the best man for the job” so to speak. The economy isn’t an issue because you can’t have “ownership” over the economy. Issues are important because they explain a lot about voting behaviour.

Deborah Stone compares the market and polis models of policy making with the intent to show that the original origin of the public policy discipline was to be grounded in a practical science, economics, but to also show how and why the economic approach to policy making has significant limitations. Stone is arguing against the view that policy decision making is rational decision making. Deborah Stone’s main reason for comparing the two models of policy making is to identify and critique the simplistic assumptions that have been used in the market and rationality project. Stone is attempting to point out the paradox that exists between the two because the two models are evidently contradictory, the market being ground in rationality and the polis being based on emotion. Stone compares the two policies in order to show that economics cannot be solely used to understand policy making because the two are fundamentally different. She also points out that policy is made in a political society and because of this the polis model seeks to explain public policy as it actually happens in reality since the field and study of public policy was created to allow government to make decisions that would best benefit their citizens.

A community’s health can be established through a myriad of differing factors. Three specific factors that will help to determine the health of the county in which I live are community safety, disaster preparedness, as well as an analysis of the population. The community under review, Merced, is located in central California and made up of seventeen cities and communities whose individual populations do not exceed more than 75,000 and covers an area of approximately 1,972 square miles (United States Census Bureau, 2010) with a total population of approximately 255,793 people in 2010 (Merced County California, 2012).

A successful economy is perhaps the most key ingredient leading to a successful nation. An economy is a delicate balance of many different conflicting and coexisting elements. Naturally, an economy’s success can often be measured by the amount of wealth it contains, not to mention the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of its distribution of the wealth. Effective distribution of wealth is no easy feat. Wealthy and poor people will always need to coexist- this is an inescapable truth. The government’s job in many cases becomes that of a referee. Naturally, perfect peace and harmony between two totally different classes would be a utopia, and probably will never be completely achieved. A government must, therefore,

Preface to the First Edition: Hazlitt states that there is always influence of fallacy in every major government. “There is not a major government in the world at this moment, however, whose economic policies are not influenced if they are not almost wholly determined by acceptance of some of these fallacies.” (Hazlitt 10) To better understand economics, it is necessary to study the fallacies that create governments. The purpose of Hazlitt’s book is to bring about the most common, and influential economic errors.

KALECKI: each economy has a different institutional framework whereby “general theories” will not be useful

Due to the consistent increase in population, there has been a serious concern on the health-event patterns in the contemporary society. The rise in population has as a result generated several issues that need to be addressed since population increase can lead to neglect of some important health issues. The rise is due to increase in the number of birth rate, decrease in the mortality rate and improvement in health services among others (Sinai Urban Health Institute, 2001).

Many urban communities do not receive good quality of health and do not have access to health care services. This will cause individuals to be at high risk for several sicknesses and diseases. Some infectious diseases or illness of the immune system that they may be exposed to are asthma, diabetes, autoimmunity, Hepatitis C (HCV), HIV/AIDS, STIs, or tuberculosis. For example, “African Americans, American Indians, and Alaska Natives are twice likely to have diabetes as white individuals; diabetes rate among Hispanics are 1.5 times higher than those for whites” (National Conference of State Legislature, 2014). An additional example is “approximately 2 million Hispanics/Latinos in the United States have asthma, and Puerto Rican Americans have almost three times the asthma rate of the over all Hispanics” (NIH, 2013). Furthermore, urban communities deal with unemployment or live in low-income households. Even with families with a steady income they are still at a high risk for poor health. Geographic locations play a factor as well due to the environmental surroundings. Families that live close to factories or highly polluted areas are exposed to toxins that is not good for their health. One city that suffers through these environmental toxins are especially neighborhoods in New York. Chronic expose will lead to progressive worsening of health. These environmental toxins lead to these

Bone A. H., 1958. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 319, pp. 83-319.

that an economy can be below full capacity in the long-run. This theory, on the other hand,

Rational choice theory is actually more than one theory per se, but the basic similarities among its variants mean that they can be intelligibly amalgamated for the purposes of critiquing its implementation in political science. Therefore public choice theory, positive political science, rational actor models, and the economic approach to politics, among others, refer to what we may call rational choice theory for the purposes of this essay. (See Green and Shapiro 1994, xi.