1. The Power is in the Details: Exploring the Mechanisms by Which Service Providers and Advocates Affect Public Policy.
- Author
-
Fry, Melissa S.
- Subjects
POLITICAL planning ,U.S. state budgets ,MENTAL health services ,LONG-term care of older people ,SOCIAL advocacy - Abstract
In an age of ever tightening state budgets, it is important to understand what factors shape decisions concerning the flow of resources from state governments into local service systems. Social movement theory examines how groups organize to affect public policy. Public policy analysis may analyze written policies and their implications or it may focus on issues of policy implementation. This research seeks to connect the pieces of the politics and policy puzzle by examining the role of advocates and service providers in shaping legislation in behavioral health and long term care services for the aging in the state of Arizona. I am interested in how the participation of advocates and providers shapes written legislation and in determining if and how this affects the implementation of public policy in service organizations. This paper is part of a larger research project that examines implementation in greater detail. The key to this piece of the project is to examine the connection between the political power of service recipients (as constituencies) and the design of the public policies that serve them. The paper that follows is a comparative legislative history and content comparison of long term care for the aging and behavioral health for the seriously mentally ill. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006