How to make a difference in the world

In our recent class discussions, we’ve said several times that some desirable policy changes will "never happen," but we haven't gone into much detail about why this is true. Looking through some old class notes, I found references to the work of political scientist David Easton and his theory of Systems Analysis to explain how policy changes come into being. Here's the Reader's Digest condensed version:

You start with an input, a problem that needs to be solved. It becomes an input into the political decision-making "system" that determines policy (Easton describes it as a "tightly sealed political black box"). The political actors and institutions (ie politicians and the rules) decide whether to allow the inputs into the system or exclude them, sort of like a filter. The system works at it and determines what action to take based on a few key questions, including (but not always limited to):

(1) Is the solution legal?
(2) Does the solution have a chance of solving the problem?
(3) Is it politically acceptable?

Once the system has worked through all of these issues, the proposed solution becomes a policy, an output, and then the impacts of that policy are discovered. If it works, great; if not, it becomes another input.

I don't entirely agree with Easton's analysis, since legislators seem to focus more on the political aspect of decision-making than solving the problem or (sometimes) the legality of their action. Still, it's a useful way to summarize political decision-making. If something isn't politically acceptable to most of the decision-makers, it isn't going to happen.

Forgive me for taking 250 words to explain what is probably obvious to many of you. But since this helped me when I first learned it, I thought I'd share it with the class.