Policy Memo #2: DADT & Who Makes Public Policy

Case Study: The Public

One of the most important questions that must be answered when it comes to the making of public policy is: what role does the public play in this process? Which is to say, is public opinion ultimately reflected accurately in policy outcomes? To address these fundamental questions, I will examine DADT and its reflection of public opinion on the issue of gay service members in the military. To get at public opinion, I will first offer an explication of the Brady model as it applies to the policy in question. Then, I will critique it in light of some conceptual challenges and open questions that remain. Finally, I will argue for a more complex relationship and interplay of public opinion, interest groups, the president and congress.

The Brady Framework: Understanding & Application

In his draft article “Public Opinion and Congressional Policy,” David Brady examines the relationship between public opinion and public policy. More specifically, he hopes to get at some of the gaps in political scientists’ professional knowledge on the subject by offering congress as a mirror – with limitations – to perceiving public opinion before a policy takes shape. He makes the following argument to support his analytical framework:

I believe Congress is an ideal place to the relationship, not only because Congress makes policy but, more importantly, we normally thinking of Congress as responding to national opinion on policy; thus, the influence relationship is more unidirectional --- from opinion to the Congress. Presidents, interest groups through advertising and organizing opinion, and elites…speak with one voice and have been observed to shift public opinion,[sic] toward their policy alternative. Congress, in contrast, is most often viewed as a responder to opinion where members, most often, seek to earn slack with their constituents so that they might occasionally vote against their wishes. Members are normally seen as explainers of their policy votes, not as public opinion shifters. Thus, in this sense, Congress is a good beginning point for the study of the nature of the relationship.”[1]

Brady lays out two methods for examining this relationship. The first is based on a study of public opinion’s impact on defense spending (Bartels 1991); however, he remarks that this study is challenging to duplicate because data on opinion and voting are not “as available and clear across other issues.”[2] The second is through polling. Brady adequately discusses the methodological challenges, citing the affect of wording and calling the discipline “a strange mixture of sampling theory and the art of asking questions.”[3] However, his most important contribution is calling attention to the issue of cost, a factor that certainly affects the public’s thinking on an issue but is rarely ascertained through polls – though it does not bare on the issue of gay service members in the military as it a moral rather than cost-bases issue.

Unfortunately, the other piece of the puzzle – the congressional record – is obscured here and gets at one of the underlying conceptual limitations, or flaws, of Brady’s model. There was no direct vote on the issue of gay service members in the military; rather, there was a codification of an old DoD Directive. This codification can certainly be seen as an act of congress. However, without a direct vote on an issue how can you say that the voting record on the 1994 defense bill reflects the opinion of congressmen much less that of the public? Lack of a definitive vote is endemic on the issue of gays in the military and even gay rights more generally.

More recently, this can be illustrated with the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010. The ultimate text of the amendment was brought to a vote in the 107^th, 109^th, 110^th, and 111^th congresses, before being attached in the 111^th to the 2010 defense bill.[4] The Act also included was meant to protect individuals on the basis of gender, gender identity, and disability in addition to sexual orientation, even further obscuring the meaning of ballots cast.[5] Examining the voting records on these previous votes would be far more indicative of congressional opinion – and by extension, public opinion – as they were not tangled up in and bogged down by the weight of passing an enormous spending bill. Furthermore, Brady’s conceptual problem becomes even more acute when no vote exists. Certainly, no vote does not indicate a lack of public opinion on a given issue. Congressional inaction – or action in which a bill dies in committee – suggests the absence of a policy window rather than no opinion.

When looking to understand the evolution of DADT in the 1990s, I will use the Brady’s second method. Similar to the health care case study he examines throughout the piece, the Bartels model is not feasible given the data. Using polling data from The Polling Report, I will attempt to get at a fair representation of public opinion during the period of the 1993 vote to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1994 without the DADT language and with the codification of 1982 Directive 1332.14. The House vote took place on September 29, the Senate vote on October 6, and the final conference yea-nay vote on November 15 and 17 respectively; the Act ultimately became Public Law No. 103-160 on November 30, 1993.[6] The issue of gay service members first got major play in the public sphere in the first 100 days of President Clinton’s term when he “asked the Secretary of Defense to prepare a draft policy to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation…Clinton’s proposal, however, was greeted with intense opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress, the political opposition, and a considerable segment of the U.S. public.”[7]

Given this information and the Brady framework, I investigated polls occurring before the votes took place. It must be noted that these measures of public opinion were certainly influenced by the President putting the issue at the top of the decision agenda and creating a policy window with his election. Three polls asking slightly varied questions indicated public opinion to be pretty evenly split over the issue of gays serving in the military, though polling data suggests that people leaned toward support of DADT: 63% thought homosexuals who did not publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be able to serve while 44% thought those who did should not be able to serve.[8] This data suggests that the DADT policy outcome – the presidential directive of December 1993 – better reflected public opinion than the Congressional decision to codify the 1982 DoD Directive. Therefore, this is a case where the Congress did not best reflect public opinion.

Brady chooses to “black box the institutions intervening between public median opinion and policy.”[9] However, it is here that the answer about public opinion’s impact lies. In the introduction to his paper, he explains:

There are a number of intervening variables between public opinion and policy results. Interest groups represent businesses, labor and various issue publics to the policy makers and political parties aggregate over these interest groups to collect funds, sort preferences, arrange elections and nominate candidates who run for elections on issues concerning public policy as well as perhaps making public policy. Moreover, the very form of American elections, with gerrymandered districts and primaries, structure and shape the relationship between opinion and policy.[10]

He says that these issues have led political scientists to question the relationship between public opinion and policy outcomes; however, in reality these powerful and elites and institutions marshal public opinion in an un-ignorable way.

If we are to get at a role of public opinion on policy, we must understand the role of these interest groups in galvanizing beliefs. Furthermore, we certainly must not underestimate their power in influencing congressional voting – lobbyists have long been powerful on Capitol Hill. Looking historically at the debate around the DADT policy, universities and other institutions manifested their dissent – simultaneously reflecting and shaping public opinion – by applying pressure indirectly. In a protest against unfair and discriminatory treatment of gay service members, “many national organizations had officially condemned the policy [DoD Directive 1332.14] and many colleges and universities had banned military recruiters and Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) programs from their campuses in protest of the policy.”[11] In the case of Stanford University, although ROTC was banned during the Vietnam War, university administrators cite the policy outcome – DADT – as one of the main barriers preventing the re-institution of the program on-campus today.[12]

Therefore, it is not that public opinion is moot in the policy making process; rather, that Congress may not best reflect the public and that institutions and elites – groups that shape and galvanize public support for an issue – make policy windows.

Revelant Data Gathered from The Polling Report

Population: 3

Sample 1

Source: CBS/New York Times Poll.

Question: “Do you favor or oppose permitting homosexuals to serve in the military?...Do you favor/oppose that strongly or not so strongly?” N=550 (Form A)

		Favor Strongly	Favor Not So Strongly	Oppose Strongly	Oppose Not So Strongly	Unsure
		%	%	%	%	%
	2/9-11/93	21	21	29	13	15

Sample 2

Source: ABC News/Washington Post Poll.

Question: “Do you think homosexuals who do NOT publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military of not?”

		Should Be Allowed	Should Not Be Allowed	Unsure
		%	%	%
	5/93	63	35	2

Sample 3

Source: ABC News/Washington Post Poll.

Question: “Do you think homosexuals who DO publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?

		Should Be Allowed	Should Not Be Allowed	Unsure
		%	%	%
	5/93	44	55	2

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[1] David Brady, “Public Opinion and Congressional Policy,” Working Draft (Stanford University, Hoover Institution): 2-3.

[2] Ibid., 16.

[3] Ibid., 7.

[4] “Matthew Shepard Act,” accessed 29 April 2010 .

[5] Ibid.

[6] The Library of Congress: THOMAS, “H.R. 2401: Major Congressional Actions,” accessed 29 April 2010 .

[7] Gregory M., Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S. Military: Historical Background, accessed 30 April 2010 .

[8] The Polling Report, “Civil Rights: Same Sex Marriage, Gay Rights,” accessed 29 April 2009 .

[9] Brady, 14.

[10] Ibid., 1.

[11] Herek, Gregory M., Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S. Military: Historical Background, accessed 30 April 2010 .

[12] Conversation with University Administrator, Stanford University, 19 Oct 2009.