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Question 1: My assigned role in the game was County Executive. When asked which roles I

wanted to partake in, this was top of my agenda for several reasons. I felt as though in

order for me to fully engage with the expectations of the game, I needed to offer what I

knew I could contribute. I have always wanted to get involved in public policy making and

legislation, so I knew that this would be a great opportunity once assigned. In the game, I

worked hard to try and engage with my peers and encouraged them to contribute

themselves to become more engaged themselves. In Pelissero, we discussed policy outputs

in Eastons Systems Model (Pelissero, pg. 3). This concept played into the very purpose

behind the game at hand. As Theodore Lowi established, domestic policies can be divided

into 3 types: distributive, redistributive and regulatory (Pelissero, pg. 21). In the game, we

made it our goal to establish better water treatment for Urbania because of several issues

involved with the water being contaminated. Having a real world example of Flint,

Michigan and knowing the outcome of that, we made sure to make this a priority of ours.

This is an example of a distributive policy a policy available for the common good

(Pelissero, pg. 21). Another theory that was touched on in this exercise was the pluralist

theory. According to Pinderhughes, both the elite and pluralist theories center on the node

of political power in society with contributions of demands and resources from the political

system (Pelissero, pg. 106). In our roles, it was vital to have political authority that had

access to funding in order to redistribute and allocate funds for projects that other

members wanted. Like Pinderhughes suggests, it is vital to have cooperation between the

economic and political leadership in the city and in this case it was probably the key point

in order to be successful overall. The most surprising factor for me was how much people

depended on my role in order to get things done. In the beginning, I figured I would wait
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for people to come to me, but I quickly realized people were not really inclined to do so

until I initiated ideas. There was definitely a positive correlation between the amount of

output I personally contributed and the overall contribution in the class, which could easily

be confirmed by the initial starting effort of this exercise.

Question 2: One major policy outcome that I contributed to was the push for funding for

Urbania for a community college. To me, education is one of the most important categories

in political administration and that was my major push. Education remains top priority to

me because of my knowledge on socioeconomic status and it is proven to be one of the

most positive contributors to social mobility. Even though I could not personally establish a

community college on my own with my position, I could easily provide a grant-in-aid to the

Superintendant and School Board encouraging them to take the funding to establish one,

which they happily agreed to. Another major policy that I helped with was increasing

public mass transport. This was another major concern of ours, and even though I was not

directly in charge of transportation, I still contributed ideas that John adapted in his policy-

making. With a large population and the projects we had in mind for the city, we knew we

needed to start with fixing transportation before we could plan out implementing the

major projects. Overall, I think they were very effective in the sense that we tried to create

lots of bus stops to connect the city and create a metro-train like system as well. When

thinking of mass transport, something I kept in mind was the city of London. I tried to use

this as a model in my head because I think Europe overall has a much better

implementation of public transport than any other continent in the world. Their impact

was substantial, in the sense that the majority of our money was used to fund better

transport for the massive amounts of people living within these cities, while linking them to
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other areas. According to the readings, this was a positive approach to take, and in turn

yielded positive results in the game.

Question 3: Eastons Model of The Political System accurately described what occurred in

the game because it is a model that represents a continuing cycle: inputs (demands and

supports), political process (government actors and institutions), outputs (decisions,

policies, programs), and outcomes (impacts). In order to be successful in representing our

constituents, we needed to input the demands we received, and in this case it ranged from

entertainment an amusement parks baseball field, golf course to making the city more

environmentally friendly through adding recycling centers, tearing down the power

plants that polluted the city, and adding lots of parks. We had lots of support in doing the

things we did the only disagreement we had was between Mark and other committee

members who were not happy with not being able to use the county as a means of income.

As for political progress, the council and I had to act as agents to proceed with the

necessary procedures to implement these policies. When figuring out outputs, we made

decisions as a group to implement new projects such as the golf course or baseball park.

As for the outcome, overall, our work was successful in trying to make the city something

great. If we were to continue this exercise, we would have to continue through the cycle in

all policies we would make. Also, in the political process, we learned communication is key

and negotiation was our best friend in this exercise.

Question 4: One aspect I found interesting in this exercise compared to what we have

learned in the Pelissero text was the role of the media when it came to demands in the

Easton Political Systems Model. According to the Pelissero text, demands are made by

individuals who have a stake in the urban political process (Pelissero, pg. 4). In class, it was
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interesting to see what information was presented by the media in the news broadcasts

and the role of political machines in policy development. Banfield and Wilson also discuss

public and private regarding ethos in the Pelissero text, which easily ties into the culture

behind political machines (Pelissero, pg. 7). This concept also ties into the game because we

had several different lobbyist groups that were all working in either public or private

interests to make their proposals seem right or rather needed. Another area of the

Pelissero text we touched on was the intergovernmental environment in providing things

like grants to the city of Urbania. Fiscal federalism is complex as it applies to urban areas

and is intertwined in various areas (Pelissero, pg. 42). In the exercise, we had to explain

why we wanted to provide grants to different projects and the value behind them. In

regards to Mark, he utilized social capital with interest groups to negotiate what we needed

from them, which also exposes the importance of this area.

Question 5: According to Troustine article, all politics are considered local. In this

exercise, this concept was very true in the sense that in order for our policies to be

implemented successfully, information had to be gathered at the level of the people directly

in charge and affiliated. As Troustine suggests, local matters often need to be revisited in

order for progress to be made and this is what we found to be true in our policy making

when we decided to wait and make assumptions about local areas of the county instead of

directly inquiring from their representatives like we should have initially done. An

example of this could be seen in the work behind trying to make the county more eco-

friendly overall. We initially thought we could conquer the issue by adding more parks to

make the city more green while making a recycling center. What we realized soon after

establishing these ideas was that the problem with pollution was much more drastic than
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this. In chapter 13 of the Pelissero text, Oliver goes on to investigate how suburbanization

goes on to shape American political life. I feel as though in this exercise, this was very true.

The main key point of the game was to see how to make successful policies while

cooperating with other areas, and I found in order to be successful, we had to look directly

at how an area was becoming more urban, along with the predictions for how the

urbanization was going to affect the county as a whole. According to Oliver, the dynamics of

suburban politics vary, which is what we found to be true when looking at factors such as

urban sprawl outside the city of Urbania. We had to think of ways to link the outskirts of

the city to the center hub of Urbania, hence trying to propose major means of

transportation. We did our best to conquer the issue with mass transport such as trains,

buses, an international airport, etc. However, in order to conquer the issue completely, not

only do we need to be able to provide the resources to society, but society needs to do their

part in taking ways of mass transport. Lastly, chapter 6 of Urban Issues goes on to discuss

the direct political effects of pollution on a city. As said previously, I believed our proposal

to combat pollution was initially good until we received some media information on how

poorly we were performing overall to combat the issue. In this chapter, it goes on to discuss

how much better a city can be if the issue is taken care of in the beginning with positive

outcomes. It also goes on to imply a subtle reminder on how political agendas need to be

set in preparation for the future and generations to come. When our council was

approached, many believed it wasnt a real issue at hand until I reminded them of this

idea of potentially having much larger and more expensive problems in the future if we did

not change our energy sources and add recycling centers in which nearly all of them

disagreed. I also learned in this exercise that in order to reach out to individuals you may
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not necessarily see eye to eye with, you be able to communicate in a way that is

meaningful for them. Chapter 1 of the Pelissero text goes on to imply the importance of

cooperation and communication in Eastons model, and this was very true in policy making

overall. As for chapter 12 in Pelissero, Wong goes on to discuss how urban school politics

illuminates political policy making in the system which could be seen in my overall push

for supplying a grant to help form a community college (Pelissero, pg. 283). As for chapter

11 in Pelissero, the concept of privatization and how contracting out local services is

sometimes more efficient (that Ammons touches on) refers to the idea of the county

permitting matching funding for a golf course (Pelissero, pg. 262). Overall, the text helped

increase my understanding of how local government works and was truly evident in the

policies we attempted to make as the county council.

Question 6: Overall, I think this exercise was a great way to expose the concepts we

touched on in class. It is especially important for those who do not necessarily keep up with

the news or watch channels such as CSPAN to view live coverage on how policy making is

really done or for those who have never attended local town hall meetings or such. Being

able to pretend we serve our best interests also allows us to remember how concepts we

learned in class are used in action. I also feel as though it was a great way to communicate

with other individuals in the class who tend to be more reserved or not as outspoken on

their political values and agendas as well. I think down the road it will be interesting to see

if any of the students in this class pursue jobs in this field as many had said they would love

to pursue this kind of work for a living.