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Viewed in the short -run, intergovernmental relations are an expression of
underlying social values and norms that become "politically salient."
4
Collectively, the
local, state, and federal public health actors drew upon well-worn "pathways" employed
in conducting needs assessments and in designing, implementing, and evaluating public
health interventions.
5
I have observed that the public health "scope of ideation" and
"method of mobilization" (traditionally characterized as community-based and
participatory with respect to local, state, and federal actors and to populations and
localities served) comprise the normative foundation for intergovernmental relations
among the local, state, and federal actors.
These actors mobilized support through political organizations and political ideas.
The scope or scale of mobilization was both (a) limited with respect to the specialized or
analytic entrepreneurs (internal experts across a range of disciplines including
epidemiologists, scientists, and public health directors), and (b) broad with respect to the
mass and symbolic mobilization through the professional associations. As concerns
scope or scale of ideation, my research is preliminary and it offers an incomplete
response; however, the policy action leading toward enactment of the DHS was pluralist
and incremental with respect to the "process of adjustment" among the "organized
interests" among local, state, and federal intergovernmental actors. An analysis of
4
See Lipsett (2000: p. 278). Acknowledgement is given to rhetorical framework, as applied by Lipsett,
used to describe the short- and long-run role of political parties in American political exceptionalism.
5
See Beam and Conlan’s (1998: 3). paper, in which the authors distinguish four "pathways to power,"
which are "…differentiated by the scope or scale of mobilization (whether specialized or mass) and the
method of mobilization (principally utilizing organizations or ideas….In addition, we would now like to
emphasize, more strongly than in our previous writings, that these four models do not represent
independent and discrete policy types. Rather, they are distinctive "pathways of power": dynamic and
changeable strategies by which political actors can seek to build support for their proposals. While it often
is accurate to characterize a particular bill as "mostly" presidential-majoritarian or "chiefly" incremental-
pluralist, others resist being pigeonholed so neatly. The four can represent phases of activity, separate
stages in the process by which a bill becomes law -- or more than one may be in play simultaneously."
Convention