1. Introduction to Public Policy

2. Policy Science is a comparatively recent discipline.
It primarily emerged in North America and Europe in the post-World War II era.
It is a outcome of the search for new understandings of the relationship between governments and citizens.

3. Prior to that studies of political life tended to focus on the normative or moral dimensions of government or on the minutiae of the operation of the operation of specific political institutions.
Recognition of the increasing gap between prescriptive political theory and the political practice of modern state led many to search for another method of examining politics.

4. Similarly, scholars interested in the institutions of government had been conducting empirical examination of legislature, courts and bureaucracies while generally ignoring the normative aspects of these institutions. – failed to the basis for evaluation
In the post world war era due to decolonization, the reconstruction of war-torn states and eth establishment of new institutions of international governance –students of politics sought new approach

5. The desire was for a new approach that would blend their studies with question of
justice,
Equity
Pursuit of social, economic and political development

6. Harold Lasswell and others expected Policy Sciences to replace traditional political studies, integrating the study of political theory and political practices without falling into the sterility of formal legal studies.
Lasswell proposed that the policy science had three distinct characteristics :
Multi-disciplinary
Problem Solving
Explicitly Normative – not cloaked in the guise of scientific objectivity

7. However, the passage of time has led to some changes in the three specific components of the policy orientation
First - While emphasis on multi-disciplinary approach remains, policy science is much more a discipline by itself with a unique set of concepts, concerns, and a vocabulary and terminology all of its own.

8. Second the virtually exclusive concern of many policy makers with concrete problem solving has waned as government often proved intractable and resistant to expert advice.
The call for policy sciences to remain explicitly normative also changed over time. Yet, most policy scholars have refused to exclude values from their analysis and have insisted upon evaluating both the goals and the means of policy. More emphasis of late on efficiency or effectiveness in achieving stated goals.

9. Question of associating policy sciences with an era of unrealised hopes and expectations for social engineering and government planning.
This criticism is to some extent justified and should serve as a warning against premature or ill founded prescriptions or excessive conceptual sophistry.
However, this should not be taken as a rejection of the need to undertake systematic study of government actions.

10. Definition of Public Policy

11. Thomas Dye defines public policy as “Anything a Government chooses to do or not to do”.
This formulation is perhaps too simple and fails to provide the means for conceptualising public policy.
It would include as public policy every aspect of governmental behaviour from purchasing or failing to purchase paper clips to waging or failing to wage nuclear war.
Further there might be a divergence between what governments decide to do and what they actually do.

12. Contributions of Dye’s definition
First, Dye specifies clearly that the agent of public policy making is a government.
Second, Dye highlights the that public policies involve a fundamental choice on the part of governments to do something or to do nothing. This includes ‘non-decision’.

13. Carl Friedrich defines public policy as “ … a proposed course of action of a person, group, or government within a given environment providing obstacles and opportunities which the policy was proposed to utilize and overcome in an effort to reach a goal or realise an objective or a purpose.”
Friedrich adds the requirement that policy is directed toward the accomplishment of some purpose or goal. Goal and purpose may not always be easy to discern.

14. William Jenkins defines public policy as “ a set of interrelated decisions taken by a political actor or group of actors concerning the selection of goals and the means of achieving them within a specified situation where those decisions should, in principle, be within the power of those actors to achieve.”
Jenkins views public policy as a process unlike Dye who defines it as a choice (which presumes the existence of an underlying process but does not state that explicitly.

15. Jenkins also explicitly acknowledges that public policy is a ‘set of interrelated decisions”.
Jenkins also improves upon Dye by suggesting that the question of a government’s capacity to implement its decisions is also significant. Internal and external constraints on government make public policy difficult.
Choices may be restricted by for instance lack of resources or domestic or international resistance.

16. Jenkins also introduced the idea of public policy making as goal-oriented behaviour on the part of the Government, an idea which provides a standard by which to evaluate public policies.
This says nothing about the nature of the goals or the means to achieve it provides several avenues for evaluating policies which are missing from Dye’s definition.
These include the relevance of the goal, the congruence of the goals and means and the degree to which means succeed in reaching the goals.

17. James Anderson defines public policy as “a purposive course of action followed by an actor or a set of actors in dealing with a problem or matter of concern”.
Two important additions namely :
it notes that policy decisions are often taken by sets of actors rather than a sole set or actor within a government. Policies are often the result of not only multiple decisions but of multiple decisions taken by multiple decision makers

18. Anderson’s definition highlights the link between government action and the perception, real or otherwise, of the existence of a problem or concern requiring action.

19. All illustrate that studying public policy is a complex task because
Mere description is not sufficient.
Dependence on government record does not provide information about potential choices or choices not made.
Records of decisions do not reflect the unencumbered will of government decision makers.
Governments do not generally give a reason why a certain decision was preferred.

20. It would be well to spell out some of the implications of our concept of public policy.
These are purposive and goal oriented rather than random or chance behaviour.
Policy consists of courses or pattern of action by governmental officials rather than their separate discrete decisions.
Policy is what governments actually do in regulating trade, controlling inflation, or promoting public housing not what they intend to do or say they are going to do.

21. Public Policy may be either positive or negative.
Positive may involve some form of overt government action to affect a particular problem,
Negatively, it involves a decision by government officials not to take action or to do nothing.
Public policy, at least in its positive form, is based on law and is authoritative. Members accept it as legitimate.

22. The special characteristics of public policies stem from the fact that they are formulated by what David Easton has called the ‘authorities’ in a political system namely elders,
paramount chiefs,
executives,
legislators,
judges,
administrators,
councillors,
monarchs and the like.

23. Nature of Public Policy

24. Very Complex
policy making involves many components which are interconnected by communication and feedback loops and which interact in different ways.
Some parts of the process are explicit and directly observable, but many others proceed by hidden channels and even actors themselves are often partly aware of.
Series of single decisions that result in a policy without any one of the decision makers being aware of that process.

25. Dynamic Process
Policy making is a process, that is, a continuous activity taking place within a structure.
To be sustained it requires a continuing input of resources and motivation.
It is a dynamic process, which change with time.
The sequence of its sub processes and phases vary internally and with respect to each other.

26. Various Component
Nearly all public policymaking involves a great variety of substructures.
The identity of these substructures, and degree of their involvement in policymaking vary among different issues, times and societies. E.g.. the role of President, Legislature, role of Military elite.
The substructure most involved in policy making constitute the ‘political institutions’ or ‘political system’ of a society.

27. Make Different Contributions
Every substructure makes a different and sometimes unique contribution to public policy.
What sort of contribution substructures make depends in part on their formal and informal characteristics which vary from society to society. For instance –

28. Representative Parliament:
sensitive to public opinion and pressure groups is low or medium on ‘expertness’, takes short or medium range points of view and shows low or medium
Merit- Selected Civil Service
Moderately insensitive to public opinion and pressure groups, has a high level of expertness, takes a medium range and sometimes longer points of view and shows medium or high consistency in its decisions.

29. Courts :
Highly insensitive to public opinion and pressure groups, have a high level of limited legal expertness, take short- or medium range point of view, and show high or very high consistency in their decisions.

30. Decides
Policymaking is a species of decision making.
Lets us use decision making models for dealing with policy making.
Yet important to remember that public policy making is an aggregative form of decision making and differs in important respects from the discrete decisions that most decision-theory literature deals with.

31. Major guidelines
Public policy, in most cases, lays down general directives rather than detailed instructions, on the main lines of action to be followed.
It is thus not identical with the game-theory definition of strategy as a detailed set of decisions covering all possible situations.
After main lines of action have been decided on detailed sub-policies that translate the general policy into concrete terms are usually needed.

32. General policy is built up by a complex, interacting set of secondary policies and decisions
In many cases these two flows of decision making from top down and from the bottom up, proceed simultaneously and even partly overlap;
Policy is partly formed and partly executed by the same sub-decisions.

33. E.g., if a developing country has declared a policy “to encourage all private investment”
Day-to-day decision making provides incentives mainly to private investment in heavy industry.
This results in an actual policy of “encourage private investment mainly in heavy industry”.
This results from high level decisions interacting with middle-level operational decisions.

34. How specific or general a public policy seems to be depends on differing conditions.
The same process can often be viewed from higher level as execution of a policy by sub-decisions, and from a lower level as policy- making.
This ambiguity makes it impossible to draw clear lines between ‘policymaking’, ‘policy execution’ and ‘administration’.

35. For Action
Decision making can result in external action, in changes in the decision maker himself, or in both or neither.
The policies of most socially significant decision making, such as most public policymaking, are intended to result in action.
Also policies directed at the policymaking apparatus itself, such as efficiency drives in government, are action-oriented.

36. A special case is policies whose intent is to have someone other than the policymaker take action.
E.g., aggressive declaration against an unpopular neighbour may be intended to make an internal population render support to the policymakers.
Another special case is policies directed to prevent action by an adversary (deter aggression), mislead opponent, reassure partner, trial balloon the will test reaction or feel good.

37. Directed at the future
Policy making is directed at the future. This is one of the most important characteristics since it introduces the ever-present elements of uncertainty and doubtful prediction that establish the basic tone of nearly all policy making.
Policy makers tend to formulate policies in vague and elastic terms; to be continuous, to seek defensibility (often incremental) and not to make any policy about many issues.

38. Mainly by Government Organs
One of the main difference between making private policy and making public policy is that the latter mainly concerns actions to be taken by governmental organs.
Of course, this is a matter of degree – public policy can also be directed in part at private persons and non-governmental structures, as when it calls for prohibiting a certain type of behaviour or appeals to citizens to save.

39. Formally aims at achieving
One characteristic of all contemporary political systems is that their formal aim is to achieve what is in public interest.
What is in the public Interest
Always difficult to define- nevertheless convey the idea of general as against sectoral
Held in good faith by policy makers.

40. Security
Responding to needs
Efficiency
Economic efficiency
Greatest return for a
Liberty
Freedom to choose
Freedom from basic want
Democracy
Doing what people
Equity
Fairness in burdens & benefits

41. By the Best Possible means
Public policymaking aims not only at achieving what is in ‘the public interest’ but at doing so by the best possible means.
Public policy aims at achieving the maximum net benefit – public interest achieved less cost of achievement.

42. Benefits and costs take in part the form of realised values and impaired values and cannot in most cases be expressed in commensurable units.
Therefore quantitative techniques cannot often be used.
Qualitative significance of ‘maximising net benefit’ as an aim nor the necessity to think about alternative public policies in terms of benefits and costs is important.

43. The interdependence between ends and means is most important.
Often ends that is both operational and general values (though perhaps not final value) change because of innovation in means. E.g. when it was recognised that science has the potential it came to be accepted that it is possible to eliminate poverty.

44. More crucially a less direct but important relationship between means and ends depends upon the implications for power of change in means.
When means change, power distribution often changes so that to some degree different ends are stipulated for policy making and different values motivate the components of the policymaking system.

45. Policy Content

46. Policies are typically promulgated through official written documents
A purpose statement, outlining why the organization is issuing the policy, and what its desired effect is.
A applicability and scope statement, describing who the policy affects and which actions are impacted by the policy. The applicability and scope may expressly exclude certain people, organizations, or actions from the policy requirements

47. An effective date which indicates when the policy comes into force
An effective date which indicates when the policy comes into force. Retroactive policies are rare, but can be found.
A responsibilities section, indicating which parties and organizations are responsible for carrying out individual policy statements. These responsibilities may include identification of oversight and/or governance structures.
Policy statements indicating the specific regulations, requirements, or modifications to organizational behavior that the policy is creating

48. Some policies may contain additional sections, including
Background indicating the reasons and history that led to the creation of the policy, which may be listed as motivating factors
Definitions, providing clear and unambiguous definitions for terms and concepts found in the policy document.

49. Some Terminology

50. Policy Demand
Demands or claims made upon public officials by other actors, private or official, in the political system for action or inaction on some perceived problem.
These demands can range from a general insistence that government ought to do something to a proposal for specific action on the matter.
Demands that help give rise to public policy and which it is designed to satisfy are important items for consideration in the study of public policy.

51. Policy Decisions.
Decisions made by public officials that authorise or give directions and content to public policy actions.
Included are decisions to enact statutes, issue executive orders or edicts, promulgate administrative rules, or make important judicial interpretations of law.
Such decisions may be contrasted with the large numbers of relatively routine decisions.

52. Policy Statement
Formal expressions or articulations of public policy.
Included are legislative statutes, executive orders and decrees, administrative rules and regulations, and court opinions as well as statements and speeches by public officials indicating the intentions and goals of government and what will be done to realise them.

53. Policy statements are sometimes ambiguous.
Seen from the conflicts that arise over the meaning of statutory provisions or judicial holdings or the time and effort expended analysing and trying to divine the meaning of policy statements made by national leaders.
At another level different levels, branches or units of government may issue conflicting policy statements.

54. Policy Outputs
Tangible manifestations of public policies the things actually done in pursuance of policy decisions and statement.
Policy outputs are what a government does, as distinguished from what it says it is going to do.
An examination of policy outputs may indicate that policy in actuality is somewhat or greatly different from what policy statements indicate it should be.
Many laws go entirely unenforced.

55. Policy Outcome
The consequences for society, intended or unintended, that flows from action or inaction by government.
It is fairly easy to measure welfare policy output – amount of benefits paid, average level of benefits, number of people aided, and the like.
But what are the outcomes of these actions.

56. Do they increase personal security and contentment?
Do they reduce individual initiative?
In the case of aid to families with dependent children do they have the effect of encouraging promiscuity and illegitimacy?
Policies accomplish what they are intended to accomplish.

57. Policy Analysis and Policy Advocacy
Explaining the causes and consequences of various policies is not equivalent to prescribing what policies governments ought to follow.
Policy advocacy requires skills of rhetoric, persuasion, organisation and activism.
Policy analysis encourages scholars and students to examine critical policy issues with the tools of systematic inquiry.

58. Policy analysis involves:
A primary concern with explanation rather than explanation.
A rigorous search for the causes and consequences of public polices.
An effort to develop and test general proposition about the causes and consequences of public policy and to accumulate reliable research findings of general relevance.

59. Typology of Public Policy

60. Policy addresses the intent of the organization, whether government, business, professional, or voluntary. Policy is intended to affect the ‘real’ world, by guiding the decisions that are made. Whether they are formally written or not, most organizations have identified policies.
Policies may be classified in many different ways. The following is a sample of several different types of policies broken down by their effect on members of the organization.

61. Distributive policies
Distributive policies extend goods and services to members of an organization, as well as distributing the costs of the goods/services amongst the members of the organization.
Examples include government policies that impact spending for welfare, public education, highways, and public safety, or a professional organization's policy on membership training.

62. Regulatory policies
Regulatory policies, or mandates, limit the discretion of individuals and agencies, or otherwise compel certain types of behavior.
These policies are generally thought to be best applied in situations where good behavior can be easily defined and bad behavior can be easily regulated and punished through fines or sanctions.
An example of a fairly successful public regulatory policy is that of a speed limit.

63. No Smoking.

66. Criminal justice policy is public policy that addresses criminal justice needs and problems.
As criminal justice involves so many issues, actors, organizations, and systems, criminal justice policy is complex and quite broad.
It involves rules, regulations, procedures, programs, strategies, and decisions at the federal, state, and local levels and involves the police, courts, corrections, private agencies, criminal offenders, victims, and the public.
Criminal justice policies have different aims. Some of them are designed to improve or deliver justice for defendants, offenders, and victims.

67. Redistributive Policy

68. Models of public policy