Public policy is the method
of addressing the needs of citizens by a government, typically outlined in a
constitution. Understand the definition, explore the different processes and
types of public policy and the challenges they face through institutional examples.
Broadly, we might say that
a public policy is simply what government (any public official who influences
or determines public policy, including school officials, city council members,
county supervisors, etc.) does or does not do about a problem that comes before
them for consideration and possible action.
The lives of the citizens everywhere are
formed by public policies, whether we are aware of them or not. The dream for
improved life while its achievement rest on our own efforts, will probable to
contain public policies to aid the result of it. Public policy is a subject or
field of inquiry has a long past, though the current public policy analysis
have a specific American and 20th century fragrance. The public policy seeds
were sown in 1940s and made a significant influence on the government and
academic organizations over these years.
In the early 1950s public policy has
developed as academic search and from then it has been securing new
measurements and is stressed tough to attain the position of a discipline in
the area of Social science. As a study of „products‟ of government, policy
forms a significant component in many a course and academic programme in
various disciplines like political science, public administration, economics
and business management.
What Defines Public Policy?
Public policy is
the means by which a government maintains order or addresses the needs of its
citizens through actions defined by its constitution. If this definition sounds
vague or confusing, it's likely because a public policy is generally not a
tangible thing but rather is a term used to describe a collection of laws,
mandates, or regulations established through a political process.
In the United States, for example, there have been
recent changes to the health care system that now require every citizen to have
health insurance. After a series of debates, evaluations, and analysis, the
federal government arrived at the conclusion that this would be in the best
interest of citizens and began crafting bills, insurance mandates, and other
pieces of legislation to establish a system for how Americans receive health
care treatment. Through this legal and political process, they have created a new
public policy, which contains several different parts in order for it to serve
its purpose.
If you're a visual learner, imagine a jigsaw puzzle that
contains 250 pieces. Now pretend that each of those 250 puzzle pieces
represents a law, Congressional act, or federal mandate related to health care
in the United States. When you put all the pieces together properly, you arrive
at your complete picture, which, in the case of this metaphor, would be the
public policy.
If an American is in need
of emergency medical care, the first place that most seek treatment is through
the emergency room at their nearest hospital. Even if the person has no medical
insurance, they can be sure they will receive treatment if they go to the
emergency room rather than a doctor. The reason they can count on this service
is because the men and women in Congress have spent countless hours crafting
public policies around health care that outline how providers will serve their
patients.
Scholars Definitions
of Public Policy
Dye,
says that…institutional studies usually described specific government
institutions…without systematically inquiring about the impact of institutional
characteristics on policy outputs…However, the linkage between institutional
arrangements and content of policy remained largely unexamined.
The definitions of public policy are as follows:
According
to Thomas Dye, defines public policy as “whatever
governments choose to do or not to do”.
Dimock,
stated public policy as “deciding at any time or place what objectives and
substantive measures should be chosen in order to deal with a particular
problem”.
According
to Chandler and Plano, who define public policy as “the strategic
use of resources to alleviate national problems or governmental concerns”.
Freeman
and Sherwoods, stated that it is the public answer to the
interest in refining the human circumstances. In these definitions there is
deviation between what governments agree to do and what they essentially do.
Public policy is a controller which government has planned for direction and
practice in certain problem areas.
In the current times, the study of public
policy has evolved into what is virtually a fresh branch of social sciences
called as, policy sciences.
In 1951, Harold Lasswell, for the first time, the concept of policy science
was framed. Presently, the policy sciences have departed far away from immature
ambitions for societal applicable information.
Concept of Public and Policy
In the literature of academics, the term public policy is regularly utilized in our present day life and we regularly
refer to the policies which are implanted like, national, education policy,
agriculture policy, health policy, wage policy so on. In fact this is the area
where public are involved. The concept of public policy is assumes, that there
is domain of life which has totally individual and is not private, which is
believed in collective.
1.
The Notion of Public: It is very significant to recognize the
notion of public for a discussion of public policy. We regularly use the words
such as public interest, public sector, public opinion, public health, and so
on. The public policy, has to do with which are labeled as the public, as contrasting
to scopes concerning private. The measurements of public are usually mentioned
as, public ownership or governor for public purpose. The term public contains
all the measurements of human action observed as needing governmental
involvement or social directive. Though, there has been battle between what is public
and what is private.
2.
The Notion of Policy: The notion of public, the idea of policy is
also not exactly defined. Policy signifies, between other things, guidance for
action. It might take the procedure of:
1. Commanding conclusion.
2. Principle or value
3. Purposive course of action
4. Method of governance
5. Manifestation of considered judgment
6. Look of political rationality
7. Declaration of common goals.
In a Machiavellian sense, policy is the base
of power. While bureaucracy derived it legitimacy from its claim to State, the
politician claimed that their authority rested on the approval of their
policies by the electorates.
Hogwood and Gunn specified ten usages of the
word policy as:
1. A label for the field of activity
2. An expression of desired state of affairs
3. Specific proposals
4. The decision of governments
5. Formal authorization
6. A programmes
7. Output
8. Outcome
9. A theory or model
10. A process
Meaning of Public Policy
The meaning of the term policy is varying
like other concept of social science. Unluckily, the policy itself is somewhat
which take diverse procedures. David Easton defined policy as the output of the
political system, and public policy as the authoritative allocation of values
for the whole society. The measures of this alteration in the methods of the
accepted from other definitions progress by the scholars in this field. Henry
defines public policy as, “A script (cpirse pf actopm) adopted and pursued by
the government”. Anderson stated, that policy be observed as “Purposive course
of action followed by an actor or set of actors in dealing with a problem or
matter of concern”. According to Sir, Geoffrey Vickers, policies are judgments
giving way, unity and steadiness to the course of act for which the decision
making body is accountable. Friedrich look policy as, a proposed course of
action of a person, group, or government within a given environment providing
obstacles and opportunities with the policy was proposed to utilized and
overcome in an effort to reach a goal or realize an objective or purpose.
According to Parsons, who stated about it as, “A policy is an attempt to define
and structure a rational basis for action or inaction”. In present terminology
a policy is broadly defined as a course of action or plan, a set of political
purposes. It might well be sufficiently defined “policy” as a purposive
development of act taken or accepted by those in power in chase of convinced
goals or objectives. It must be added here that public policies are the
policies accepted and executed by government bodies and officials. They are
framed by what Easton appeals the „authorities‟ in a political system. Namely,
“elders, paramount chiefs, executives, legislators, judges, administrators,
councilors, monarchs, and the like”. He stated as, these are the persons who
“engage in the daily affairs of a political system”, are “recognized by most
members of the system as having the responsibility for these matters” and take
action that are “accepted and binding most of the time by most of the members
so long as their act within the limit of their roles”.
Characteristics of public policy
1. Policy is made in response to some
sort of issue or problem that requires attention.
2. Policy is what the government
chooses to do (actual) or not do (implied) about a particular issue or problem.
3. Policy might take the form of law,
or regulation, or the set of all the laws and regulations that govern a
particular issue or problem.
4. Policy is made on behalf of the
"public."
5. Policy is oriented toward a goal or
desired state, such as the solution of a problem.
6. Policy is ultimately made by
governments, even if the ideas come from outside government or through the
interaction of government and the public.
7. Policy making is part of an ongoing
process that does not always have a clear beginning or end, since decisions
about who will benefit from policies and who will bear any burden resulting
from the policy are continually reassessed, revisited and revised.
No doubt, there are many problems in our communities that
need to be solved. Some problems may readily be dealt with by actions taken in
the private sphere (individuals and families) or by our civil society (social,
economic, or political associations or organizations).
Public policy problems are those that must be
addressed by laws and regulations adopted by government. Your first task in Pro-Citizen
is to firmly establish that the problem you want to work on is, in fact, one
which requires government involvement to reach a solution.
Nature of Public Policy
It is very much evident that policy might
take different procedures like legislation, executive orders or the official
acts. They actually comprise of a set of intentions or objectives a combination
of devices or means for attainment of intensions, a description of governmental
or non-governmental units indicted with the accountability of transporting out
the intentions, and distribution of resources for the necessary tasks. To
recognize public policy, it is very much needed to examine the nature. A policy
may contain with specific or general, broad or narrow, simple or complex,
public or private written or unwritten explicit or implicit, discretionary or
detailed and quantitative or qualitative. Public policy is in fact a skill
because these task regularly some information about the social sciences and in this
case the stress is on the public policy which is known as „government policy‟,
selected by a government as a direction for action‟.
From the perspective of public policies,
actions of government could be put broadly into two groups and they are:
1. Definite or Specific policies and
2. General, vague and inconsistent policies.
In reality a government rarely will have a fixed of supervisory values for all
its actions and in fact the significant public policies are frequently made
more clear specifically where the issue of law, regulation or strategy is
involved. The Supreme Court can give its decisions; by new interpretations to
some of the articles of the Constitution which can be develop into new policy.
These policies may be too unclear or too broad and may not be reliable to each
other, in turbulent atmospheres like the current ones government has to make
regular actions without reference to any particular policy, sometimes
government announces some sort of policy for political convenience or for some
reasons, in such cases, government will not have any intention to carry it
successfully. Hence, it is likely to have a policy without action or it can
have action without policy.
Public policies alive only in set of
practices and precedents. The public policies are embodied only in an unwritten
Constitution of United Kingdom is the best instance of this form of a public
policy. Public policy contains major segment of actions, like, development
policy, economic growth, socio-economic growth, equality, social justice, or
any other such policy may be accepted by national policy. Hence, it can be
observed a single policy in various written documents, it may be narrow,
covering a particular action, like family planning which is reserved to certain
division of the people or it can be for extensive range of the people in the
country, for instance, government can accept that, no child is adult unless he
attains the age of 16 years (recent amendment). Public policy is an area
commonly defined by policy areas like health, education, housing, economic,
environment, transport and social and it is mostly set that interdisciplinary
and intergovernmental relations taking place.
These policies can be developed either by
the central government or state government, or sometimes „mega policies‟ act as
a kind of master policy. This word mega policy is coined by Yehezkel Dror. The
broad policies which are an expression of national aims are the instances for
the mega policies, eg. Economic growth, social justice etc. It is very much
important to understand the nature of the policy means, it must contain an
objective, an aim or a goal, or a purpose because a policy is guidance for
action.
In fact all the mega policies are purposive
and are object oriented but it is conceivable that a government can have policy
without any recognizable objectives or purpose. It can accept any policy
without any particular goals.
The significant regarding the goals and
objectives is that, while studying the policies of government collective as a
total, the multidimensional nature of goals and objectives, as well as the
presence of several irregularities and even ambiguities becomes observable.
Government can accept vague, inconsistent or even contradictory policies so
that to gratify all the pressure groups and political parties.
The public policy can be a positive or
negative one, in its positive form, it can contain some system of evident
government activity to treat a specific problem. Whereas, in the negative form,
it might contain a decision by a public servant not to take action on some sort
of matter on which the government action is required.
These policies sometimes will have legally
coercive so that people can adopt it legally for instance all the people will
pay the taxes in order to stay away from the fines.
These public policies make public
organizations different from private organizations.
Scope of the Public Policy
It is a noteworthy discipline examination
and practice, meanwhile, the appearance of public policy as a field of investigation;
it has extended in theoretical scope and application. A noteworthy amount of
the study of public policy contains of the growth of situations of current
styles. In several developing countries, there is excessive burden on the
governments to speed up the growth of the nation, make usage of modern and
applicable technological inventions, accept and enable essential institutional
alterations, upsurge the production of the nation, make total usage of human
and other sources, and advance the level of living standards. These tendencies
and growths have hence, improved both the magnitude and possibility of the
public policy. Michael Teitz, pronounces the outreach of public policy in term
of the citizen‟s life cycle as follows: “Modern urban man is born in a publicly
financed hospital, receives his education in a publically supported school and
university, spends a good part of his time travelling on publically built
transport facilities, communicate by the post offices or quasi-public telephone
system, drinks his public drinking water, disposes of his garbage through a
public removal system, reads his library books, picnics in his public parks, is
protected by public police, fire, and health systems. Ideological conservatives
not withstanding his daily life is inextricably bounds up with government
decisions on these various public services”. Public policy stress on the
problems of the public, according to Heidenheimer, the public policy is the
study of “how, why and what effect governments pursue particular courses of
action and inaction”. Dye, stated about it as, “what government do, why they do
it, and what difference it makes”. According to Lasswell, policy orientation is
multi method, multi-disciplinary; problem which emphasizes worried to plan the
context of the policy procedure.
Significance of Public Policy
It is evident that the public policy is the
significant factor in the democratic government and it emphasizes on the public
and its problems, in fact it is a discipline which is branded as public. The
concept of public policy assumes that there is an area of life which is totally
individual but said in public. Likewise, public policies have a significant
purposes to work in the society where the democracy is prevails. The important
role of the public policy is to make the society to lead a better life and to
maintain the delivery of the goods and services are significant, it is regarded
as the mechanism for developing economic-social system, a procedure for
determining the future and so on
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