Public Policy Formation

Public policy studies aim to explore why, how, and when particular policy decisions on the production and delivery of public goods and services such as public transportation, education, health, environmental protection, among others, are made or not made.

Instrumental goals are conditions, concrete objectives, constraints, and principles that help achieve substantive goals and values, such as political feasibility, bureaucratic or agency capacity, diversity, budget availability or resource constraints, security, and so on.

Values reflect societal and group preferences on what is worth, and how things ought to be.

The rule of law is a critical value built upon constitutions, laws, rules, and principles.

It protects citizens against the arbitrary whim of the rulers or governments.

A usual public policy making process or cycle starts with agenda setting, problem/ need identification/recognition and policy initiation (Jenkins, 1978)

Distributive policies aim at meeting some basic demands of societal groups, and they deliver public services, goods, and infrastructure. 

Policy context shapes policy making processes mainly in three ways:
• National contexts (i.e., history, political, and socioeconomic structure) shape policy priorities.
• Socioeconomic and political changes (i.e., economic globalization, Covid-19 global pandemic, and neo-liberalization) limit policy alternatives or open new policy windows.
• Existing public governance systems at national, regional, and city levels, actors involved and the type of economic and social systems (socialist, capitalist, social democrat, and open or closed) influence how public policy processes work (Fainstein and Campbell, 1996: 2-4).

In democratic public governance and public policy making, the role of public management is seen to involve facilitating the smooth functioning of public decision and policy making processes and the effective implementation of these policies.

According to Lefebvre (1998: 18), the main features of governance are flexibility, diversity, negotiation and networking between private, civic, and public policy actors, policy networks and communities, and voluntary service collaborations.

Generally, two groups of actors may be identified: those private actors with a substantively strong economic, ideological, professional, personal, civic, or partisan interests in the issue or problem, and those with official positions and standing in the decision or policy making process regarding the specific policy issue or problem (Weimer and Vining, 1999: 385)

A pressure group is an organized group of people that aims to influence the policies or actions of government.

The process goal of policy formation is achieved when the best possible set of policy alternatives are determined, assessed, and specified.

In reality, public policy making requires effective cooperation of public bureaucracy as policy implementing body, and elected bodies with policy making powers.

An iron triangle refers to particular mutually beneficial relationships between legislative committees or subcommittees, executive branches and government agencies, and interest groups in the private (or civic) sector.

In the free market theory, it is assumed that individuals (consumers and producers) have complete and valid information about the available options in the market and their prices and utilities. Besides, all individuals are considered as rational actors who can make informed decisions based on the perfect or complete information they have about the available choices (goods, services, etc.) in the market and their prices and utilities.

Public policies could be classified under three general categories: distributive, competitive or protective redistributive, and regulatory.

For the public policy making process, the stages consist of problem identification and agenda setting; policy formation; policy adoption; implementation; monitoring and evaluation.

For public policy formation, these phases include the identification and analysis of problems, needs, demands, goals and basic criteria; the selection and assessment of appropriate alternative policy choices to realize these goals, solve problems, or meet needs and demands; and finally the submission of the most viable and suitable policy option(s) to policy makers.

Since the 1980s, decreasing size and influence of the public sector, especially central government in economy and society as opposed to increased power of the market mechanisms and values (i.e., competition and freedom of choice), civic and private actors, and local and regional actors have led to a more complex web of public policy making process.