institutions, government behaviour, political parties, interest groups, or elections, the study of public policies

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summary public policy a new introduction c knill 2nd edition 9781137573292

Chapter 1: Introduction

Learning more about the making of public policies must be seen as an important complement to all other themes addressed by the discipline of political science. Ranging much more broadly than just analysing political institutions, government behaviour, political parties, interest groups, or elections, the study of public policies concerns the whole process of public decision-making.

Study of public policies:

-Seeks to understand the production and effects of public actions.-Students of public policy are interested in the processes and decisions that define the outputs of a political system, such as higher education policies, social services and environmental regulations.-But policy research also highlights the broader effects resulting from such policy decisions.If policy outputs and policy effects are the core topics of public policy, their study generally focuses on two

fundamental issues: policy variation and policy change.

policy variation: refers to the explanation of differences between public policies across sectors and countries. policy change: the central focus is on the explanation of stability and change Often, public policies remain highly stable over time, although their functionality and effectiveness have constantly been questioned.

1.1What is a public policy?

Three mayor subject areas in political science:

Polity: refers to the institutional structures characterizing a political system.Politics: concentrates on political processes, such as party political cleavages a prominent argument is that countries reveal distinctive policy styles, i.e. more or less stable patterns that characterize the policy process (politics).Policy: The analysis of public policy, by contrast, puts the content of policies centre stage Rather than focusing on institutions or processes, the research interest is on the analysis of the outputs of a political system, i.e. the decisions, measures, programmes, strategies and courses of action adopted by the government or the legislature.

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summary public policy a new introduction c knill 2nd edition 9781137573292 Public policy: can be defined as a course of action (or non-action) taken by a government or legislature with regard to a particular issue. This emphasizes two constitutive elements: 1.public policies refer to actions of public actors (typically governments) 2.governmental actions are focused on a specific issue, implying that the scope of activities is restricted to addressing a certain aspect or problem (such as air pollution control, animal protection, internet content or the liberalization of the telecommunications sector).It is not possible to specify generally a threshold number of courses of action as defining a ‘public policy’.Sometimes one single legal act might be very encompassing and entail a broad range of different activities, while in other constellations it might only constitute one out of several important elements of a public policy.

Also different conceptions about the nature of public policies:

policy-making is conceived as a problem solving activity.-policy-making can be regarded as a means of exerting power by one social group over another.

Broad range of activities that might constitute public policies:

-First, it is often used to cover a whole range of different measures in a certain sector, such as environmental policy, social policy, economic policy or fiscal policy.-Second, a similar approach is used to describe public activities in policy subfields. In most instances, it is possible to classify the public activities in a field along certain subthemes that cover functionally related measures. With regard to environmental policy, for example, subsectors refer to water policy, clean air policy.-Third, even within policy subfields, distinctive policy issues or targets can be identified. Taking clean air policy as an example, such targets include industrial discharges of different pollutants, urban air quality and car exhaust emissions.-A fourth – and the least abstract – usage of the term refers to its connection with regulatory instruments. While policy targets refer to what a legal act regulates, policy instruments define how they are regulated.

1.2Analytical perspectives on the policy-making process In the literature we find different attempts at analysing how public policies typically evolve or should evolve: Rationalist approach: defines an ideal conception of how policies should develop.-conceives of policy-making as a process of problem-solving. Rather than seeking to explain the policy process, this approach prescribes an ideal conception of how policy-making should be organized and evolve in order to achieve optimal solutions to the underlying policy problems.-Normative (how policies should evolve) perspective rather than a positive perspective (how policy can be explained) on policy-making.-Lasswell’s (1956) thinking: argued that ideally the policy process should be based on different steps that follow a logical sequence: intelligence (collection and processing of all relevant knowledge and information), promotion (identification and support of selected alternatives), prescription (imposition of a binding decision), invocation (policy enforcement), termination (abrogation of policy), and appraisal (evaluation of policy effects against the backdrop of initial objectives and intentions).Incrementalist perspective: provides an explanation for the fact that in reality this ideal is hardly ever reached.-Explicitly rejected the idea of public policy being made on the basis of a fully rational decision- making process -Process of ‘partisan mutual adjustment’: Public policy is regarded as the political result of the interaction of various actors possessing different types of information. These actors need to make concessions and

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