Introduction to Public Policy Policy cycle

Policy cycle Public policy making: set of processes including The setting of the agenda The specification of alternatives from which a choice is to be made (formulation) An authoritative choice among the alternatives (decision making) The implementation of the decision (Kingdon, 1995: 2-3)

Agenda setting Key question: What makes people in and around government attend, at any given time, to some subjects and not to others? How do issues come to be issues in the first place? Consider: Not focusing on `decision making` in this instance but on pre-decision processes.

Agenda setting Agenda: “… list of subjects or problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time” (ibid.) Our key concern: Why the agenda is composed at a particular historical moment and context and how and why it changes over time.

Agenda setting- Definitions III Governmental agenda vs. decision agenda Not all issues in governmental agenda enter into the decision agenda Agenda vs. alternatives Role of specialists, experts, academia enters more into the picture in the formulations of alternatives than the agenda itself.

When and how could the ideas/proposals be pushed for? Policy windows: an opportunity for policy entrepreneurs and advocates to push for their proposals and affect the governmental agenda (change in government, changes in public political mood/discontent…etc). It fast-tracks and couples the elevation of a particular issue and problem to prominence from governmental to decision agenda and may lead to spillover effects in other policy areas. Problem window <-> political window Problems, policies and politics need to be coupled for effective agenda-setting (Kingdon, 1995: 178) Policy entrepreneurs come to play a key role here in open policy windows in pushing forward the decision agenda Agenda is more affected by the problems and political streams Alternatives are affected more by the policy stream

Policy formulation Problems/proposals/demands  government programs Rationalistic approach dominant in the 1960s-70s Decision makers as rational actors Pluralism/rationalism replaced with corporatist perspective in the 1970s-80s Policy networks/communities, issue networks, iron triangles, multiple actors, contingent process Role of experts, scientific advice, think tanks

Decision making Factors determining which policies will be adopted: Availability of resources Allocation of competences between different actors

Implementation Specification of program details Allocation of resources Decisions Early literature- top-down, hierarchical approach In the 1970s-80s- Bottom up perspective Contributes to the emerging critique of policy cycle approach

Evaluation and termination All-encompassing across all stages of policy cycle Policy evaluation – scientific evaluation Role of interests, blame shifting, policy learning following evaluation Termination: when a problem is solved or unsuccessfully addressed Easier said than done, termination is not often favoured

CRITIQUE Separate, discrete stages and sequences Lacks defining elements of a theoretical framework Top down perspective Only problem-solving focused (not all policy is about problem solving!) Oversimplified, unrealistic world view Alternatives: advocacy coalition framework, multiple- stream framework, policy diffusion models…etc.