1. Introduction to Public Policy
Policy cycle

2. 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)

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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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

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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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.