THEORIES OF PUBLIC POLICY MAKING PROCESS

JOHN GIEVESON E. IGLUPAS

I. INTRODUCTION

Thomas R. Dye (1987) defines public policy as whatever governments

choose to do or not to do. In other words, government do many things, they
can regulate conflict within the society, at the same time organize society to
resolve the conflict. They even can distribute variety of rewards, and finally they
can extract money from the society in the form of taxes. Thus, public policies
may regulate behavior, organize bureaucracies, distribute benefits or extract
taxes from the people.

There are variety of reasons why political scientists and public

administrators should devote themselves to the study of public policy. First of
all, public policy can be studied for purely scientific reasons. Studying and
analyzing causes and consequences of policy decision making can improve
our knowledge of the society. Second, public policy can also be studied for
professional reasons. Because understanding the causes and consequences
of public policy permits us to apply social science knowledge to the solution of
practical problems. Finally, public policy can be studied for political purpose. It
is by understanding the causes and consequences of public policy ensures that
a nation adopts right policies to achieve the “right” goals.

Furthermore, public policy is not an easy task, it requires insight, creativity,

and imagination to alleviate the identified societal problems. On the other hand,
if the public policy was not cautiously and thoughtfully crafted, it may end up
making things worse. That is why we cannot deny that the role of the policy
makers is very crucial in the policy making process.
II. THEORIES OF PUBLIC POLICY-MAKING PROCESS

To understand more what is public policy is to understand the theory that

can suggests some of the general cause and consequences of the former.
Specifically, this paper will examine public policy from the perspective of the
following theories:

A. Institutional theory

This theory suggest that political activities generally centers around

particular government institutions like the congress, the presidency the
courts, the political parties and so on. Thus public policy is authoritatively
determined, implemented, and enforced by these institutions. That is why
the relationship of public policy and this governmental institutions is very
close. Because in strict manner, a policy cannot become a public policy until
it is adopted, implemented and enforced by some governmental institutions.

This governmental institutions give public policy three

distinctive features. First of all, the government lends legitimacy to
policies. Because of that a governmental policies are generally regarded as
legal obligation which commands cooperation to the citizens. Second,
public policy involves universality. It is for the reason that only the
governmental policies covers to all people in the society. People may regard
policies of other groups and associations in the society like corporation,
churches and professional organizations, but only the government policies
involve legal responsibility. Finally, only government can legitimately
imprison violators of its policy. It is because only the government
monopolized coercion in the society and everyone must compel to submit.

Traditional institutional approach focuses on the specific

governmental institutions, its functions, structure and duties without
systematically questioning the impact of the institutional characteristics on
 the policy output. It does not devote much attention to the connection
between the governmental structures and the content of the public policy.

B. Process theory

This theory argues that it is not the content of the public policy that
is to be studied, but rather the process by which public policy is developed,
implemented, and changed. Still, despite of the narrow focus of the process
theory, it is still helpful in understanding the various political activities that
involved policy making. The latter concerns agenda setting, formulation of
proposal, legitimating policy, implementing policy and evaluating policy.
Thus, it may even be the case that the way policies are made affects the
content of the public policy. But again, it doesn’t always mean that a change
in the process of policy making will always bring about change in the content
of public policy.

C. Group theory

This theory starts with the notion that interaction among groups is the
central fact of politics. According to Aristotle, “man by nature is social
animal”, the words of the father of Political Science have implication on the
natural instinct of human being to associate themselves with people in
which they shared same interest. Hence, individuals with common interests
group together formally or informally to push demands upon the
government. According to political scientist David Truman (1951), “an
interest group is a shared attitude group that makes certain claims upon
other groups in the society. The group becomes the essential bridge
between individual and the government. Thus, politics is the struggle among
different groups to influence public policy. Policy will move on the direction
desired by the groups gaining in influence and away from the desires of
 groups losing influence. The influence of groups is determined by their
numbers, wealth, organizational strength, leadership and access to
decision makers.

D. Elite theory

This theory assumes that public policy can also be viewed as the
preferences and values of a governing elite. The idea that public policy
reflects the demands of the people may express to be a myth rather than
the reality in the Philippine democracy. Elite theory suggests that “the
people” are the apathetic and ill-informed about the public policy, that the
elites are the ones actually shape mass opinion. Thus, policy really turns
out to be the preferences of the elite. Policies flow “downward” from elites
to masses; they don’t arise from mass demands.

Elite theory can be summarized briefly as follows: 1) Society is

divided into the few who have the power and the many who do not. Only
small number of persons allocate values for society; the masses do not
decide public policy. 2) Elites are drawn disproportionally form the upper
socioeconomic strata of the society. 3) Public policy does not reflect
demands of the masses but rather the prevailing values of the elite. 4)
Active elites are subject to relatively little direct influence from apathetic
masses. Elites influence masses more than masses influence elites.

E. Rational Theory

The key assumption of this theory is that government should choose

policies which result in gain to society which exceeds cost by greatest
amounts, and government should refrain from policies if cost are not
exceeded by gains. Thus, this theory suggest that no policy should be
adopted if its cost surpasses its benefits, at the same time policy and
decision makers should choose the policy that produces the greatest benefit
 over the cost. In other words, a policy is considered as rational when the
difference between the values it achieves and the values it sacrifices is
positive and greater than other policy alternative. In addition, rationalism
involves the calculation of all social, political, and economic values
sacrificed or achieved by public policy, not just those measured in dollars.

F. Incremental theory

This theory views public policy as a continuation of past government

activities with only incremental modification. According to Political scientist
Charles E. Lindblom (1968), because of the constraints of time, information,
and cost, it prevent policy makers from identifying full range of policy
alternatives. Instead, policy makers do not annually review the whole range
of existing and proposed policies, identify societal goals, and rank
preferences according to the maximum net benefits. The incremental
theory, recognized the impractical nature of “rational-comprehensive” policy
making, and describes a more conservative process of decision making.
Policy makers generally accept the legitimacy of established programs and
tacitly agree to continue previous policies. Policy makers do it because they
do not have time, information and money to investigate all the alternatives
to existing policy. Also, policy makers accept the legitimacy of previous
policies because of the uncertainty about the consequences of completely
new or different policy. Because to them, it is safer to stick with known
programs when the consequences of the new programs cannot be
predicted.

G. Game theory

This theory is the study of rational decisions in situations in which

two or more participants have choice to make and outcome depends on the
choices made by each of them. It can be applied to policy making where
there is no independently best choice that one can make because the best
outcome depend upon what others do. Game theory does not describe how
 people actually make decisions, but rather how would they go about making
decisions in competitive situations if they were completely rational. Thus,
this theory is a form of rationalism, but it is applied in competitive situations
where the outcome depends on what two or more participants do.

H. Systems theory

This theory perceives public policy as a response of a political

system to forces brought to bear upon it form the environment. The
environment is any condition or circumstance defined as external to the
boundaries of the political system. The political system is the group of
interrelated structures and processes which functions authoritatively to
allocate values for a society. Output of the political system are authoritative
value allocations of the system, and these allocations constitute of public
policy.

Systems theory portrays public policy as an output of the political

system. The concept of system implies an identifiable set of institutions and
activities in the society that function to transform demands into authoritative
decisions requiring the support of the whole society. Inputs are received into
the political system in the form of both demands and support. At the same
time, demands occur when individual or groups, in response to real or
perceived environmental conditions, act to affect public policy.

III. CONCLUSION

Public policy is undeniably one of the most essential subfield of Political

Science and Public Administration, because it concerns with “who gets what
and how”. That is why, as a student of Public Administration, we are not
concerned only with what policies governments pursue but also why
governments pursue the policies they do, and what are the consequences of
these policies are. That is why the abovementioned theories will help us find
 explanation of the causes and consequences of the public policies. Thus, most
of the public policies that is present in the society are combination of rational
planning, incrementalism, competition among groups, elite preferences,
systematic forces, political processes and institutional influences.

References
Dye, T. R. (1976). Policy Analysis: What Do, Why They Do it, What differenceit makes. University of
Alabama Press.

Dye, T. R. (1987). Models of Politics. In T. R. Dye, Understanding Public Policy (pp. 19-44). New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Easton, D. (1965). A framework of Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Lindblom, C. E. (1968). The Policy-Making Process. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Truman, D. B. (1951). The Governmental Process. New York: Knopf.