The Public Policy primer

Agenda Setting: An agenda is a list of issues or problems to which governmental officials and
others in the policy community are paying some serious attention at any given time. Agenda
setting is about a government recognizing that a problem is a “public” problem worthy of its
attention.
Policy Formulation: Policy formulation refers to the process of generating a set of plausible
policy choices for addressing problems. At this stage of the policy process, a range of
potential policy choices is identified, and a preliminary assessment of their feasibility is
offered.

Decision Making: Decision-making is the stage of policymaking involving the selection of a

course of action from a range of policy options, including that of maintaining the status quo.
It is not synonymous with the entire policymaking process.

Policy Implementation: Policy implementation is a dynamic, not linear, process. Changing

policy rarely involves a straightforward mobilization of the resources necessary to achieve
well defined policy aims that already have broad support. Instead, the implementation task
can and often does involve elements of all the preceding ‘stages’ of policymaking and all of
the uncertainties and contingencies that these might entail.

Policy Evaluation: Policy evaluation refers broadly to all the activities carried out by a range
of state and societal actors to determine how a policy has fared in practice and to estimate
how it is likely to perform in the future. Evaluation examines both the means employed and
the objectives served by a policy in practice. The results and recommendations from these
evaluation are then fed back into further rounds of policy-making and can lead to the
refinement of policy design and implementation or, infrequently, to its complete reform or
termination.

Actors in Policy:
State Actors Societal Actors
1. Elected Officials – Politicians 1. NGOs, CSOs, Activists, Think Tanks,
2. Appointed Administrators – Media, Research Organizations,
Bureaucrats Interest Groups, Religious Groups,
Unions, etc

Challenges in Policy as an overall: three broad categories

Political 1. Slow Authorization: Plans and resource mobilization
Barriers/challenges proceed very slowly due to the existence of multiple veto
points among stakeholders in a network, making forward
progress difficult.
2. Weak Political Support: Plans may proceed and even attain
moderate levels of support success in the pilot project stage
while flying under the “radar” of key politicians with
opposing interests, until program begins to “scale up.”
3. Bureaucratic Opposition: Sabotage implementation due to
low priority of project, lacking incentives, and/or competing
 interests.
4. Poor Implementer Incentives: Local implementers who were
not consulted during the decision-making stage, have
inadequate “buy-in” or incentives to comply with directives
from below.
Analytical 1. Vague or multiple missions: Intersectoral nature of plans
Barriers/Challenges and implementation leads over conflicting goals.
1. Changing Priorities: For example, between environmental
and economic dimensions of a policy problem, may need to
be reconsidered in light of changing economic and political
conditions.
1. Poor Design: Social or environmental programs that are
unlikely to work as intended given multiple constraints left
unaddressed by program design; failure is
“overdetermined”—that is, it will occur if any of the
constraints are left unaddressed.
2. Feasibility: Different components of the integrated plans
may be operationally linked—one can only advance if all are
jointly present—subjecting operations to the “weakest link.”
Operation 1. Fund Limitation: Funds necessary to implement approved
Barriers/Challenges plans slow to materialize, blocking progress.
2. Weak Management Structure: Poor precedents for
coordination between major agencies
3. Lack of clarity in operational plans: Approved and funded
plans are mismanaged due to poor operational plans
specification of roles, responsibilities and accountability.

Strategies for public managers

1. Leveraging on their positions and resources to shape issue definition.
2. Managing agenda entrance /policy formulation/decision making/implementation
strategically
3. Forming strategic alliances with non-state actors
4. Understanding the source of the problem
5. Clarifying policy objectives
6. Leveraging on policy networks
1. Establishing and participating in interagency committees or task forces
2. Integrating and mandating political, technical, and organizational considerations
3. build constituencies supportive of policy change among a range of stakeholders, who
bring different resources and interests to the table;
4. set overall objectives and design parameters for policies; and, at some point,
5. secure sufficient formal authorization and resources necessary to drive the process
forward.
6. Clarifying evaluation criteria, benchmarking, and performance measures (evaluation)
7. Making greater use of impact assessment (Evaluation)
8. Improving access to program evaluation to organizations and researchers outside
the government (Evaluation)