POLICY SYSTEM

Maria Fe Villamejor-Mendoza
University of the Philippines 2020
Policy System
• the overall institutional pattern within which policies are
made;
• involves the interrelationships among 3 major elements,
e.g., 1) public policies; 2) policy environment; and 3)
policy stakeholders.
Policy Environment
• forces and conditions in the environment that affect
policy-making
• specific context in which events surrounding a
particular policy issue occur
• that which generates and transmits demands for
policy action; limits, constraints
• social, political and economic context/setting of policy
decisions
• the intra-social/societal, economic, demographic,
physical, environmental and overtly political factors in
both domestic and international context
Policy Stakeholders
• individuals or groups which have a stake in the policy
process because they affect or are affected by
government decisions;
• players in position; men in jobs
• the official and unofficial policy makers
Public Policy
• Output-oriented:
a long series of more or less related choices
(including decisions to act or not to act) made and taken
by government to provide public good, welfare and
interest to improve the society
Public Policy
• *Process-oriented:
• an extremely complex, analytical and political process
in which there is no beginning or end, and the
boundaries are uncertain;
• a very complex, dynamic process whose various
components make different contributions to it;
decides major guidelines for action directed at future,
mainly by government, formally to achieve what is
good or in the interest of the public by the best
possible means.
Framework of Policy System

Public Policy

Policy Policy
Stakeholders Environment
Source: Dunn, 1981 as adapted from Dye, 1978
The Policy Environment-
Political Culture
• widely held values, beliefs and attitudes concerning
what government should try to do and how they
should operate
• the relationship between the citizens and their
government; could be
• moralistic, individualistic, traditionalistic & their mutations
• major value orientations such as freedom, equality, progress,
efficiency, practicality, democracy, etc.
• time orientation, e.g., past, present, future
• parochial, subject or participant
Policy Environment- Socioeconomic
• urbanization,
• industrialization,
• income
• education
Policy Environment- Economic
• structure of a nation’s economic enterprise or
who owns the major means of production; debate
between public and private ownership, capitalism
vs. socialism
• (advanced) technology or the application of
science to the production of goods and services;
• wealth
• status in the international market (core-
periphery; North-South; G7-G77 or G8-G88)
Policy Environment
• Physical Environment
• geographic and other characteristics of natural resources,
e.g., climate, topography, land and water bodies, ecological
crises
• Demographic Characteristics
• population size, age distribution, spatial location, density,
social divisions or cleavages
• Political Community and Regime Characteristics
• shared identity and commitment of members
• established democracies and autocracies
Linkages & Influences
• “To understand how management and policy decisions
are made and why some decisions are made rather than
others, we must consider social, economic, political and
other factors.” (Anderson, 1975)
Linkages & Influences
• Which factor is/has more influence in shaping
public policy is still an open question
• Effect may be- sole determining, the irresistible
cause (may be liberating or evil);
• Conditioning
• interactive, reciprocating, ethically neutral
• Each factor has independent effect/influence