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Public Policy in 100 Words

The document discusses the policy cycle approach to analyzing the policymaking process. It describes the policy cycle as breaking policymaking down into a series of stages from agenda setting to policy evaluation and maintenance. These stages include identifying problems, formulating policies, legitimizing policies, implementing policies, and assessing their effectiveness before deciding whether to continue, modify, or discontinue policies. While the stages approach provides a simple and understandable framework, it is an oversimplification and is no longer central to policy studies because it does not fully explain the complex and political nature of real-world policymaking.

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Habib Khan Toha
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92 views

Public Policy in 100 Words

The document discusses the policy cycle approach to analyzing the policymaking process. It describes the policy cycle as breaking policymaking down into a series of stages from agenda setting to policy evaluation and maintenance. These stages include identifying problems, formulating policies, legitimizing policies, implementing policies, and assessing their effectiveness before deciding whether to continue, modify, or discontinue policies. While the stages approach provides a simple and understandable framework, it is an oversimplification and is no longer central to policy studies because it does not fully explain the complex and political nature of real-world policymaking.

Uploaded by

Habib Khan Toha
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Policy Cycle and its Stages

Paul Paul
The classic way to study policymaking is to break it down into stages. The stages
have changed over the years, and vary by country, but the basic ideas remain the
same:

Descriptive. Let’s simplify a complex world by identifying its key elements.


Prescriptive. Let’s work out how to make policy, to translate public demands into
government action (or at least to carry out government policy).
cycle

A cycle divides the policy process into a series of stages, from a notional starting
point at which policymakers begin to think about a policy problem to a notional
end point at which a policy has been implemented and policymakers think about
how successful it has been before deciding what to do next. The image is of a
continuous process rather than a single event. The evaluation stage of policy 1
represents the first stage of policy 2, as lessons learned in the past set the agenda
for choices to be made in the future:

Agenda setting. Identifying problems that require government attention, deciding


which issues deserve the most attention and defining the nature of the problem.
Policy formulation. Setting objectives, identifying the cost and estimating the
effect of solutions, choosing from a list of solutions and selecting policy
instruments.
Legitimation. Ensuring that the chosen policy instruments have support. It can
involve one or a combination of: legislative approval, executive approval, seeking
consent through consultation with interest groups, and referenda.
Implementation. Establishing or employing an organization to take responsibility
for implementation, ensuring that the organization has the resources (such as
staffing, money and legal authority) to do so, and making sure that policy decisions
are carried out as planned.
Evaluation. Assessing the extent to which the policy was successful or the policy
decision was the correct one; if it was implemented correctly and, if so, had the
desired effect.
Policy maintenance, succession or termination. Considering if the policy should be
continued, modified or discontinued.
The cycle is useful in many ways. It is simple and understandable. It can be applied
to all political systems. The emphasis on cycles highlights fluid policymaking.
There is also a wide range of important studies (and key debates) based on the
analysis of particular stages – such as the top-down versus bottom-up approaches
to the study of policymaking.

However, the stages approach is no longer central to policy studies, partly because
it does not help explain what it describes, and partly because it oversimplifies a
complex world (does it also seem to take the politics out of policymaking? In other
words, note the often-fraught politics of seemingly-innocuous stages such as
evaluation). The policymaking system may be seen more as a collection of
thousands of policy cycles, which interact with each other to produce much less
predictable outcomes. Indeed, many of the theories or concepts outlined in this
series serve as replacements for a focus on cycles (see the The Advocacy Coalition
Framework and Multiple Streams Analysis in particular).

The prescriptive side of cycles and stages is a bit more interesting, because it may
be both unrealistic and useful at the same time. Stages can be used to organise
policymaking in a simple way: identify policymaker aims, identify policies to
achieve those aims, select a policy measure, ensure that the selection is legitimised
by the population or its legislature, identify the necessary resources, implement and
then evaluate the policy. The academic idea is simple and the consequent advice to
policy practitioners is straightforward. It is difficult – but not impossible – to
describe a more meaningful, more realistic, analytical model to policymakers (and
give advice on how to act) in the same straightforward way.

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