Scribd
Upload
10 views

Lecture 3 and 4

This document discusses key aspects of public policy formulation and decision making. It covers the following main points: 1) Policy formulation refers to generating potential policy choices to address problems and involves identifying a range of options and preliminarily assessing their feasibility. It is an ongoing process throughout the policy cycle. 2) Actors in policy formulation include political executives and departments, but can also involve think tanks, experts, and interest groups depending on the issue. 3) Challenges in policy formulation include political barriers like lack of consensus and technical barriers like understanding the root causes of problems and defining clear objectives. 4) Decision making involves selecting a course of action from policy options. It is influenced by anticipating

Uploaded by

Kanwal Arshad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
10 views

Lecture 3 and 4

This document discusses key aspects of public policy formulation and decision making. It covers the following main points: 1) Policy formulation refers to generating potential policy choices to address problems and involves identifying a range of options and preliminarily assessing their feasibility. It is an ongoing process throughout the policy cycle. 2) Actors in policy formulation include political executives and departments, but can also involve think tanks, experts, and interest groups depending on the issue. 3) Challenges in policy formulation include political barriers like lack of consensus and technical barriers like understanding the root causes of problems and defining clear objectives. 4) Decision making involves selecting a course of action from policy options. It is influenced by anticipating

Uploaded by

Kanwal Arshad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 20

Public policy and decision

making
Bs 8th PCS
Lecture 3 and 4
By: Anum Khalid
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.
• Policy formulation, as we use the term here, extends
throughout the policy process. The search for new policy
options thus may precede the initiation of a policy problem in
agenda setting and may extend beyond the point where a
decision is made and implemented, to the evaluation of
existing and future potential means to resolve public
problems.
Actors in policy formulation
• Exactly who is involved in policy formulation in any given
policymaking circumstance depends on the nature of the
overall political system as well as the concrete characteristics
of the policy in question.
• Policy formulation often conveys an image of some high-level
activity carried out by a small group of senior officials (both
appointed and elected) and there is some truth in this
characterization.
• The political executives (cabinet ministers in parliamentary
systems and departmental secretaries in presidential systems)
are often the most prominent and publicly visible figures
involved in policy formulation, especially on high-profile issues.
CONT’D
• Policy scholars tend, at least avowedly, to be
practical in their orientation and strive to offer
workable solutions to problems.
• This practical orientation is even more vital
for think tanks. Indeed, their main goal is to
offer easily comprehensible analyses of public
problems and the solutions to them.
Types of policy options
• Policy alternatives can be categorized into two
types based on this criterion: incremental
alternatives and fundamental alternatives.
• Incremental alternatives, as the name suggests, are
policy alternatives that are only marginally different
from the status quo, while fundamental
alternatives represent a significant departure from
the status quo in terms of the ideas they embody,
the interests they serve, and the policy instruments
they propose.
CONT’D
• fundamental alternatives involve a higher risk for many
policy-makers because of their generally greater
uncertainties and, as a result, the higher degree of risk
they entail for budgets, society, political and
administrative reputations, and job prospects if
something should go terribly wrong.
• incremental alternatives consume fewer resources
because financial, personnel, and organizational
arrangements are often already in place and only need
to be marginally “pulled” to implement proposed
changes.
Challenges in Policy formulation
Political challenges:
• The political environment is not always conducive
to systematic policy formulation and the
consideration of a wide range of policy options.
Often senior government officials at the top of the
policy pyramid do not know exactly what they
want, and will only form ideas in a general way—for
example the need for improved access to safe
drinking water or the promotion of economic
development in a depressed region.
CONT’D
• Even when political masters know which problems
they want to address and express their views
transparently, the public may not be supportive of the
possible solutions. People dislike traffic congestion in
urban areas, for example, but they dislike many
solutions even more: public transport, because it is
inconvenient; more roads, because they could mean
more taxes; and the pricing of road use (such as
additional charges for licensing, fuel, peak hour road
use, or parking), because it is both expensive and
inconvenient.
Technical challenges
• Despite the priority frequently given to
overcoming political obstacles, it is often the
technical barriers that can be most challenging
in policy formulation.
• The difficulties start with understanding the
cause of the problem being addressed and the
objectives being sought in order to
consolidate and scrutinize specific policy
options capable of addressing these concerns.
• If there is a lack of a common understanding of the
source of a policy problem and no way to determine
which of the many possible competing
interpretations is correct, for example, managers
will find it hard to recognize which objectives to
pursue, where to look for alternatives, or what
criteria to use to sift or sort policy options.
• Even when a problem is very narrowly defined— for
example, poverty can most simply be defined as a
lack of sufficient monetary income
Strategies to improve policy formulation

1- Understanding the source of the problem


2- Clarifying policy objectives
3- Anticipating changes and building political
support
4- Formulating policies with implementation in
mind
5- Looking beyond incremental changes
LECTURE 4
DECISION MAKING
• Decision-making is the stage of policy-making
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, although it is
sometimes discussed as if this were so.
• Decision-making is distinguishable from agenda
setting and policy formulation, for example, in both
the key features of the tasks and also the narrower
range of key players involved.
Main actors in decision-making
• It is a common perception among public managers
that decision-making is, more or less, the exclusive
business of senior administrators and/or elected
officials, and is therefore dominated by political
rather than administrative or technical
considerations. Decision-making is indeed highly
political because policy decisions often create
“winners” or “losers,” whose real and anticipated
reactions to the different policy options play an
essential role in shaping policy decisions.
CONT’D
• while it is true that elite members of governments
are the main players in formal decision-making,
public policies may take many forms, and public
managers can be involved in decision-making in
various capacities. First of all, public policy
decisions can be acts, laws, regu latory guidance,
and/or procedural measures, many of which may
be decided at different levels of government
agencies so that the final elite “decision” is merely
to approve.
CONT’D
• Second, even for the policies for which substantial input
from top executives and legislative bodies is sought, the
policy options reaching these decisionmakers typically
reflect the preferences and alternatives developed by
public managers at various levels within the government.
• Third, even when they do not propose specific
alternatives, public managers are often asked by high-
level policy-makers to prepare appraisals or evaluations
of their preferred policy options, or to provide technical
information and professional advice on various aspects of
those options,
Decision-making models
• There are three main models depending on the extent to
which information is known about expected policy
outcomes.
1- The “rational” decision model:
The first model is a “rational” decision model, which is built
on the assumption that the consequences of each
alternative policy option can be known in advance.
According to this model, decision-makers should choose the
option that maximizes the attainment of their individual
goals, values, and objectives. The model is “rational” in the
sense that, at least in theory, it can lead to the most efficient
way of achieving policy goals.
CONT’D
2- The “incremental” decision model:
the “incremental” decision model, which analyzes public
decision-making as a time- and information-constrained
process characterized by conflict, bargaining, and
compromise among self-interested decision-makers.
Rather than adopt “maximizing” alternatives, in this model
it is expected that decisions arrived at through bargaining
will be the result of the “successive limited comparisons”
decision-makers make of new proposals against the results
of earlier decisions, resulting typically in only “marginal” or
“incremental” changes from the status quo.
CONT’D
• The “garbage can” decision model:
• The another alternative to rational decision models is the so-
called “garbage can” model, which applies when there is a
very large number of decision-makers and a great deal of
uncertainty about both the causes of problems and their
solutions.
• In this model, the ideas of maximization, found in the rational
model, or of optimization, found in the incremental model,
are largely abandoned. Instead it is argued that a satisfying
principle is likely to emerge, in which decision-making involves
simply satisfying whatever standards or goals have been set by
a group of policy-makers at the time of the decision.
Challenges of decision making
• Short time horizo: As we have seen, the time
horizon facing decision-makers is often too
short to adequately assess the various effects of
policy proposals, especially those that deviate
significantly from current policies and practices.
• Lack of reliable information: Information
needed for adequately assessing different policy
options is often unavailable or available only at
a very high cost.
Cont’d
• Lack of expertise in policy analysis: The analysis of
policy proposals can be highly complex, but very
few government officials possess the necessary
training and experience to carry out proper analysis.
• Performance measurement inside the
bureaucracy: .The performance of government
agencies responsible for certain policy areas is often
measured against their mandated goals, which
traditionally are defined in a single dimension, such
as efficiency.

You might also like