Summary Public Policy Handelswetenschappen

Public Policy
1. Policy making
The first question we ask is what is public policy, we have a lot of different
definitions:
 Anything a government chooses to do or not to do.
o The government is the only one that makes policy, experts don’t,
they just talk to the people.
o Policy is only made if there is a problem because it takes a lot of
work.
o If it is not government priority, then it will not be on the agenda.
Some characteristics of public policy:
 Conscious and deliberate decision
 Response to some sort of problem or challenge
 Oriented towards a goal or desired state
 Made by governments

Types of public policy:




 Regulatory policies
= Regulate your behavior
 Redistributive policies
= Gets resources and then uses it for something else.
 Distributive policies
= It gives privileges to the people
 Constituent policies
= To regulate the government

There are still other types of policy:
 Competitive policy
= Restricts access to the provision of certain goods or services. Imposes
conditions that the facilities must meet.
 Protective policy
= Intended to protect citizens by establishing conditions under which
private activities may be provided.
 Self-regulating policy
= Corresponds to protective policy, but initiative is taken by the providers
themselves.
 Exploratory policy
= The intention of mobilizing parties to think along about the desired
development and the necessary changes.

,  Facilitating policy
= Supporting certain objectives without imposing them in a binding
manner.
 Stimulating policy
= Stimulating people or organisations to show a certain desirable behavior.

Why does the government pursue public policy:
 To address a problem or concern of the population.
o A problem can be defined as a gap between desirable situation and
current situation. Not everybody sees the same problems and thats
why there is conflict about what the government should focus on.
 To make a difference in the struggle between ideas, interests and
ideologies.
 Often aimed at changing the behaviour of the target group in the interest
of the end beneficiaries.
 Demands = People wanting things




 Support = How many people support solving a specific problem.

Who is involved in policy:
 The government (they make the public policy)
= Minister, parliamentarians, public administration entities, networks and
institutions
 Government organisations
 Politicians as elected decision-makers with formal authority, participants
and players.
 Public and sometimes private actors, social groups that are capable of
solving the problem or social groups that experience the negative impact
of the problem.
 People in the street, private companies, non-profit sector, academia,
political parties
Policy actors:
 An actor can be an individual, several individuals, a legal entity or a social
group.
 The most important thing with actors is that they must have a shared
aproach to problems and solutions and to the values/interest they
represent.
o They can have different opinions about other things, but they have
the same opinions about the problem.
 A policy actor needs to have an agency. This agency needs to have
responsibility and awareness to act and do something.
 In big organisations you can have different actor groups.

Basic triangle of policy actors

,  Intervention hypothesis
= If we do this, the problem will solved.
 Causal hypothesis
= What is the relationship between what causes the problem and the
people suffering from this problem.
 Politico-administrative authority
= Politicans and the government that are involved in developing a solution.

Example of the basic triangle:
In India there are a lot of woman that die because of the ovens that they have to
use daily. To use the oven, they have to make a fire with wood and trash and this
is in the long run bad for their health.
 The politico administrative authority: Local government and UN-agency
 Intervention hypothesis: If we give new ovens to the woman, they can cook
in a better environment.
 Target groups: Men that can allow these new ovens in their home.
 Causal hypothesis: Men have no money for clean ovens.
 End beneficiaries: Woman
 Political definition: Poverty and unavailibility
But actually the problem was not solved because after one year the ovens broke
down because the woman sabotaged them because the only time that they could
socialize was when they left the house to get wood and trash, so the intervention
hypothesis was not completely right.

How does the government policy take shape:
 Agenda-setting – Problem recognition
 Policy formulation – Proposal of a solution
 Decision-making – Choice of solution
 Policy implementation – Converting solution into effect
 Policy evaluation – Monitoring of results
 Policy evolution
 In the agenda-setting fase, we always have to start with a problem and this




problem has to be prioritized.
 In policy formulation, we are looking at solutions.
 In policy determination, we pick the solutions that has the best value.
 In policy implementation, we implement the solution.
 In policy evaluation, we are gonna look if the solution was really the right
choice.
 In policy evolution, we are gonna think about if next time we are gonna
make other decisions or the same decisions.