Conceptualizing Public Policy

Policy-making involves both a technical and political process of articulating and matching actors’ goals and means. Policies are thus actions which contain goal(s) and the means to achieve them, however well or poorly identified, justified, articulated and formulated. Probably the best-known, simple and short definition of public policy has been offered by Thomas Dye, ‘anything a government chooses to do or not to do’ (Dye, 1972: 2).While many organizations and actors create policies to which their members must adhere, we focus on ‘public’ policies made by governments that affect and influence every member of a nation-state or a subnational jurisdiction. The ‘actions’ we are concerned with in this case are government decisions to act, or not to act, to change or maintain some aspect of the status quo (Birkland, 2001: ch. 1).

# Public Policy and Administration Research # Social Sciences # Public Administration and Governance # Public Administration and Political Analysis

Michael P. Howlett, Ben Cashore (2014). "Conceptualizing Public Policy". Palgrave Macmillan eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314154.0006