Philosophy of public administration

Philosophy of Public Administration

Policy Making Process

Policymaking is the act of making laws or setting principles for a business or a government. The process includes the essentials of agenda setting, decision making, implementation of the policy and evaluation of the set standards to understand its impact upon the citizens and the society as a whole. The policy formulated needs to be effectively communicated at all organizational levels to ensure positive execution. The stated elements of policy making would be discussed individually in the paper.

Policy makers start the process by setting up an agenda to gain public and elite support. The agenda should be such so that it could narrow a set of feasible subjects to the set that essentially becomes the center of attention. The problem highlighted in an agenda should be convincible and captivating for the government officials and people external to the government and diligently associated with those officials. This would ensure support and a desired action from the target audience and confirm the success of the policymaking process, for which an agenda would serve as a foundation (Bamberger, 2009).

The development of an agenda and the correct identification of the organizational problem would be followed by devising alternative solutions. Formulating alternative policies for the given set of problems is the most challenging phase of policy development. For this, a criterion has to be set up, against which the standards of the alternatives could be judged and measured. To develop a manageable range of alternatives, it is vital to consider the perspectives of all the stakeholders that could be affected by the policy. A far-ranging set of alternatives can be developed by carefully considering the relationship between a particular problem and similar issues.

The next step in policy design is the implementation of the new program or making necessary changes in the old program. Agenda, already structured, would be helpful in determining the choice between these two options. In a policy process, implementation is a practical and action phase. Once strategies been made and policies decided, they must be executed. During implementation, a policy maker is involved in delivering and enforcing directives and commands, conferring contracts and grants, analyzing problems which should be both programmatic and operational, taking carefully measured corrective actions, and discussing the value of the program with the concerned businesses, citizens and those in other nonprofit and public organizations. Financial and human resources are also distributed and allocated in the implementation phase. An effective policy maker must understand that policies and plans remain sterile without enactment, so it is essential to build up a connection between planning and execution.