Policy concepts in 1000 Words: What is Policy?

What is policy? My name is Paul Kierney. I'm a professor of politics and public policy. And this is a series of short podcasts to accompany my series of blog posts and the posts introduce key public policy concepts and fees and 1,000 words. So these podcasts will hopefully be about 10, 15 minutes each. So the first thing we do when we study public policies, we try to define it. Now I'm not given too much away by saying that we can actually define it very well, but we can raise questions along the way. So the first thing you might do is do a Google search and there's no shortage of definitions if you just search for what is policy. So let me give some examples. So it can be a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organization or individual. Or one definition is policies are clear, simple statements of how your organization intends to conduct its business. Another definition is policy is a plan of action used by a government body to set out clear rules and expectations for the delivery of programs and services to the public. Another is a policy is a system of principles to guide decisions and achieve outcomes. And a final example is a policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Now some of these definitions are helpful. Some of them are quite vague, I think. But most of them tally with the first definition of public policy that I give you in box 2.1 in this post. So Cochrane and colleagues give this definition of public policy as the actions of government and the intentions that determine those actions. Now it's still a little bit vague, but it gives you a sense that this is a, we're talking about decisions made by a government and you know what we can use to explain what's going on there. It's the same with the third one on your list by Richardson Smith. Policies are general term used to describe a formal decision or plan of action. The public policy is a more specific term which applies to a decision or plan of action taken by a government or a state organization. So far so good. But then look at the definition by co-batch, which is in some ways almost the opposite kind of sense. We've gone from this quite specific definition into something much more confusing. So he describes diverse activities by different bodies drawn together into stable and predictable patterns of action which come to be labelled policy. So his suggestion is we call quite a complicated mix of decisions and outcomes policy largely as a shorthand not as a readily identifiable thing or decision. And then look at Thomas Dye's definition below there. Whatever governments choose to do or not to do. Now that instantly adds a second dimension to all of those definitions we started off with because we've gone from saying that it is a purposeful act to make a choice, something that you can point to is something that's happened. And now we've got something to point to in which a government has decided not to do something and that's the same as the next quotation by Howlett and Ramesh which is decisions by governments to retain the status quo and they say they're just as important as policies to change the status quo. Then look at the final three definitions. The one by Smith suggests the same sort of thing don't just focus on decisions which produce change. Also look at decisions or actions in which people have successfully resisted change. And look at that final discussion difficult to observe. Now that's a key part of the study of public policy. It's incredibly complicated and I think a lot of the jargon and concepts should reflect that. So look at the Peter John definition. Public policy is hard to research. It's a composite of different processes. Crosscut most branches of government and involve many decision makers. And then look at how Sabati describes that. The staggering complexity of the policy process means that we have to find some way of simplifying that situation to have any chance of understanding it. So that's the first idea. When you say what is policy, what is public policy? We'll come up with these simplifying very simple definitions. But at the same time we accept that they're only going to capture a very small part of what's going on and it can take a career or a lifetime to give you a more settled sense of what's going on. So what does this discussion tell us initially? Well, there's more to this than simple definition. In fact, if you look at my book Understanding Public Policy, I've provided a definition so that we can ask more questions. I've set it up to be problematic so that it deliberately asks more questions than answers. And I think this kind of discussion is inspired by scholars such as Brian Hoggwood. So the definition I like is as follows. The sum total of government action from signals of intent to the final outcomes. Now that sounds okay to me. So you've got your government involved. That's the public policy aspect. You've got a sense that it's not just one action that's many actions. And you've got a sense that it's not just what they say they'll do, it's also what happens. Now this raises all sorts of questions and I'll give you four. The first one is does government action include what policymakers say they will do is what they actually do. Now that's an obvious question because often policymakers make unfulfilled promises and that doesn't seem to be policy in the way they would associate with something that's carried out. But at the same time, what would you call it if you didn't call it policy? You know, if a government puts something in a manifesto, wouldn't you call that policy as soon as they did so. The second question is does it include the effects of decision decisions as well as the decision itself? Now in this case you might say well, you know, you want to include policy outcomes. You don't want to just focus on the things people say they'll do. But those outcomes might not resemble the initial policy. So that's the question then. Is this the same thing? The aims are different from the intentions. Do we call both of those things policy? Do we call some combination of those things policy? It's very difficult to say. The third question is, you know, what is the government and does it include elected and unelected policy makers? Now that is a key theme in a lot of these posts in that. We talk about subsistence, policy communities, policy networks. And we use those concepts to describe the fact that many individuals, many groups, many organizations influence policy and help carry out. Often to the extent that it's difficult to separate, you know, the elected policy makers firmly in charge from the influential actors that help them make decisions. And the final question which is raised by some of these definitions does public policy include what policy makers do not do? There are a lot of the discussion of concepts such as agenda setting, power framing. It's about the power to keep important issues off the public media and government agenda is to make sure that decisions are not made so that you maintain this data school. So where do we go from there? Now I think the next thing that I would say you do is you accept that this is a problematic multifastied concept. But then that reflects the problem of studying government because the first thing you learn about government is that it's huge. There's almost no part of your life. This doesn't involve some sort of government action in some sense. And that vast scale of government often means that it's too big to be understood without some simplifying concepts and theories. So we can go into that in, you know, 20 post-20 podcasts that try to make sense of the same thing in different ways. Now in more practical terms, you might say, well, the scale of government is so large that it's too big to be managed. So instead, policy makers have to come up with ways in which they make that process more manageable. So in some studies, particularly in the UK, that you know, these things are described differently in different countries. You say the government is too big to be managed by elected policy makers. Instead, what they do is that they divide government into manageable units and they devolve almost all decisions to bureaucrats or civil servants and other public sector or non-governmental organisations. So they are responsible for government, but they do not have the time to pay attention to anything but a tiny proportion of their responsibilities. So a big part of the study of public policy, I mean, this isn't intuitive, is that what happens when elected policy makers do not have the ability to pay attention to what goes on in their name. Now it's the same with the public only more so. The vast majority of policy making takes place in the absence of meaningful public attention. So Shatchnider famously talks about the semi-sauvering public and that's the idea you might pick up here, that the public are sovereign, when they pay attention to an issue in, you know, a significant amount, then something might happen, you know. But the public or members of the public can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of government, so that makes them semi-sauvering. They don't have the time to pay attention. So a large part of public policy goes on in the name of the public, but without them really knowing what happens. Now for me, that's what makes it simultaneously problematic, messy, messed up, but so interesting at the same time. How can you study a process in which almost no one pays attention to what's going on? It's really going to counterintuitive and goes against the idea of politics where, you know, people are electing governments and making informed decisions about what they do. And this sort of conclusion gives a sense of why we study public policy in the way we do it. So for example, many schools reject a focus on very high profile elected policy makers, because we know that a lot of the action takes place elsewhere. So we often focus on the day-to-day practices of organizations, which are far removed from the top of government or the centre of government. And we often, you know, use different perspectives, so we zoom in to look at particular organizations. We zoom out to look at policy-making systems. Now interestingly enough, so we find it difficult to identify what is policy. Now it's the same with things like identifying and measuring policy change. I mean, if you look at the literature, you go to our conference and we're still talking about our inability to measure policy change effectively. So imagine that. Imagine we end up spending your time trying to explain that kind of change without actually knowing what policy is and how it changes. You know, it's kind of frustrating and fascinating at the same time. So to sum up that initial discussion, this is why, you know, if you ask this simple question, what is policy? What is public policy? That is why I respond and say to you, well, that's really 12 questions you've asked me, and I'll go into those 12 discussions in a separate podcast. It's also why I think you should forgive policy scholars for coming up with so many wacky names to describe these processes. And for you to think that the literature is so full of jargon. If you imagine, if the policy process is so complicated, it's so hard to understand. You have to describe so much information. It's essential that we come up with these simplifying concepts that we can share together in our language, we both understand, so that we can make sense of a huge amount of information in a short amount of time. Now we might describe those things with more words, more detail in, you know, podcasts and blog posts. But when we're talking together, this, this shorthand is very useful. And that's why I think it's worth going through, you know, roughly 20 of these concepts in such depth to compare them and give you a sense of why people use these concepts. And at the end of it, I think what you should find is that policy making is complicated, the study of it is very difficult and it takes a lot of skill and many useful concepts to make it look simple. Okay. And that's what we're going to do in the next 19 or so podcasts.