Policy Formulation

Scope of Policy Process

The study of policy varies from the analysis of policy (to understand its nature and content, how it is made and implemented, and policy as a political process) to the analysis for policy (i.e., policy research, information and advice that can lead to a case for action to be taken). The identification and recognition of problems in the policy formulation process can be conceptualized as a predecision, as agenda setting serves to limit the number of subjects attracting attention and getting on the decision makers' agenda. Exclusion of a subject from the agenda is in itself a negative decision as far as the subject is concerned, since agenda setting is as important as, if not more important than, decision making itself.

Conceptually, policy formulation can be separated from policy execution or implementation, but there is a growing literature that sees the two as highly intermingled and being part of a policy continuum. The rationalist approach sees policy as an outcome of a rational—even scientific, technical, and nonproblematic—decision-making process within a relatively controlled environment based on an instrumental “means–ends” causality, leading problems to their solutions and decisions to their implementation. Implementation is similarly taken as nonproblematic, technical, and highly directed and controlled. In contrast, the realist or political approach sees policy as essentially an outcome of negotiation among political actors and institutions based on their competing values, interests, agendas, strategies, and power resources within an uncertain, conflictual, and, at times, turbulent environment. In the real world, the actual process of policy formulation is shaped and defined by the policy institutions and bound by the external policy-making environment and prevailing trends—local, national, regional, as well as global. Policy formulation is triggered by the need to either formulate new policy or change existing policy in order to deal with newly identified or redefined problems. Policy change thus captures a spectrum of types from policy innovation and succession to maintenance and termination. Sometimes policy learning, diffusion, and transformation also generate the need for policy formulation.

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