Stages Model of Policy Making

A common method of examining the operation of a policy process is to break it down into several stages and substages. Each of these can then be analyzed separately, and commonalities across stages can also be identified. Over the course of the history of the policy sciences, several distinct models of the policy process were put forward before the current five-stage model of agenda setting, policy formulation, decision making, policy implementation, and policy evaluation was settled on. The evolution of these models and their advantages and disadvantages as analytical and empirical constructs are set out below.

One of the most popular means for simplifying public policy making has been to disaggregate the process into a series of discrete stages and sub-stages. The resulting sequence of stages is referred to as the policy cycle or stages model of policy. This simplification has its origins in the earliest works on public policy analysis but has received somewhat different treatment in the hands of different authors.

The idea of simplifying the complexity of public policy making by breaking the policy-making process down into a number of discrete stages was first broached in the early work of Harold Lasswell, one of the founders of the policy sciences. Lasswell divided the policy process into seven stages: (1) intelligence, (2) promotion, (3) prescription, (4) invocation, (5) application, (6) termination, and (7) appraisal. In Lasswell's view, the seven stages described not only how public policies were actually made but also how they should be made. The policy process [Page 2480]began with intelligence gathering—that is, the collection, processing, and dissemination of information for those who participate in the decision process. It then moved to the promotion of particular options by those involved in making the decision. In the third stage, the decision makers actually prescribed a course of action. In the fourth stage, the prescribed course of action was invoked; a set of sanctions was developed to penalize those who failed to comply with the prescriptions of the decision makers. The policy was then applied by the courts and the bureaucracy and ran its course until it was terminated or cancelled. Finally, the results of the policy were appraised or evaluated against the aims and goals of the original decision makers.

Lasswell's analysis of the policy-making process focused on the decision-making process within government and had little to say about external or environmental influences on government behavior. It simply assumed that decision making was limited or restricted to a presumably small number of participants staffing official positions in government. Another shortcoming of this model was its lack of internal logic, especially with reference to placing appraisal or evaluation after termination, since policies are usually evaluated prior to being wound down rather than afterward. Nevertheless, this model was highly influential in the development of a policy science. Although not entirely accurate, it did reduce the complexity of studying public policy by allowing each stage to be isolated and examined before putting the whole picture of the process back together.

Lasswell's formulation formed the basis for a model developed by Gary Brewer in the early 1970s. According to Brewer, the policy process was composed of six stages: (1) invention/initiation, (2) estimation, (3) selection, (4) implementation, (5) evaluation, and (6) termination. In Brewer's view, invention or initiation referred to the earliest stage in the sequence when a problem would be initially sensed. This stage, he argued, would be characterized by an ill-conceived definition of the problem and suggested solutions to it. The second stage of estimation concerned calculation of the risks, costs, and benefits associated with each of the various solutions raised in the earlier stage. This would involve both technical evaluation and normative choices. The objective of this stage is to narrow the range of plausible choices by excluding the unfeasible ones and to somehow range the remaining options in terms of desirability. The third stage consists of adopting one, none, or some combination of the solutions remaining at the end of the estimation stage. The remaining three stages consist of implementing the selected option, evaluating the results of the entire process, and terminating the policy according to the conclusions reached by its evaluation.

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