Public Policy Fundamentals: Cycle, Actors, and Evaluation
Understanding the Policy Cycle
The policy cycle is a framework used to understand and analyze policy making through its distinct stages. Policy issues flow from inputs, such as problem recognition, to outputs, which are the resulting policies.
Stages of the Policy Cycle
- Agenda Setting: Problem recognition and defining issues that require government attention.
- Policy Formulation: The proposal of solutions and development of policy options to address identified problems.
- Decision Making: The choice of a specific solution or policy option from those formulated.
- Policy Implementation: Putting the chosen solutions into effect through programs, regulations, and actions.
- Policy Evaluation: Monitoring and assessing the results and impacts of implemented policies.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Policy Cycle Model
- Advantages: Simplifies a complex process, applicable to multiple contexts, and includes various actors.
- Disadvantages: Can imply that policy development is a linear process, which is often not the case in reality.
Key Policy Actors and Subsystems
Policy actors are individuals or groups who influence or are affected by policy decisions. A policy subsystem refers to actors with significant information about a problem or a vested interest in alternative courses of action.
Defining Policy Actors
- Executive Branch: Key figures such as the Prime Minister, Premier, and Department of Finance, responsible for leading government and policy direction.
- Cabinet: A group of ministers responsible for the government’s agenda and policy directions.
- Epistemic Communities: Actors who develop information on a policy issue, not always advocating for a specific solution but providing expertise.
- Advocacy Coalitions: Actors with a similar understanding of both the cause of a policy problem and the best solution.
- Policy Brokers: Informed and connected insiders who move between government, the public, and other interests, without loyalty to a specific policy outcome.
- Instrument Constituencies: Actors who may have different understandings of the cause but unite for a specific solution.
Approaches to Policy Analysis
Positivist Approach
This approach assumes that the analysis of policy goals and outcomes is possible using standard social science methodologies for data collection and analysis. It assumes a universally applicable logic of causation and correlation.
Post-Positivist Approach
This approach argues that objective analysis is not possible as it is shaped by assumptions and social relations (e.g., gender, race). It acknowledges that individual and Indigenous knowledge systems may not fit the positivist framework.
Policy Instruments and Tools
Policy instruments are the methods or tools governments use to achieve policy objectives.
- Nodality (Information): Informs, persuades, or nudges societal actors through communication and awareness campaigns.
- Authority (Legal Powers): Uses rule-making, regulations, and legislation to mandate or prohibit certain actions.
- Treasury (Financial Resources): Involves financial resources like subsidies, taxes, user fees, and grants to incentivize or disincentivize behaviors.
- Organization (Service Delivery): Changes the way goods or services are delivered, often through restructuring or creating new agencies.
Types of Policy Change
Policy change can occur at different levels of intensity and scope.
- First-Order Change: Changes to instrument components, such as adjusting the settings or calibrations of existing policy tools.
- Second-Order Change: Changes to instrument type, where the types of policy tools themselves are altered or replaced.
- Third-Order Change: Changes to policy goals, where the fundamental objectives or underlying principles of the policy are redefined.
Policy Evaluation: Assessment and Frameworks
Purpose of Policy Evaluation
Policy evaluation is the systematic assessment of public-sector interventions, including their organization, content, implementation, outputs, and outcomes. It includes a value judgment on effectiveness.
Types of Policy Evaluation
- Process Evaluation: Evaluates the procedural aspects of the policy, focusing on inputs, activities, and outputs.
- Summative Evaluation: Evaluates the substantive effects of the policy, focusing on outcomes and impacts (intended and unintended medium/long-term effects).
Evaluation Frameworks
- Logic Model: A framework describing inputs → activities → outputs → outcomes in a linear way, commonly used for planning, implementation, and evaluation.
- Theory of Change: Specifies the causal mechanism explaining how and why a policy leads to desired outcomes, often more complex than a simple linear model.
Policy Feedback Loops and Outcomes
Policies can be continued, reformed, or terminated based on evaluation findings. Success and failure in policy evaluation are judgments rooted in values and expectations, reflecting societal priorities and goals.
Principles of Good Public Policy
Siu’s Principles for Policy Assessment
These principles can be used to assess the quality of public policy, although achieving all of them equally can be challenging due to various factors like political context, public opinion, and ideology.
- Accountability: Government responsibility for well-researched and well-resourced policy.
- Impact: The intended effects and broader consequences of the policy.
- Outcomes: The specific changes that result from the policy’s implementation.
- Cost-effectiveness: Good public policy can be implemented using minimal funding while achieving the same or better results compared to jurisdictions with similar policies.
- Justice: Fairness and equity in policy design and application.
- Balance of Short- and Long-Term Interests: Considering both immediate and future effects of the policy.
Examples of Policy Areas and Key Terms
Housing Policy
Key terms include: Market housing, non-market housing, homelessness, Indigenous definition of homelessness, social housing, supportive housing, point-in-time count, wicked problem.
Social Policy
Key terms include: Welfare state, social assistance, conditional cash transfer, cycle of poverty, bureaucratic disentitlement.
Energy Policy
Key terms include: Energy supply, energy security, energy affordability, environmental impact, Ontario Energy Support Program.
Indigenous Policy
Key terms include: Jordan’s Principle, Royal Proclamation, Treaty, Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.