Constituent elements of a public policy

Several of the constituent elements of a public policy can be noted in the following definition. The constituent elements of a public policy comprise:

1) A solution to a public problem: a policy aims to resolve a social problem that is politically acknowledged as public and necessitates the re-establishment of the communication between several social actors that has broken down or is under threat. Thus, the proposed definition presupposes the recognition of a problem, that is a socially unsatisfactory situation whose resolution is subject to action by the public sector.

2) Existence of target groups at the root of a public problem: all public policy aims to change the behaviour of target groups, either directly or by affecting these actors' environment. A political declaration to the effect that air should be clean, public order restored, unemployment reduced that is not accompanied by the identification of the social groups to be called on to change their behaviour with a view to fulfilling these objectives cannot, therefore, be considered a policy.

3) Intentional coherence, at the very least: a public policy is created with a given direction. It presupposes "a theory of social change" which the policy will attempt to apply in its attempt to resolve the public problem in question. It also assumes that the decisions or actions taken are connected. Thus, a lack of coherence will manifest itself in the purely occasional coincidence of measures that are aimed at the same target groups but are not connected to each other in accordance with the legislator’s intention.

4) The existence of several decisions and activities: public policies are characterised by a group of actions that go beyond the level of the single or specific decision while remaining short of a "general social movement". A basic declaration of government policy stating that AIDS is a public problem that does not also define the social groups affected by the existence of this problem cannot in itself be considered as a public policy.

5) Intervention programme: this group of decisions and actions should - moreover - contain decisions that are to a greater or lesser extent concrete and specific (decisions relating to the programme and its application). We are of the opinion that an intervention programme that is specific to one or more authorities cannot be considered in itself as a public policy. A programme of interventions that has no outcome is not a policy; it is merely a - possibly indispensable - product among the other constituent elements of a public policy.

6) The key role of public actors: the group of decisions and actions can only be considered as a public policy to the extent that those who take the decisions act in the capacity of public actors: in other words, the involvement of actors belonging to the political-administrative system or private actors with the legitimation to decide or act on the basis of a delegation based on a legal rule is essential. If this condition is not fulfilled, a group of decisions of this kind will be considered as a 'corporative (associative)' or even 'private' policy.

7) Existence of formalised measures: a public policy assumes the production of acts or outputs intended to change the behaviour of groups or individuals.

8) Decisions and activities that impose constraints: traditionally, the majority of actors assume that the decisions made by political- administrative actors are often coercive in nature, but the forms of public action adopted today are as likely to be incentive- based as coercive.

 

Stages of public policy

1) Emergence of the problem – emergence; perception of the problem; definition of the problem and identification of possible causes; representation of the problem; request for public action

2) Agenda setting – selection of the emerging problems; outline and formulation of causality model, response of public powers to problems recognized as being object of the policy

3) Formulation and adoption of the policy programme – definition of the causality model; definition of a suitable and acceptable solutions; filtering between ideal solutions and available resources; selection of instruments

4) Policy implementation –application of the selected solutions; action of the administrative implementation agents

5) Policy evaluation – determination of eventual policy effects; evaluation of extent of impacts, effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, with respect to the original problem.

 

Actors of the public policy

Empirical actors

Actor - either an individual (a minister, member of parliament, specialist journalist etc), several individuals (constituting for example an office or a section of an administration), a legal entity (a private company, an association, a trade union and so on) or a social group (farmers, drug users, the homeless etc).

A group of several individuals constitutes a single actor insofar as, with respect to the policy under consideration, they are in broad agreement and share a common approach as far as the values and interests that they represent and the concrete aims that they pursue are concerned. Every individual, legal entity or social group is considered as an actor once, by virtue of their very existence, they belong to the social field regarded as being relevant to the analysis: An individual in a given field does not qualify as an actor by virtue of his understanding of, or control over, events, nor on the basis of his awareness of his interests and scope for action, nor, a fortiori, because he is aware of his place in history or in the process of social change, or because he participates in the production of society.

In this way, every individual or social group concerned by the collective problem addressed by a policy can be considered as a potential actor capable of being part of the arena of this policy. In fact, the actor’s — more or less active — behaviour influences the way in which the public intervention in question is devised and implemented.

This broad definition of the actor concept means that the analyst must consider all individuals and social groups concerned by a specific collective problem. Such a viewpoint has the advantage of taking account of the fact that public and private actors do not all intervene actively and visibly at all stages of a policy: their behaviour is sometimes directly tangible, but equally it is sometimes hard to identify directly. This depends on, among other factors, the process by which they become aware of their own interests, their capacity to mobilise resources and form a coalition to defend their rights and interests and, finally, their strategic decision either to take action or to remain voluntarily outside the decision-making arena.

If analysts only focus on the behaviour of the most dynamic and enterprising actors, stipulating that passive groups are 'non-actors', they run the risk of overlooking certain factors that are central to an understanding of how a given policy is developed. Analysts sometimes adopt too elitist approach to the actors' game, not taking into account sufficiently the effects induced by the passivity of certain social groups or political-administrative actors who are concerned by the collective problem under consideration. However, that for obvious reasons connected to empirical observation, analysts tend naturally to focus on the behaviour of the most active actors within the context of a policy. It is certainly easier to identify individuals, informal groups and formal organisations who, having access to the necessary resources, participate on an ongoing basis in the conception, adoption and implementation of a policy.

Intentional actors

An actor always disposes of a greater or lesser margin of discretion and of maneuver, depending on the situation in question. Our thesis here is that no social or political field is perfectly structured, controlled or regulated. Actors possess, therefore, a certain degree of freedom but also resources, which enables them to develop strategies and tactics, or even to adopt "goal-oriented behaviour". Thus, we do not seek to deny the influence - that is sometimes quite considerable - that the actors’ institutional and social context has on their decisions and actions. It is proposed that policies should be interpreted as the result of the behaviour of actors who are (partially) autonomous. The area of uncertainty is particularly significant in the context of unforeseen crises (for example, the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, natural disasters).The actors who have to intervene in such circumstances are unprepared and have to cope as best they can with no system to fall back on. This in no way implies that we interpret actors as totally rational beings, motivated only by the maximisation of their personal utility (both material and non-material) and omniscient. For example, for cognitive, emotional and cultural reasons, the rationality of individuals and social groups remains necessarily limited.

We take the view that actors are rational in the sense that they care about the consequences of their own decisions and actions, even if they are unable to anticipate and control all of the effects that stem from these, and especially the adverse or undesirable effects that derive from the cumulative actions and behaviour of individuals. At the same time, we propose a very broad interpretation of the intentions and interests that underlie all human activity: an actor's motivations are manifold, especially because they depend on the experiences and past history of the individual or social group concerned and also on the situation that pertains at a given moment in time and which entails certain constraints as well as opportunities for action.

Policy actors can be described in the following terms:

1) Actors rarely define clear, explicit or coherent objectives. They change them as they go along, if only because the unanticipated consequences of their own actions and those of other actors in the domain of policy compel them to readjust their objectives or re-evaluate their positions. What was a means to an end at one moment becomes an end in itself at another, and vice versa.

2) Although it may sometimes appear erratic, actors' behaviour always has a meaning and a logic of its own. Instead of being necessarily rational in relation to predetermined objectives, it is sometimes quite reasonable given the constraints and opportunities afforded by a given situation.

3) An actor’s “strategic instinct” is characterised by two complementary aspects. On the one hand, an actor tends to go on the offensive when taking advantage of opportunities to improve a position and further immediate interests. On the other hand, an actor adopts a more defensive approach when seeking to maintain and broaden a margin of freedom, that is, the capacity to act in the way wanted at a later stage (indirect intervention on the institutional components of policy).

 

Types of actors

Private and public (political-administrative actors) actors form the triangle of actors

Private actors:

1) Target groups - the actors whose behaviour is politically defined as the [in]direct cause of a problem or who are able to take action to deal with it

2) End beneficiaries - actors who experience the negative effects of a particular problem and whose situation should be improved following the implementation of public intervention.

3) Third-party groups - who are affected indirectly by the policy (negatively = negatively affected third parties, positively = positively affected third parties)

Public actors (political-administrative system) comprise all of a country's governmental (parliament/government) administrative and legal institutions, which have the capacity, legitimised by the legal establishment, to structure any sector of society through decisions of an authoritarian nature.

Main features:

1) sovereignty of public actors: the state is supposed to be the only entity entitled to exercise power of restraint over all other sub-systems and over citizens

2) The administrative organisations of the political-administrative system form an important and relatively independent centre of gravity (for example, in relation to governments and parliaments) in the body of a state's institutions.

3) Relationships between the sub-systems. The political-administrative sub-system transforms 'societal' demands (inputs) into restrictive state actions (outputs).

4) External interactions and internal interactions.