A Note on “Public Policy”

Abstract

Normally in political studies the term public policy is construed to encompass the societally binding directives issued by a society's legitimate government. We usually consider government, and only government, as being able to “authoritatively allocate values.” This common conception pervades the literature on government policy-making, so much so that it is hardly questioned by students and practitioners of political science. As this note attempts to demonstrate, some re-thinking seems to be in order. For purposes of analysis in the social sciences, this conceptualization of public policy tends to obscure important realities of modern corporate society and to restrict unnecessarily the study of policy-making. Public policy is held to be public simply and solely because it originates from a duly legitimated government, which in turn is held to have the authority (within specified limits) of formulating and implementing such policy. Public policy is public then, our usual thinking goes, because it is made by a body defined somewhat arbitrarily as “public”: a government or some branch of government. All other policy-making is seen as private; it is not public (and hence to lie essentially beyond the scope of the disciplines of poliitcal science and public administration) because it is duly arrived at by non-governmental bodies. Thus policy analysts lead us to believe that public policy is made only when a government body acts to consider some subject of concern, and that other organizations are not relevant to the study of public policy.

Public‐private Policy: An Introduction

“…In the increasing literature on the role of non-governmental organizations there is a recogmtion of private governments performing tasks beyond issue identification and lobbying. Vaison (1973), Nadel (1975), and Lindblom (1966) have argued that there is a positive private role in making public policies.…”

“…Thus we include the corporations which not only affect policy formation but also participate in the implementation of public policies; churches, illustrated by the role of the Catholic Church in abortion policies and of various churches in given communities or even states on a broad range of issues; labor unions which are often more persuasive on some issues than all other institutions; professional associations particularly as they participate in the setting of standards or levels of public performance; foundations and privately endowed institutions which perform public functions; and other organizations which bind their members to rules, regulations, and actions of the body. Robert Vaison's (1973) discussion is accepted;…”