ABSTRACT
Public policy as a field developed as part of the movement towards improved planning, rationalization of governmental processes, and greater accountability and transparency to the public and its officials. While there are many excellent and competing attempts at defining public policy by scholars (Gerston, 1997; Cochran and Malone, 1999; Anderson, 2000; Birkland 2005), public policy can be defined for the purposes of this chapter as the creation and institutionalization of government plans of action, the definition of terms and concepts involved in such policies, and the body of discussion and discourse that surrounds and emerges from policy formulation and deliberation. Dimensions and differentiations within public policy include:
the locus of policy-making, as well as its geographical target and locus of • implementation – local, regional, state-provincial, national or international; types of policy that include ‘substantive’ (addressing what government • wants to do), ‘procedural’ (addressing how government should accomplish its goals and objectives), ‘promoting’ change, control/regulation, or distributing/redistributing certain goods or services (Cochran and Malone, 1999, pp12-14; Anderson, 2000, pp7-18; Birkland, 2005, pp139-149); policy scope, which refers to whether policy is intended to be narrow or far • reaching, long enduring or of a delimited timeframe.
