ABSTRACT
The public-policymaking system is only a subsystem of society, and interacts constantly with culture, public opinions, social groups, economic, religious, and educational institutions, and all other components of society. Various types of societies differ significantly in how much autonomy the public-policymaking system enjoys and in how strong the society-shaping effects of public policymaking are compared with the policy-shaping effects of society. At one extreme, we have the avant-garde developing states, in which directed social change is the main aim of specific policymaking cadres. At the other extreme, we have the modem western democratic state, in which policy is presumed to be guided by the wishes of the population and does very much reflect the values and relative strengths of a heterogeneous set of social power centers. Even in the pure avant-garde developing state, the operation of the public-policymaking system is circumscribed and basically shaped by the social ecology. Diffuse social characteristics, as well as the activities of widespread power centers, determine the features of public policymaking even more in other types of countries and particularly in modem western democratic states.
