ABSTRACT
Policy network is an assortment of inter-related policy actors interested—for civic, professional, intellectual, or selfish reasons—in pursuing a matter of public policy. The concept policy networks evolved from related notions such as policy subsystems, issue networks, cozy triangles, and iron triangles. All of these phrases depict policymaking processes that reside outside the formal categories of the representative government model. From the vantage point of public administration they are significant because they imply the presence of political administration as opposed to neutral, scientific administration. The ubiquity of private lobbying organizations as well as a growing intergovernmental web of associations was an increasingly apparent actuality of the public policy process. Some observers contend that the network form is a third type of social structure, distinct from either markets or hierarchies, two forms of social structure that, rightly or wrongly, dominate theoretical formulations among students of public policy and administration.
