ABSTRACT
Political science needs to reconceptualize what is meant by the term public policy. Political science textbooks, reflecting disciplinary consensus, use a very constrained definition of public policy that focuses on government statements and activities: The composite of laws, rules, regulations, and actions of government, taken together, is characterized as public policy. Government, in this case, is used generically to mean any legally constituted branch, level, or agency of government. The of government part of the definition is presumably what makes the policy public. Hence under this conception of public policy, decisions made by private entities, like the Financial Accounting Standards Board or the American Petroleum Institute, cannot, by definition, be a matter of public policy regardless of how much of an impact they have on the general public.
