ABSTRACT
What is public policy and why the current concern to focus on it, analyse it and reform it? Pursuit of the first question leads one down the tangled path towards a definition where many have been before and from which few have emerged unscathed. There is, as Lineberry and Masotti point out, little in the way of a consistent conceptualisation of the term ‘policy’ itself and pages could be, and have been, filled with competing definitions. 1 The problem may be to provide an account that captures the detail and density of the activities embraced by the policy arena. With this in mind, it is worth considering the following definition of public policy:
A set of interrelated decisions taken by a political actor or group of actors concerning the selection of goals and the means of achieving them within a specified situation where these decisions should, in principle, be within the power of these actors to achieve. 2
