ABSTRACT
The legitimacy of the government to make decisions on behalf of the polity in this way relies on those regulated and controlled trusting its right to make the rules. In a democracy government needs support from the polity to legitimise its right to change existing patterns of behaviour. A democratic system is said to exist where power is generally dispersed through participate decision-making process, now commonly expressed through election processes and pressure groups. The state emphasises public power over individual power: to do this it depersonalises the use of power through the rules and procedures of its institutions. Government policy-making develops in three stages: the initiation stage, the processing stage and the implementation stage. Pressman and Wildavsky suggest that 'implementation may be viewed as a process of interaction between the setting of goals and actors geared to achieving them'. With a network of interests at play it is not surprising to find that policies are rarely clearly articulated mandates.
