Forming Public Policies

There are many factors to consider when forming public policies within the American government system. Public policies can take a few different forms. They can be an offensive strategy, designed to have the government take action. They can also be defensive in nature, by means to stop the government from taking action. Policies can be written to address Domestic issues or issues that affect our Foreign policy. Regardless of the nature of the policy, they are all formed in the same basic steps. Policies are processed through six steps, that are influenced mostly by education, lobbying, campaigning and campaign contributions. The six steps are: identifying a problem, agenda setting, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, and policy evaluation (Lenz, Timothy O., and Mirya Holman, 2013). As the issues are processed through the different stages, agendas are formed and pushed by lobbyist and legislative staff. Lobbyist are hired to negotiate with all three branches of government to press …show more content…
The first step of recognizing that there is an issue that the government needs to address, sets the platform for how the agenda is developed. Many times the policy is a direct reflection of personal and political ideologies that are brought to the forefront so they can get the attention of the government to resolve (How Governmental Policy is Made, 2005). To truly understand the issue and identify it appropriately, you must understand the problematic conditions leading to the issue. The aforementioned groups can take a proactive approach by witnessing, firsthand the cause and effect of the problem, they can read about the issue in books, articles or stories and lastly and they can be informed by others that can show or teach them about the issue (Smith,