Public Policy Formulation

Public Policy is determined and judged by a set of ideals held simultaneously by policy makers and by the public which judges a program. We have discussed the ways policy is formulated, enforced, and judged by both the public and the government. Policy and implementation are of the utmost importance to the people effected and the people who are responsible for its implementation. Public policy helps define what the government is or is not, creates rights and benefits, and otherwise describes the will of the policy makers, the government, and the citizens that they represent, to be implemented by the bureaucrats tasked with realizing this will. Policy formulation occurs for a myriad of reasons. The public, whether that public be of a general …show more content…
The funding of one program may be directly contrary to the goals of another policy, i.e. The Affordable Care Act requires funding from both the federal government and the state government to achieve the results that were desired by the policy makers, however the state governments have not all agreed to this funding instead choosing the desires of the populations of their states and thus not contributed to the Act despite it still effecting the citizens in the state. When policies conflict, particularly a policy that effects a great number of people, the results typically end in neither policy achieving the outcomes that were desired by the parties responsible for the policies. Policy gridlock, when policy makers cannot agree even enough to get a policy passed to achieve any goals, is very common in American politics. To avoid these detrimental interactions between policies, policy makers can resort to compromises on their policies to form a policy that functions correctly and may achieve the desires of both parties rather than one party winning out over the other one. Another approach to policy conflict is for policies to be changed gradually over time, otherwise known as Incrementalism, to such a degree that it does not draw the ire of the public or other policy makers due to its minor change in effect on the lives of voters or otherwise. Incrementalism in policies seeks to implement a change over a longer frame of time to avoid conflicts with the public or for policy makers to write or decide on policy that will interrupt this process. A one percent increase in taxes will draw far less attention from the public than a ten percent increase in taxes. Most policies in the United States are enacted through long term incremental policy changes to eventually reach the desired goal. The problems presented by incrementalism in policy making are typically seen as the