The Nature of Public Policy

Part of the difficulty in describing how administrators make

policy is that the term public policy is itself ambiguous. If, as is

commonly thought, public policy is synonymous with law, then

public administrators are not policy makers. But policy is not the

same as law, court decisions, or even administrative rules and

regulations. Rather, public policy is all of these and more. A

leading policy analyst describes policy as an “existential

phenomenon... much too complex and dynamic to be fully

caught in concepts, models, and themes.” Some scholars see

public policy as the intentions of what officials would like to

accomplish.

Policy is never “set in concrete.” It is constantly changing

and highly subjective. It is how people interpret various actions –

a rationalization of actions taken – rather than some objective

characteristic of these actions. Public policy expert Laurence

Lynn, Jr. writes, “Authoritative decision makers act first then

rationalize the completed action and its consequences.” They may

start with goals and objectives in mind, but there is no public

policy until governmental actions produce consequences that are

perceived by various publics. According to Lynn, “Public policy

can be said to comprise the meanings or interpretations ascribed

by various affected politics to identifiable sequences of

governmental actions based on the perceived or anticipated

consequence of these actions.” The goals of the Education of All

Handicapped Children Act of 1975 was to provide free,

appropriate education in a regular classroom for all handicapped

children. In fact, a number of compromises had to be made

because of lack of resources. The end result was quite different. In

some cases, only a select few were served; in others, only

inexpensive services were provided.

Thus, some saw the legislation as a step in the right direction

while others saw it as a less-than-earnest attempt to help the

handicapped.

Like beauty, public policy is somewhat in the eye of the

beholder. Actual change in governmental actions is not always

necessary for a policy maker to claim success; often “the creation

of a favorable impression is enough”. Some people are better at

this than others. President Reagan and his administrative officials

claimed that they did not have a policy of promoting

discrimination against blacks and women, for example, and yet his

administration tried to remove the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

ruling that denied tax-exempt status to schools practicing racial

discrimination and tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that

racial or gender preferences in hiring and promotion – affirmative

action – were unconstitutional. The Reagan administration’s

public interpretation of its own policy regarding discrimination

was quite different from others’ perceptions of these same actions

– and from the facts themselves.

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