Essay On Public Policy Making

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Public Policy Formation “Public policy making is a part of politics and political action” (Almond, 1978). By simple definition politics can be defined as: activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power. In this essay we will discuss public policy, public problem, policy stakeholders, and the process of public policy formation and why is regarded as political rather than technical in nature. Malawi free primary education policy will be taken as an example for purposes of elaborating the political nature of public policy making. It is necessary to understand key public policy terms and their meaning before going into details. Public policy is defined by different scholars, but for purposes of this essay we will adopt (Anderson, 1976) who defined public policy as 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 those decisions should in principle be within the power of those actors to achieve. By the definition alone there is involvement of power, government and political actors in the policy making who are always in…show more content…
The most dominant stakeholder in policy making is the government which made up executive, judicially and legislature, the heads of these branches of government are appointed by elected presidents or members of parliament, therefore, they are influenced to serve the interest of the government. It is through them that the government implements policies that will have political benefit, no government can enact a law or a policy that is likely to make the governments
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