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Conceptualizing Public Policy

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Comparative Policy Studies

Part of the book series: Research Methods Series ((REMES))

Abstract

Policy-making involves both a technical and political process of articulating and matching actors’ goals and means. Policies are thus actions which contain goal(s) and the means to achieve them, however well or poorly identified, justified, articulated and formulated. Probably the best-known, simple and short definition of public policy has been offered by Thomas Dye, ‘anything a government chooses to do or not to do’ (Dye, 1972: 2).While many organizations and actors create policies to which their members must adhere, we focus on ‘public’ policies made by governments that affect and influence every member of a nation-state or a subnational jurisdiction. The ‘actions’ we are concerned with in this case are government decisions to act, or not to act, to change or maintain some aspect of the status quo (Birkland, 2001: ch. 1).

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Authors
  1. Michael Howlett
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  2. Ben Cashore
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ottawa, Canada

    Isabelle Engeli

  2. University of Montreal, Canada

    Christine Rothmayr Allison

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© 2014 Michael Howlett and Ben Cashore

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Howlett, M., Cashore, B. (2014). Conceptualizing Public Policy. In: Engeli, I., Allison, C.R. (eds) Comparative Policy Studies. Research Methods Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314154_2

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