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Writer's pictureRyan Workman

What is Public Policy?

Updated: May 10, 2020

I have, at this point, a masters degree in public policy and over a year of work experience. Yet I realized recently that I still found it difficult to define what public policy was. I knew many aspects of what it is to do public policy, but I did not have a succinct definition of what public policy is. I have therefore written this post to help clarify, for myself and for others, what public policy is and what it means to work in public policy.


1. What is public policy?


Let us begin by breaking public policy down into its two component parts: 'public' and 'policy'. The 'public' component designates that the policy is governmental, or pertaining to the public. Public policy and private policy do differ in some important ways, but I will expand on that later.

'Policy' is more challenging to define. Most organizations have formal policy of some sort. For example, a company may have policies dictating what employees are supposed to wear. This may seem to suggest that policies are rules, but this is not entirely accurate. Policy can also refer to organizational action and strategy. For example, many governments are currently implementing austerity measures, which means that they are implementing various (policy) actions to reduce their budget deficit. It is also entirely sensible to talk about policies of non-action, since choosing what not to do is an essential part of deciding what to do.


A more complicated issue is whether policy needs to be offical in order to exist. It could be argued that patterns of behaviour constitute policy. For example, in some countries bribes are just a part of government business. This is never official policy, yet it is a consistent feature of government behaviour.


Finally, there is the issue of law. The creation of law is a public policy act, but the enforcement and interpretation of law is not, at least in countries where a gap is maintained between the legislative and judicial branches of government.

I propose the following definition: 'public policy' refers to action(s) taken, not taken, or rule(s) adopted by a government.'


2. What does it mean to work in public policy?


Given the above definition of policy, the scope of what constitutes 'policy work' is very broad. Essentially anyone who has been involved in organizational decision making, has contributed to the implementation of new rules or the enforcement of old ones, or has critiqued existing rules or actions have participated in organizational policy. However, those who identify themselves as working in or on policy are primarily either public employees or experts on government policy.


'Public' policy differs from private policy in two key ways. First, it pertains to a great many more people and organizations than private policy, meaning that it is usually more complex and that its creation and interpretation is of greater consequence. Second, public policy is political, both because citizens and organizations involve themselves in it (e.g. lobbyists, journalists), and because the success or failure of policies is one of the primary metrics for evaluating the success or failure of politicians and governments.

A rough and ready division of public policy workers is as follows: there are policy makers, policy advisors, policy influencers, and policy scrutineers.


Policy makers are those empowered to direct the goals and objectives of a government (e.g. the Prime Minister of Canada and their cabinet). Policy advisors support policy makers by ensuring that they have the information they require. Advisors may be subject-matter experts (e.g. academics), or they may be experts in policy-making in general (e.g. civil-servants). Policy influencers are those who seek to influence policy, including lobbyists, charities, and think-tanks. Policy scrutineers are those organizations and individuals who examine and evaluate the effectiveness of government policy, including opposition party-members, monitoring bodies, and journalists, among others.


3. What is the difference between subject-matter experts and policy experts.


Public policy requires inputs from all manners of experts. Economic policy draws on economists, health policy is supported by doctors and medical researchers, public-work projects are informed by engineers and designers. Policy workers such as civil servants will often be subject-matter experts themselves (e.g. health professionals who move on to work in health policy). Perhaps more central to their work as policy experts, however, public-policy workers are synthesizers and conveners. They take expertise and research, and identify where it can be feasibly applied. They work with politicians to translate political mandates into concrete programs. They facilitate dialogue with public servants and interest groups. They are, in other words, generalists who are strongly connected in their local environment.


4. Summary


Public policy refers to actions taken or decisions made by governments. Given the variety of issues governments must act on, policy requires input from experts of all kinds. One of the key dimensions of working as an expert in public policy itself is synthesizing a broad sweep of inputs, including political priorities, academic expertise, points of social tension, in order to develop and negotiate the concrete outputs of government.


Cover Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

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