This article is written by Pippa Catterall, Professor of History and Policy at the University of Westminster in London.

For many people, their most direct experience of a policy is in the form of insurance. This is an example of private policy, undertaken to guard against personal risks.

In a wider sphere, public policy seeks to manage the risks confronting society and provide for the needs and requirements of the public. This, of course, begs the question of who “the public” are, and who gets to designate them and to decide what is and is not done for “the public good”.

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One way of thinking about that is to see the public as consumers of policies that are generally applied across a society, even if those policies may have been designed for the benefit of particular interests and have conspicuously uneven and inequitable effects. To take an example, what a public authority does – such as refuse collection – is an operation rather than a policy. The policy element is in the decision to collect the bins in the first place, and in how issues like recycling are managed in the process.

The role of the public

The public are more consumers than producers of policy. The media may claim to speak for them. Civil society organisations may act as mouthpieces of public interest on issues through mechanisms ranging from protests to litigation. Those in government may respond to what they thereby come to see as public concerns. Yet the public do not generally set the agenda. Their role is largely confined to voting in functioning democracies every few years and electing parties who control the levers of power, then eventually holding them to account for their actions by either re-electing them or kicking them out.

The policies produced by the power elites in government fall into several categories. Some provide broad frameworks, to define and guard against a public bad, such as crime. Some address specific needs, such as infrastructure, social security or environmental regulations. Some provide for the resources to deliver policy, in the form of taxation, procurement or the establishment of agencies. Some attempt to affect economic or social behaviour by, for instance, subsidising certain products or industries or taxing others.

Many policies build on their predecessors. There is thus a path-dependency to many policies. Radical shifts in policy are disruptive and their impacts – not least on electoral behaviour – can be hard to predict. Accordingly, many policy shifts are incremental and carefully managed in terms of presentation.

Policies may originate in one jurisdiction and then be adopted by another. This is particularly the case with those intended to facilitate international trade and exchange. They may also be developed in response to legal action. Litigation can, for instance, reveal that a policy does not have the effects intended, or that it is effectively unenforceable in the courts. This is, however, an expensive and slow means of rectifying bad policy.

Of course, all policies can negatively impact some members of the community. Ultimately, policymaking across a government as a whole is a complex balancing act of priorities, resource allocation and attempts to ensure the coherence of the resulting effects across the whole of society if possible. This is a challenge which proves beyond the capabilities of many policy elites.

The role of political parties

Political parties are more vehicles for putting forward the ideas and programmes on which those elites are elected. They do not tend to produce the policies that turn those ideas into practice. Increasingly in Britain, those ideas are developed not in the parties themselves, but in think tanks funded by a variety of special interests. However, to make these ideas feasible, they often need to be turned into legislation and allocated budgets, processes which are carried out in the UK in the permanent civil service.

An election manifesto is more a shopping list of ideas than a set of detailed policies. It is the civil service that sets out for elected ministers the options to achieve their ambitions. Ministers can then accept or reject that advice. Furthermore, those ministers have an incentive to be seen to be doing something in order to impress the Prime Minister, the press or the public. This can lead to a tendency for much policymaking to be symbolic, rather than effective.

There are various mechanisms which are supposed to guard against a proliferation of badly conceived policies. During the policy formulation process all the stakeholders likely to be affected by the proposed policy – including the general public – are often consulted. However, frequently (particularly in the case of the public) this is only once the aims and basic outline of how the policy will work have been set. Then there are procedures within legislatures for scrutinising proposed legislation and policy processes, though often of limited effectiveness.

The individual may provide for their own wellbeing and guard against risks by taking out personal insurance policies. Public policy in contrast tries to manage these needs and risks across entire populations. The size of the task makes the impacts of any one policy decision difficult to predict. This is why the quality of the information on which a policy is based is crucial. So is the transparency of the decision-making process. Otherwise, how can the public properly hold to account the policymakers who act in their name?

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