Making Public Policies (A study in political field to the stages of process of making the policies of the state)

Abstract

This study seeks to identify the stages which the process of making public policies & their analysis are going through in order to illustrate their significance in the cycle of public policies of state; and to identify the nature of their interactions, as well as the roles which played by the official and unofficial actors through it. The track of this process might be different, by its measures and aspects, from a state to another, because of the various factors of the type of political system, economic and social case, prevailing values of society and the extent that policy makers take into account about the needs and demands of people, and the size of influence resulted by the parties participating in this process, as well as its activity to direct the policies and other influencing factors. But, although there is a difference between states, in the field of measures and procedures, it is possible to extraction a general form of stages indicating an action that define the problem and to recognize it, and study its dimensions and to select the aim of dealing with it in order to choose the possible alternatives to solve it, and to compete among these alternatives to choose the best and endorse it as a binding public policy which seeks to solve the problem in a suitable and acceptable way, and to adopt the alternative as a law, legislation, or decree. And in spite of the participation of individuals and nongovernmental groups in making public policies, this process, first of all, remains a government activity characterized, by its nature, a large degree of complexity and interlacement, and variety of participating actors whose values and interests are, totally or partially, contradictory. Unlike many previous studies about making public policies which concentrated on procedural and professional sides of this process, the study gave high priority to the political side, because of its significance in making policies. The study has demonstrated that making public policies is a political activity even though it had scientific methods and shared by executive and administrative systems. And this activity aims to meet the demands and needs of society, or to solve general problems, and institute for certain values. Thus, the stability of political system and its legislation depend on the success that made!