Understanding the Politics of public Policy

By Job Shipululo Amupanda, Omaalala Village, Namibia

There are many various definition of Public Policy . Public Policy was defined by John Dewey in 1927 as about the public and its problems. According to Jenkins (1978), a Policy is ‘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’. Other scholars define Public Policy as that sphere of human activities that requires governmental or social intervention or regulation. Generally and in this context , Public Policy can be defined as a response initiated by the state through the agent of the state called government. It is said to be the one that brings politics and administration together. It should be noted from the onset that Policy can be both action and non-action. Public Policy entails a lot of things, a Policy can be a process, a proposal, programmes, an outcome, model/theory, a decision of government, formal authorisation, field of activities, Policy can be knowledge and some scholars argued that policy can be an art of illusion and duplicity. In today’s world, Public Policy plays an imperative role in ensuring good governance and effective administration provided that the Policy is good, practical, inclusive, context bound and problem solving oriented.

One central thing that Is the telos of my contribution today is the understanding of public policy and the politics around it. It is very important that we go into the inside of the Policy and see how its intestines are and how they function. This is what scholars refer to as Meta Analysis of policy which entails getting a deeper understanding of Policy by looking inside it rather than just looking at it from the outside. In Meta Analysis of Policy we come across the Politics of the Policy. The Politics of the Policy includes four things. It includes what is called INTEREST which can be taken to mean who makes the decision (Agency).We cannot fully understand the rationale of the components of the policy if we do not know who made the policy because in most cases the crafters of the policy make it in such a way that it caters for their interest, so by knowing the agents, we will be able to know the rationale of the outlook of the policy in question. Another component that is very crucial that forms part of the politics of policy is what is called IDEOLOGY. Ideology can be defined into two ways, firstly, Ideology can be defined as a set of ideas on which a political or economic system is based and secondly it can be defined as a set of ideas and attitudes that strongly influence the way people conduct themselves. You can only understand policy better when we look at this factor by identifying the type of Ideology that the framers of such policy have/uses. The next equally important part of the four components of the politics of policy is the INSTITUTIONS. At times referred to as the structures, the institutions that are carrying out the policy can also provide an insight in understanding the Meta or the Politics of Policy. Institutions also have a profound effect on the functionality and the implementation of the Policy. We cannot understand policy without looking at the Institutions. The last of the four is what is called the IMPACTS. John Dewey in 1927 defined Public Policy as the public and its problem. From this Scholar’s definition, herein delivers an issue of problem. A policy is designed many times to address a problem, so Impacts is indeed part of the Politics of the Policy because it gives one to an understanding what result or outcome is the Policy desiring to achieve. For us to understand policy, we need to know the direction and the purpose of the policy.

I have given you the four important factors that embodies the politics of Public policy. I express hope that with these four Is (Interest, Institutions, Ideology and Impact) should help you understand the policy in your institution.

While I welcome other views on the subject within the framework of intellectual contestation of ideas, I appeal to you to make analysis of our policies with a telos of perfecting them in order to build a better Namibia.

Till second half-Hear and be heard