Public Policy: Governmental Roles, Citizen Impact and Alternatives

This essay delves into the realm of public policy, examining its significance in addressing societal challenges and shaping the lives of citizens. It explores how governments utilize public policies to respond to citizen needs, highlighting the purposive nature of these actions and their impact on various aspects of life, including criminal justice, civil rights, and economic stability. The essay discusses the role of policy makers and the importance of public involvement in policy formation, especially in democratic systems. It analyzes the structure of the US government, outlining the functions of the Judiciary, Legislature, and Executive branches. Furthermore, it examines the importance of public policies, providing guidelines for governance and offering citizens a means to assess governmental performance. The essay addresses the complexity of policy making and the need to consider diverse perspectives and alternative approaches to ensure effective and equitable outcomes. Finally, it explores specific areas of public policy, such as social, health, educational, environmental, criminal justice, and economic policies, emphasizing the role of government in each of these areas and the importance of stakeholder involvement. The essay concludes by emphasizing the vastness of policy study and its importance in informing various sectors and guiding decision-making processes.

Running head: PUBLIC POLICY
Public policy
Daniel Wood
Southern Arkansas University
September 28th, 2018

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The reason why citizens in any given country have a ruling authority is to try to solve the
daily problems that ordinary citizens face in an organized manner. Every government have its
way of addressing the issues that the citizens raise. However, in most of the circumstances, the
authority makes use of public policies. The term public policy refers to the means in which the
administration used to respond to the needs of the members of the society. Public policy is
purposive and a course of action that perceive problem of an constituency and constructs a
particular political process and adopts it to resolve the problem for example- policies for criminal
justice, civil rights, drug policy, arts, gun control, abortion but it is important to know who
actually enforces and influences the formation of policy formation. The first concern is general
public because most of countries follow democracy in which citizen affects the policy. Policy
makers have the ability to hold offices and senate and they are supported and vested in power by
acquiring votes from their constituencies. Government is responsible for policies forming such as
environmental policies to treat air quality and global warming. Economic policies considers
budget and taxation policy and undertakes measures to support when economy is in recession.
Educational policies consider that it is important to a person to have and access basic elementary
and secondary education. Inclusion to these, new agricultural policy in US is formed due to
unique geography, history, and weather. Agricultural policies have been formed to support
industrialization especially commodity-based agriculture. The federal government developed the
Dietary guidelines for Americans that emphasizes consumption of food produced by large-scale
farming (Milevska, Chichevalieva, Ponce, and Winkelmann, 2017). According to Dunn, (2015).
For example, if it is a matter of security, the government can come with a directive that
maintains a certain number of police of police officers in a specific region. The study of public
policies aims at analyzing how the government come up with essential programs to address the

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nation’s challenges. Although most policies are made to favor the maximum population but as
different people has different perception, any rule can be beneficial to particular groups but on
the other side it can be unbeneficial for to greater population (Sheikh, Sood, and Bates, 2015).
Those who study public systems enjoy various advantages. They can assist in coming up with
directives that solve poverty, health problems and address the general human rights in reference
to Hill & Hupe, (2014). The best policy-making platform here is politics. Public policy
determines the present and future decisions that both private individual, private institutional
actions designed in order to solve the given and prevailing problem. Policy makers involves and
undertakes a combination of processes that includes identifying the problem, formulating the
proposals to resolving method, legitimating public policy, implementing it and finally evaluating
it. Some of the example of public policies are EPA (Environmental Protection Act), Public health
law, NACCHO (National Association of Country and City Health Officials), HIS program, Food
and Drug Administration (FDA), National Drug Control Policy and other LPHA (Local public
health agency) (Sheikh, Sood, and Bates, 2015).
Public policy refers to medium the government use responds to the social challenges
regarding social, political and economic problems. For example, in the case of US, if the
government have identified that many people are not able to afford the medical care, the
Congress can pass some rules to ensure everyone can access treatment in reference to Vedung,
(2017). One way of doing it is coming up with medical insurance for every citizen.
On the other hand, the federal government of America have three main branches which
include Judiciary, Legislature and the executive. Beginning with the Judiciary, it is made up of
Federal courts and the Supreme court. All of the three branches have different functions such as
legislature creates the law. The law is formulated by elected body after a intense discussion

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within the senate. They also delegate some decision making power to executive to ensure that
they inspect whether a proper framing of rules are formed or not. Executive is an appointed body
sit in senate and is appointed by legislatives. This body is in charge of implementation and
enforcement of law. Judiciary is a body that punishes the one who breaches and do not follow
these rules. United States congress is the legislative branch of federal government. Moreover, a
senate is made up of one from each state whether the population is less or more. Executive power
is held by president of US. Power is delegated to the cabinet members. This branch enforced the
establishment of Supreme Court in US. The judiciary functions to listen to cases and
controversies (Nepstad et al., 2014). All these courts have judges of different levels.
Consequently, the primary function of the Judiciary branch interprets what the laws mean. After,
the interpretation the judges use the rules to determine various cases that have been laid before it
in reference to Scalia, (2018). The second arm of the government is Legislature. The main work
of legislature is to make and amend the laws, approve the government appointees and declare
war between American and other nations. It is mainly comprised of the house of the
representatives and the Senate. The third branch is the executive arm of the government. It is
made up of the president and the cabinet members. The role of the executive is enforcing and
carries out laws. For instance, the cabinet members advice the government on how to run the
state. Simple justification of government act as a protector that protects citizens from violence.
There are numerous essentials of public policies. The primary importance is that it
provides a guideline in which the authority governs people within the set duration. For instance,
every political party have a manifesto that it intends to fulfil when the citizens give it
opportunity. Once it is on power, the government would use the policies to guide it on what to
accomplish at a specific time according to Morone & Kersh, (2016). On the other side, the

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citizens have an opportunity to examine the government using the strategies they have set in
place. For instance, if it was a directive to provide free maternity, have the government fulfilled
its promise? Everybody would like to be part of the rulers that meet its obligations. If by any
chance the government fails to achieve the public policies, it will automatically fail to get
support in the next general election according to Wilson, (2017).
The relevant public policy in the context is the directive that the government have given
concerning abortion. It shows that no one should abort, the life of an individual begins at
conception. There it means that the person who commits abortion is a killer and can face severe
penalties including that of a life sentence. The policy ensures that life is highly valued no more
deaths would be as a result of abortion. The senate often debates on domestic policies that
addresses health, safety, and educational welfare of the citizens. Social policy relates to issues
faced by general public or everyday citizens. The government undertakes social insurance
programs such as social security and unemployment insecurity during recession. It includes cash
assistance, housing assistance, several public assistance programs and food stamps (Zhang,
Yang, Wang, Gillespie, Clarke, and Yan, 2015). Health policy focuses on providing the adequate
two meals for a day and Medicare facilities. Public health policy implements and enforces
regulation in regards to protect them from food scarcity or nutritional less food (Gerston, 2014).
Educational policy is concerned with education of citizens. Generally, primary and secondary
education is the purview of government and moreover, federal and state senate have involved
completely. In US, department of education is at cabinet level. Environmental policy focuses on
regulating in such a manner that citizens interacting with the environment for their business
profits should not hamper the renewable resources especially which cannot be recycled.
Government policies attempts to make such programs that can aware the public how to recycle

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or reuse those products. Criminal justice policy focuses on law and order. It involves the
behavior that is illegal and perpetrators are punished. It also involve crime prevention programs
such as anti-trust campaigns. Economic policy attempts to maintain a favorable and healthy
economy such as currently government has been encouraging existing and huge domestic
ventures to enter in international market. Apart from this, it has also started promoting new
ventures with new business ideas (Head, and Alford, 2015).
Even though the public policies create an effective way of governing citizens, there is an
instance that the society still blames the government. It is therefore essential to get some
alternatives to come up with the policies. The first issue is the priority. The government
sometimes come up with directives that do not address current issues. The reason is that the
political parties do not consult widely. It is imperative that the authority should involve other
avenues such as the non-governmental organization to make sound policies. The issue like health
matters should receive priorities. The second alternative way is to consult the ordinary citizens
on what things they need to be given priority thus creating a balance of the policies. It is very
important to understand that a government cannot adopt socialist policy wholly. It has to focus
and undertake traits of capitalist economy because it would not be able to stand among other
countries in economic terms in this globalized globe. Hypothetically, even if the country has
surplus resources to serve its public in every field than also it is not sure that utility and wants of
public is finished or they are satisfied. A government should be combination of both socialism
and capitalism traits (Chetty, 2015).
In conclusion, policy study is a vast area. It assists the individuals with information that
would support various sectors to come up with directives. When making policies, the
government should have priority and involve every stakeholder.

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Economic Review, 105(5), pp.1-33.
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Gerston, L.N., (2014). Public policy making: Process and principles. US: Routledge.
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management. Administration & Society, 47(6), pp.711-739.
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