Conclusion: Public Policy Theory and Democracy: The Elephant in the Corner

Abstract

Democracy is a wounded mammoth, looming large but mainly ignored by policy theorists. While serving democracy was a foundational goal of the policy sciences, few public policy scholars today mention democracy (or its absence), and they certainly do not use it as a criterion for evaluating policy. In this chapter, we probe why and how policy scholars turned away from the topic, and examine the insignificant stature of the subject in contemporary approaches, including those covered in this book. Our response to this deficiency is to offer a democracy-centered approach that considers the two-way relationship of citizens to policy and vice versa. Electoral and other policies affect citizen involvement across the board, but these same policies also benefit some, burden others, and send messages that affect citizens’ attitudes, orientation, and participation.