Conceptualizing Public Policy

Abstract

Policy making takes place in a context of interdependence. This statement is uncontroversial and there are many examples of cases in which decision-makers in one country (or state, city and so on) are somehow influenced by the choices made in other countries (or states, cities, and so on). For instance, consider the following exchange on ‘Big Society’, a project by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, aiming to reinvigorate civil society in the context of drastic cuts in public spending:1 Francis Maude (the minister for the Cabinet office) was unconcerned about the unevenness of services that Big Society is likely to entail. In his view, one of the programme’s key virtues was its potential for heterogeneity. ‘People will associate to form a bigger, stronger society in many ways which will be random,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fantastically different in different places.’ ‘What if it’s fantastically better in some places?’ I asked. ‘The advantage of where we are with technology is that it becomes much easier for the ones where it isn’t fantastic to look at what’s going on where it’s fantastic and draw from it,’ he replied.