Public Policies

What Is A Public Policy?

A real basic definition of a public policy is any type of actual or proposed government action to address social problems.

In your American history or government courses, you learned about the three branches of our government: legislative, executive, and judicial.

The actions that are taken by members of these three branches are public policies. In elementary school, you learned that the legislative branch makes the laws, the executive enforces them, and the judicial interprets them.

Legislative public policies: In global history, laws may be passed by parliaments, dumas, or other legislative bodies. Some governments, of course, do no have three branches of government and laws may be edicts or pronouncements by a king or emperor.

Administrative public policies: When Congress enacted the Social Security Act, it also created the Social Security Administration, an executive or administrative agency, to carry out the law. State and local governments have police forces to enforce criminal laws. The actions of these agencies and police forces are also public policies.

Judicial public policies: Courts at the national, state and local levels interpret the laws. They also punish those who violate laws. Their actions are also public policy.

Revolutions and public policy: Existing governments are sometimes overthrown by revolutions. In global history, you will study the French and Russian Revolutions.

The Global History Public Policy Analayst (GHPPA) may be used to study these and other revolutions. People experience severe social problems prior to a revolution (the first step in the GHPPA). They feel that government policies will never be able to solve these problems. Normally, the GHPPA involves analyzes the policy enacted by the government to deal with the social problem. However, in order to analyze revolutions—actions taken by the people that resulted in overthrowing their existing governments—the revolutionary actions may be considered as public policies.