Planning and the policy cycle

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Planning and the policy cycle

• Planning is a public function. Its purpose is to
  promote a more convenient, attractive and
  equitable pattern of development than the kind of
  development produced through unregulated markets
  (Self in Gleeson and Low2000, 217).

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Planning and the policy cycle

• Government - formal institutions of public
  discussion, planning, decision-making and
  administration
• Governance - the set of formal and informal
  institutions within and beyond government,
  providing the conditions for ordered rule and
  collective action

3
Structures and functions of government

• Government has three official structural
  components
• legislative, judicial, executive
• The Executive
• Ministerial and agency activities in chains of
  accountability
• Cabinet function
• clearinghouse
• information exchange
• arbitration
• decisions
• coordination
• guardianship of strategies

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Structures and functions of government

• Public servants
• providers of service delivery, administration,
  policy advice to Ministers and Parliament
• apolitical
• Government also has three functional components
• government as politics - politicians, parties,
  advisors
• government as policy - goals, strategies,
  directions embracing wider public sector
• government as administration - service delivery,
  law enforcement

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Planning and the policy cycle

• Planning as domain of governance
• concerned with provision of services
• Planning as approach to governance
• seeking democratic, equitable and effective
  steering of state apparatus for benefit of
  citizens
• The role of public policy
• course of action adopted using rational means
  government polity

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Planning and the policy cycle

• Public policy is
• intentional and designed
• decisions, consequences
• structured, orderly
• political and administrative
• dynamic
• problem/process/innovation orientation
• complex
• value laden
• created amidst uncertainty (risk)

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Planning and the policy cycle
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Planning and the policy cycle
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Planning and policy actors
Policy is a discontinuous series of actions,
played out simultaneously across multiple arenas,
given unity only through the selection and
synthesis of a narrator (Bridgman and Davis,
1998, 27) Who is the narrator? Who speaks for
whom, in what contexts, using what language,
demeanour and style, to what ends and with what
effects?