POLS 3250 Chapter Notes -Policy Analysis, Satisficing, Bounded Rationality

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 3250
• Professor: Tim Mau

Document Summary

Public policies are an essential element in modern democracies in that they provide both guidance for government officials and accountability links to citizens. When government actors are guided by policy, they presumable are taking a course of action that has been thought through in terms of the nature of the problem they are addressing and the circumstances they face. The importance of policy to democratic governance has experiences a resurgence in recent years. Rational model: all of these definitions are grounded in a rationale model of what it means to make decisions and respond to problems: policy or strategy is formulates consciously, preferably analytically, and made explicit and then implemented formally. Emergent strategies: consistent patterns of behavior that emerge of form rather than being planned. In this perspective, policy is what governments actually do, not that whey say or intend. Every policy has 3 key elements: the definition of the problem: the central element of a policy statement.