About Policies

Policies and Policy Analysis

Policies are written guidelines that serve as the framework for the majority of choices made at various levels of government. The effectiveness of a policy is determined by how well the policy’s reasoning justifies the recommended course of action. A policy analysis outlines the problem at hand and assesses the reasoning and implementation.

Termination of Government Programs

Policies are the techniques that the government employs to address specific concerns. Termination in public policy refers to the intentional end of government programs. If government programs complete their goals or become redundant or dysfunctional, the government may consider discontinuing them. However, terminating government initiatives is difficult and infrequent for a variety of reasons. Government programs or functions are considered as public goods in economics. Government programs are meant to provide certain goods and services that can be easily accessed like for instance security or education (California State University, Long Beach). They are designed to help people, especially the poor ones. As such, there is always fear within government cycles that termination of government programs may lead to suffering. There is also the high cost of terminating government programs. Immediate termination of government programs can cost people their jobs. The government must spend money to pay those employees who cannot be reassigned. A lot of time and resource are sunk into government programs, and there is always reluctance on the side of policy makers to admit that a program has failed (California State University Long Beach).

Notable Case: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

A classic case of a government program that should have been terminated is Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However, the government program survived the assault when a few Republican senators refused to vote for the legislation that would replace ACA (Frankel, 2016).

The Role of Policies in Government Decision-Making

Policies are what drive government decision-making process. A good policy must be readable, clear and concise despite the complexity of the problem it is attempting to address. Policy analysts determine if there any merit in an argument contained in a policy.

Reference

California State University Long Beach Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration. (n.d). Women & Public Policy. Retrieved Oct. 19, 2017, from http://web.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa590/terminat.htm

Frankel, J., (2016). Why Obamacare Survived. Belfer Center. Retrieved Oct. 19, 2017, from https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/why-obamacare-survived