Public Policy Issues

Public Policy Issues

Introduction

Every government or state has a responsibility to ensure that its citizens enjoy safety and security. Therefore, it comes up with public policies to mitigate social issues. The simplest way to describe public policy is the actions taken by a government or a state to address issues affecting its people. Public policies are generated by government or states through the law-making process. Law is part and parcel of public policy. The laws depict what will be done to a person if they do or do not do certain things (Ozawa, 2019).

There are various attributes of public policy discussed below. One, a policy is developed from an issue or a sort of problem that needs attention. The policy is what a state or authority decides to do or not do concerning specific challenges or problems facing its people. The state does this on behalf of the citizens. The government directs the policies towards achieving particular goals or solving some problems. The governments form systems through their ideas or by interacting with customers.

Making policy is a continuous process that does not always have a definite end or beginning. It’s because the decisions of who will benefit from the systems and who will carry its burdens are revised continually. Many problems and issues are affecting the societies and need an intervention. Hence, public policy issues are those things or concerns that a government or authority must attend to through laws and regulations (Weible and Jenkins-Smith, 2016).

Public issues

Let us now take a look at social issues. Mainly, there can never be a public policy without a social problem or societal problem. General concerns, also known as public or social problems, are very different from personal or private matters. Social issues call for an intervention. People perceive them as societal problems that call for the authority or government to react to them and look for solutions. Unlike personal or private issues where the individual is supposed to resolve, the public or social problems require the government to act upon them and look for solutions (Weible and Jenkins-Smith, 2016).

There are several examples that we can give to illustrate the prevalent social issues in a society that need government intervention. One of these is poverty and homelessness. It is a global issue. Research shows that that one-quarter of the population in the world lives in conditions that deteriorate their health and safety as many have no basic human needs to survive. Due to a lack of proper and clean shelter for this vulnerable population, the relevant authority is called upon to react to the situation, including schools and healthcare systems (Weible and Jenkins-Smith, 2016).

Climate change is another social issue. We can confidently say that it is also a global issue. Warmer climate change is a threat to the whole world since it affects its entire population. It is the worst social issue that can affect the human race. The millions of people who already live in severe poverty will be the most affected by this social epidemic. Warmer winters are already in many parts of the world, destructive storms, rainfall, and frequent wildfires. These social issues are calling for government interventions already in several states.

Overpopulation is also another social problem. As the population increases, the resources become scarcer. According to Mathieu (2019), by 2030 the human growth is expected to have a tremendous growth rate. It poses a substantial social issue as already sub-Saharan Africa already faces scarce resources like land for farming because the population is becoming more than a country can sustain. It calls for the people to move elsewhere to curb homelessness and starvation. Immigration stresses is another social issue. People moving from one country to another itself may not be a social issue, but the pressure it transfers to the government programs and social systems causes social problems (Mathieu, 2019). Immigration stresses affect many people. Research shows that a better part of the United States population identifies as immigrants. It causes strain to the resources available and hence calls for a government response.

Another social issue affecting societies around the world is civil rights and racial discrimination. All humans are entitled to equal social and political treatment. Even after the Civil Rights Act was passed over forty years ago, a large percentage of African Americans still attest to living in segregation hence affirming that racial discrimination is a major social issue. Gender inequality is also a major social issue around the world, which requires public interventions. Human Care Availability still poses as a social problem. According to research, many citizens are not able to obtain the necessary medical care due to the cost (Ozawa, 2019). Every sick individual requires medical attention, and hence the governments need to intervene in this problem.

Poor leadership has been, by far, been mentioned by many as a significant social issue. Many social problems connect in subtle ways, but by now, these issues are related to the poor leadership of the governments, corporations, and other groups. Other social items that require public policies are childhood obesity and bullying.

Categories and types of public policies

Public policies constitute government programs, laws, regulations, rules, judgments, and case studies, among others (Jung and Lee,2015). Public policies are in three categories that are, regulatory policies, restrictive policies, and facilitating policies. Restrictive policies are those that hinder or curb certain types of activities or some situations from being carried out or happening. A vivid example of a restrictive policy is when the government increases import and customs duties. This kind of system intends to help the local business by curbing the number of imports into the country. It plans to support the local trading to grow and encourage exports and reduce massive importing.

The other type of public policy is the regulatory policies and practices.  These practices ensure that the sector remains in check and follow the procedures. Examples of these practices are the banking sector, money markets, and stock markets policies, among others. The other type of policy is facilitating policies. The government has several institutions that lead to the growth of business in the economy (Ozawa, 2019). For example, banks and credit institutions.

There are various public policies that countries or governments are putting into action to curb the social issues affecting their people (Jung and Lee 2015). Some of these policies are criminal justice policy. These policies include but not limited to the death penalty, drug policy, and gun control. Another strategy is culture and society policy, which provides for abortion, arts, and civil rights. There is also economic affairs policy, which includes budgets and taxes. The education policy covers elementary, secondary, and higher education. Schools are putting in place measures to control bullying. The environmental policy looks into air quality and global warming. For instance, European Unions have taken significant steps in the control of carbon emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change. Health policy is a substantial intervention by the government to alleviate health issues. These include health insurance and medical care. Efforts have been put in place to reduce childhood obesity, such as adding salad bars to school lunch, and concentrating on physical fitness has seen some improvements. Jung and Lee (2015) state that many people feel that the major problem they are facing is in leadership, governments, and communities are putting up policies to suppress some of the social issues.

Roles of public policies

Public policy is a multidimensional means of solving past, immediate, and future concerns facing the community at large. The significance of public policy is in its salient features. The public policy process is a well-structured process involving the steps of; problem identification, problem analysis, problem diagnosis, action, and ultimately review (Amacher et al., 2019). All these processes directly involve the community, and thus the community needs are well catered. The public policy making process is dynamic and goes into the future. By so doing, both present and foreseeable community challenges are well-taken care. By being goal-oriented, the public policy aims at achieving particular objectives. This feature enables policy implementers to review the effectiveness of the plan and the levels of satisfaction with the laws put up concerning public policies.

Generally, the public policy aims at improving the communal living environment by enhancing the standards of living. Some of the conventional public policies concentrate on improving health, food security, social security, societal integration, enhancing education, and improved social amenities. Enactment and development of the policies help in increasing public confidence in the government and strengthens government effectiveness (Amacher et al., 2019). Enhanced public policing goes a long way in improving the lives of citizens and easing pressure on the government from the electorate. Since the general policing process is a vicious cycle, improvement strategies come up and incorporate into the program.

Public policy issues

Whereas the private problems or issues depend on an individual to resolve, the social issues call for public response. It is because the range of possible public responses is too broad. At times we may point out to the intrusions intended to curb or control social issues. For instance, inflicting physical punishments or depriving persons, locking them up, or even to the extreme situations, kill them. As stated by Braunstein (2019), such responses or policies are to suppress social issues. It is preventing the people who the society labels as problems, for example, juveniles, drug addicts, terrorists, and robbers. There are those people who do not think that social issues are a challenge to social order. Sometimes these interventions are put in place for the well-being of the offender. Such people sometimes respect the toughness and the discipline instilled in them.

On the other hand, policies to enhance or improve the circumstances that cause problems. Thus bringing out social justice, social welfare enhancement, and to an extent to provide a degree of social protection to the citizens. The development of welfare states in many developed countries during the twentieth-century connects with the attempts to suppress the public or social issues. As well as provide the citizens with collective protection from dangers for their economic and social welfare.

With time, a lot of issues shifted from being personal to public problems (Braunstein, 2019). For instance, children attending schools changed from an individual matter to a general concern in the middle of the nineteenth century. Health, which for a very long time had been a private issue, became a public issue financed by the government. For the more substantial part of the nineteenth century, unemployment was not an issue or problem. It was left to individuals and perceived as people refusing to work, but now it is taken as a public policy issue by the governments. Previously, the unemployed were a threat to society, such as being beggars, thieves, and a bad example to the other workers.

As time went by, citizens in industrially advanced societies learned to associate social problems with public policies, involving action by the government. These actions were to reform and curb the conditions that created the general issues. Health public policies arose in a bid to eradicate illness, poverty, and homelessness. The main question has been whether the problems are social and whether public policies are the best remedies. Some still argue that several social issues are private and not public affairs (Braunstein, 2019). Hence do not require social intervention by the government. Hearing such arguments arising in the twentieth century should be a reminder that the central aspect of what is social about public issues is in the way these problems are perceived, understood, and defined socially.

Conclusion

Social problems differ from one state to another. Similarly, different personal problems are public problems in particular societies and specific periods through a complex process of social construction. Social construction means an active process of defining and redefining in which some issues get classified as social problems while others are not. For example, it is not automatic that since unemployment was at one time defined as a public issue, that it will always be a social problem. Simply because unemployment is a social problem today, it does not necessarily mean that it will always be that way and that people will still regard it as a public issue.

A shift from the school of thought that unemployed citizens have problems with the notion that unemployed people are the problems will have a significant impact on the direction of public policy. If we can all agree that lack of employment is a problem resulting from a broader failure of the economy, then the right policy response can be to restore the economy to provide job opportunities and provide financial support in the meantime (Lundan, 2018). However, if a lack of employment is attributed to the lack of relevant skills for unemployed people or unemployed failing to look for jobs, then an appropriate response would be to discourage such citizens from depending too much on the income provided by the state. It would work best by, for instance, cutting down the levels of benefits and offer stricter rules on the entitlement. Also, such people in the society should be encouraged to participate in acquiring the necessary skills training that will enable them to be competent in the job market (Lundan, 2018). Now the emphasis should be for people to shift from the first approach to the second approach.

References

Jung, K., & Lee, S. (2015). A systematic review of RFID applications and diffusion: key areas and public policy issues. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 1(1), 9.

Braunstein, Y. (2019). Information as a commodity: public policy issues and recent research. In Information Services (pp. 9-22). Routledge.

Lundan, S. M. (2018). From the editor: Engaging international business scholars with public policy issues.

Mathieu, D. (2019). Organ substitution technology: Ethical, legal, and public policy issues. Routledge.

Weible, C. M., & Jenkins-Smith, H. C. (2016). The advocacy coalition framework: an approach for the comparative analysis of contentious policy issues. Contemporary Approaches to Public Policy (pp. 15-34). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Amacher, R., Tollison, R. D., & Willett, T. D. (Eds.). (2019). The economic approach to public policy: selected readings. Cornell University Press.

Ozawa, C. P. (2019). Recasting science: Consensual procedures in public policymaking. Routledge.