Randy Spence and Séverine Deneulin

Randy Spence and Séverine Deneulin

Aims of the Chapter • To analyse the different areas of public policy.

• To provide tools for analysing public policy from a human development perspective. • To outline the policy implications of the human development and capability

approach. Key Points

• Public policy involves a course of action and a web of decisions, and cannot be associated with only one moment, one actor, one decision and one action. • Policy is political: the policy process is closely connected to the nature of power itself. • Policy analysis contains both ‘analysis of policy’ and ‘analysis for policy’; both contribute to ongoing policy development and implementation through the monitoring and evaluation functions that connect them.

• A human development approach to policy analysis is based on the notion that all

areas of public policy promote human freedom and flourishing, and that the policy process itself should respect people’s agency.

• From the perspective of the human development and capability approach, some areas of public policy are more researched than others. Aggregate economic performance continues to dominate other policy paradigms in international, goals and practice although alternative views continue to grow.

This textbook has analysed many topics in relation to the human development and capability approach: economic growth, equality and justice, measurement, institutions and markets, democracy, education, health and nutrition, culture and religion. But there is a central piece that is still missing: an examination of

POLICY

the policy implications of the approach itself. Policy permeates our daily living and what options are available to us. Educational policies, health policies, transportation policies, environmental policies or macroeconomic policies, to name a few, ultimately affect what we are able to do. Studying can be very difficult in contexts where governments have no appropriate education policy enabling students to access higher education independently of their parents’ income, or have no macroeconomic policy to ensure relative price stability. One can think of additional examples where ‘policy’ affects one’s daily life. Analysing policy and how it impacts our lives is therefore a cornerstone of the human development and capability approach. Indeed, given that the approach is an evaluative framework for assessing states of affairs, the exercise of analysing the impact of policies upon human flourishing is particularly critical.

Although individuals have policies, policy is generally conceived as being what organizations do. A stated policy is what an organization plans to do or officially says it is doing. A revealed or actual policy is what it is actually doing. Policy occupies a large middle-ground between mission and strategy at the ‘top’ end, and specific programmes, products or services at the detailed implementa- tion end. Policy is made and implemented by government, corporate and non-profit organizations. Combinations of organizations have varying degrees of combined or coordinated policies. For example, coalitions of non-govern- mental organizations, corporate conglomerates and governments (local, regional, national) are themselves combinations of many organizations and agencies.

This chapter is mainly concerned with public policy, that is, what govern- ments do, although it touches briefly on the policy of other organizations. It starts by examining various areas of public policy which are particularly important for human flourishing. It then looks at the fundamental political nature of the public policy process, from its design to its implementation. It concludes by giving some tools for policy analysis from the perspective of the human development and capability approach.