Malaysia Process On Policy Formulation

12 June 2014

Policy Formulation Process

Policy formulation varies from countries to countries. It will depend on the type of political structure and philosophy of one State. The world trends also may have influenced on the overall practice of a nation. Sometimes, such trend may result acceptable or radical outcome.

Policy Models

Public Policy varies from one another and some based on several models such as :
a) Institution model – policy may result from an instituitional ouput.
b) process model –policy as a political activity
(c) group – policy as group equilibirium which means that the interaction among groups will result indicative demands(formal and informal)
(d) Elite model – policy as elite preference rather than the mass opinion. The normal people are apathetic and ill-informed about public policy.
(e) rational model –policy as efficient goal achievement. It maximizes net value achievement after taking into consideration all aspect of denominators such as the values of the society, available alternatives, consequences, measures, and priorities of the most efficient policy.
(f) incremental model – policy as variations on the past. It is a continuation on the past government activities.
(g) game –theory model- policy as rational choice in competitive situation. It involve study of the rational decision in which two or more entities have choice to make decision and
(h) System Model – as system output .It is a response of political system where the force initiated from the environment itself (inputs-outputs relationship).

Public Policy In Malaysia

Scantility public policy in Malaysia is designed generally upon the requirement of the political and social structure and the future demand of the nations as whole. In Malaysia the social and political system are very closely related to the creation and formulation of public policy.
First is through political channel that means the policy is initiated through Cabinet orders or through the recommendation of several political reigning parties. Second is through administrative processes at the ministerial level. Since a policy has implication on the administrative machinery, the drafted policy is discussed at several high – level of government meetings. Third is through the combination of both processes via integrated approaches/interaction.

Policy making process

In general, policy making process in Malaysia has to go through several stages such as identifying the arising problem,  planning, and recommending/formulating suitable alternatives, legitimizing policies, implementing the suitable action policy, coordinating various events to suit the established policy and finally evaluating the effectiveness of such policy. Upon all processes, policy revision is vital nowadays due to the development of complex society in the modern era. Moreover, the roles played by certain groups are also essential to provide a better input in the content of the policy. In general, three players are identified: the politicians and government public administrators; the public’s and the related interest group.  The first group is the major players to be responsible in ensuring the success of the policy implementation. This group can be refined as the cabinet minister, members of parliament and high-level of government officials. The policy is implemented under the jurisdiction of the constitution and government regulations. Under the constitution, the federal, state and local governments are given constitutional rights to implement public policy. As for the publics, they can act individually or form interest groups to put forth their ideas and needs for government consideration. However, these individuals and interest groups do not automatically have exact power to formulate a public policy or playing as a major actor. Still, their movement can sometimes get a kind of strong public support through their campaign and activities and they also can make the policymaker to understand a ground problem in a clear vision to resolve the arising problems. Some even use the mass media as their tool to convey their intention toward the government and to this extent, recently this mode seems to be quite effective to trigger the government machinery.

Coordinating agencies

To understand the means of implementation for diversified types of policies among ministries; therefore we need to explore the coordinating machinery that involve in such as process. The essential component of coordination within the government machinery lies initially at the federal level where one of which is trough the cabinet and the cabinet committees. Three most important councils known as the national development council (NDC),  the national economic council (NEC) and the national security council (NSC) assist the cabinet to deal with related fields such as coordinating implementation of development programs and projects under NDC; planning on  economic aspects under NEC and security aspect under NSC.  These councils chaired by the prime minister himself. Since major component of policy deals with the development aspect, the  national development planning committee (NDPC) has been set up to evaluate and restructure all plans of the development programs drawn by various government ministries and agencies. The chairman is the secretary to the government and the secretariat is the economic planning unit, Prime Minister Department.


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