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.
