Policy

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For policies on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:List of policies.

A policy is a plan of action to guide decisions and actions. The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, and individuals. The policy process includes the identification of different alternatives, such as programs or spending priorities, and choosing among them on the basis of the impact they will have. Policies can be understood as political, management, financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals.

Contents 1 Goals of Policy 2 Policy Cycle 3 Policy typology 3.1 Distributive policies 3.2 Regulatory policies 3.3 Constituent policies 3.4 Miscellaneous policies 4 Technical uses of policy 5 Other uses of the term policy 6 See also 7 External links 8 References

Goals of Policy

The goals of policy may vary widely according to the organization and the context in which they are made. Broadly, policies are typically instituted in order to avoid some negative effect that has been noticed in the organization, or to seek some positive benefit.

Corporate purchasing policies provide an example of how organizations attempt to avoid negative effects. Many large companies have policies that all purchases above a certain value must be performed through a purchasing process. By requiring this standard purchasing process through policy, the organization can limit waste and standardize the way purchasing is done.

The State of California provides an example of benefit-seeking policy. In recent years, the numbers of hybrid vehicles in California has increased dramatically, in part because of policy changes that provide USD $1,500 in tax credits as well as the use of high-occupancy vehicle lanes to hybrid owners. In this case, the organization (state and/or federal government) created a positive effect (increased ownership and use of hybrid cars) through policy (tax breaks, benefits).

Policy Cycle

In political science the policy cycle is a tool used for the analysing of the development of a policy item. It can also be referred to as a "stagist approach". It includes the following stages:

1. Agenda setting
2. Policy formation
3. Decision-making
4. Policy implementation
5. Policy evaluation (continue or terminate)

Policy typology

Policy addresses the intent of the organization, whether government, business, professional, or voluntary. Policy is intended to affect the ‘real’ world, by guiding the decisions that are made. Whether they are formally written or not, most organizations have identified policies.

Policies may be classified in many different ways. The following is a sample of several different types of policies broken down by their effect on members of the organization.

Distributive policies

Distributive policies extend goods and services to members of an organization, as well as distributing the costs of the goods/services amongst the members of the organization. Examples include government policies that impact spending for welfare, public education, highways, and public safety, or a professional organization's policy on membership training.

Regulatory policies

Regulatory policies, or mandates, limit the discretion of individuals and agencies, or otherwise compel certain types of behavior. These policies are generally thought to be best applied in situations where good behavior can be easily defined and bad behavior can be easily regulated and punished through fines or sanctions. An example of a fairly successful public regulatory policy is that of a speed limit.

Constituent policies

Constituent policies create executive power entities, or deal with laws.

Miscellaneous policies

Policies are dynamic; they are not just static lists of goals or laws. Policy blueprints have to be implemented, often with unexpected results. Social policies are what happens ‘on the ground’ when they are implemented, as well as what happens at the decision making or legislative stage.

When the term policy is used, it may also refer to:

• Official government policy (legislation or guidelines that govern how laws should be put into operation)
• Broad ideas and goals in political manifestos and pamphlets
• A company or organization’s policy on a particular topic. For example, the equal opportunity policy of a company shows that the company aims to treat all its staff equally.

There is often a gulf between stated policy (i.e. which actions the organization intends to take) and the actions the organization actually takes. This difference is sometimes caused by political compromise over policy, while in other situations it is caused by lack of policy implementation and enforcement. Implementing policy may have unexpected results, stemming from a policy whose reach extends further than the problem it was originally crafted to address. Additionally, unpredictable results may arise from selective or idiosyncratic enforcement of policy.

Types of policy include:

• Causal (resp. non-causal)
• Deterministic (resp. stochastic, randomized and sometimes non-deterministic)
• Index
• Memoryless (e.g. non-stationary)
• Opportunistic (resp. non-opportunistic)
• Stationary (resp. non-stationary)

These qualifiers can be combined, so for example you could have a stationary-memoryless-index policy.

Technical uses of policy

In enterprise architecture for systems design, policy appliances are technical control and logging mechanisms to enforce or reconcile policy (systems use) rules and to ensure accountability in information systems.

Other uses of the term policy

• In insurance, policies are contracts between insurer and insured used to indemnify (protect) against potential loss from specified perils. While these documents are referred to as policies, they are in actuality a form of contract - see insurance contract.
• In gambling, policy is a form of an unsanctioned lottery, where players purport to purchase insurance against a chosen number being picked by a legitimate lottery.
• In artificial intelligence planning and reinforcement learning, a policy prescribes a non-empty deliberation (sequence of actions) given a non-empty sequence of states.

See also

• Think tank
• Monetary policy
• Energy policy
• Education policy
• Economic policy
• Macroeconomic policy
• Foreign policy

Wikipedia information about Policy This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Policy". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.