Research in policy analysis: the approach paradigms

Abstract

This paper is addressed to the study of the process of public policy, its evolutionary aspects and applications. The term policy has come to be used in different ways in public administration and business management orientations. Administrators, for instance use policy in its original sense to mean a course of action formulated by a collective constituency, or a legislative body.[l] On the other hand, the management people, especially, in India use the term 'policy' rather mechanistically, (and imprecisely) to mean merely a set of guidelines which may be used to formulate an official course of action. This latter interpretation, often, negates the basic principle that a policy must evolve out of the "pol" (a collective in Greek, equivalent to "palli" in Dravidian) and must continue to be anchored in the collective forms of rationality. Such an anchorage would justify the requirements of legitimacy, sovereignty, autonomy, and hierarchy, in the cybernetics of decision-making