What Are The Limitations Of Public Policy

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Discuss the arguments made by scholars such as Thomas Dye, Hebert Simon, Charles Lindblom and Edward Woodhouse among others, for the need to recognize the limitations of public policies in eliminating socio-economic and political problems.

Introduction.
The science of decision making has over the years captivated and produced many scholars of repute who have become authorities such as Thomas R. Dye and William Dunn. Not only individuals have grown to be giants of authorities in the field of public policy, but institutions like the Brookings Institution in the United States of America and Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA) have been established. The public and private organizations annually disburse funds to sponsor …show more content…

Public policy can be defined as “What ever governments choose to do or not do” (Dye, 2008, p 2). In the context of this essay, public policies are a set of actors by the government in order to reach out to the masses. The ministries and departments are mandated to deliver specific mandates in the form of public goods and services.
Limitations of public policies are a set of factors that distort public policy to resolve socio-economic and political problemes faced by the society.
Socio-economic problems. Thomas R. Dye term those to be maladies refers to socio-ecomic problems
Political problems or issues has to do with government or politics. This may include issues related to party politics or a political systems or social, environmental or other issues as determined by the voting …show more content…

As a result, research and public policies are designed to try and solve the problems. Dye (2008, p 7) observed that, in the American context the problems faced by communities include; ingnorance, crime, poverty, racial conflict, inequality, poor housing and ill health. It follows that in attempting to resovle these issues there are limitations that disturb the good process of public policy for the benefit of the society. Dye (2008, p 7) said, “there are many reasons for tempering our enthusiasim for policy analysis, some of which are illustrated in the battle over education policy”. The reasons or limitaions include; limits on government power, disagreement over the problem and complexity of human behavior. Argawal and Somanathan (2005, p 13) has discussed the shortcomings to public policy in resovling economic and political issues as excessive overlap between policy making and implementation in the context of India and some of those are; excessive fragmentation in thinking and action, excessive overlap between policy making and implementation, lack of non-governmental inputs and informed debate, lack of systematic analysis and integration prior to policy-making and reforming the policy-making

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