Policy formulation: Design and tools

In a traditional stages model of the public policy process, policy formulation is part of the pre-decision phase of policy making. It involves identifying and/or crafting a set of policy alternatives to address a problem, and narrowing that set of solutions in preparation for the fi nal policy decision. According to Cochran and Malone, policy formulation takes up the “what” questions: “What is the plan for dealing with the problem? What are the goals and priorities? What options are available to achieve those goals? What are the costs and benefi ts of each of the options? What externalities, positive or negative, are associated with each alternative?” (1999, 46). This approach to policy formulation, embedded in a stages model of the policy process, assumes that participants in the policy process already have recognized and defi ned a policy problem, and moved it onto the policy agenda. Formulating the set of alternatives thus involves identifying a range of broad approaches to a problem, and then identifying and designing the specifi c sets of policy tools that constitute each approach. It involves drafting the legislative or regulatory language for each alternative-that is, describing the tools (e.g., sanctions, grants, prohibitions, rights, and the like) and articulating to whom or to what they will apply, and when they will take effect. Selecting from among these a smaller set of possible solutions from which decision makers actually will choose involves applying some set of criteria to the alternatives, for example judging their feasibility, political acceptability, costs, benefi ts, and such.