‘The policy process’ is a term that slips easily off the tongue and fits
comfortably into the analysis of the contemporary world, a world in
which ‘policy’ has a high salience, and scholars are active in
identifying, analysing and perhaps improving, the way in which it is
formed and in which it operates. But scholars have differed both in
the ways in which they use the terms ‘policy’ and ‘process’ in their
analyses, and in the extent to which they recognise these differences
as a problem for the analysis. Moreover, scholars are not the only
users of these terms. They are widely used in the structuring and
validation of official activity, both within government and outside it.
And it is increasingly recognised that ‘the governed’ are not simply the
passive recipients of policy, but are active co-creators of what is meant
by ‘policy’ and ‘process’.
In other words, ‘the policy process’ is a concept in use in both the
practices and the explanation of governing, and giving a ‘good
account’ of it calls for attention to the part it plays in governing, as
well as to the specific use that policy scholars have made of it. It calls
for inquiry into how policy is theorised: the categories that are
incorporated, the relationships that are recognised, and the way that
outcomes are discerned and evaluated.