The Treasury in public policy-making

A public policy is a programme for action towards an objective or purpose in the public sector, often chosen from a number of alternatives, within the constraints of political circumstances and ideology, and accepted by those responsible for its implementation. This definition is suggested as a straightforward and basic approach to the study of policy-making. Other definitions could have been proposed and there is no shortage of books and articles on the nature of policy-making in liberal democracies, on how policy-makers actually go about their work and what they should do, or on how students of policy-making can be most effective in relation to the modern methodological expectations of academic research in political science and public administration.1