Implementation of public policy

Implementation of Public Policy

Introduction

Public policy is an attempt by a government to address a public issue by instituting laws, regulations, decisions, or actions pertinent to the problem at hand. Numerous issues can be addressed by public policy including crime, education, foreign policy, health, and social welfare. While public policies are most common in the United States, several other countries, such as those in the United Kingdom, implement them as well. The process to create a new public policy typically follows three steps: agenda-setting, option-formulation, and implementation; the time-line for a new policy to be put in place can range from weeks to several years, depending on the situation. Public policies can also be made by leaders of religious and cultural institutions for the benefit of the congregation and participants, and the term can also refer to a type of academic study that covers topics such as sociology, economics, and policy analysis. In 1996 voters in California approved the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), a measure that forbids the use of race, gender, or ethnicity as criteria in state hiring or public university admissions. No longer would businesses and universities be required to adhere to affirmative action guidelines that mandated minority representation in the workforce or student body. The passage of the CCRI effectively put an end to more than thirty years of affirmative action in the state of California, and sparked a fiery debate over the continued need for affirmative action programs.

Affirmative action was part of the legislation that came out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It was designed by federal lawmakers to ensure that a certain percentage of African Americans (the program was later expanded to include women and other minorities) were represented in business, higher education, and government offices. When affirmative action was first introduced in the mid-1960s, it attracted little opposition. America was just emerging from the Jim Crow period, an era of racial segregation and state-supported discrimination against African Americans. Many black Americans lived in poverty, a result of centuries of slavery and racist mistreatment. The rate of unemployment in the black community was double the rate found in the white community, and inner-city neighborhoods, where many African Americans were forced to live, were saddled with substandard schools and crumbling tenement housing. Many citizens at the time felt that affirmative action was needed to address the grim conditions that plagued the black community, and open the doors of opportunity that had been previously locked to African Americans.

Today, however, many critics contend that affirmative action has outlived its usefulness. “For black people during the 1960s there was a presumption of inferiority, affirmative action was the shock treatment to change our culture,” says Ward Connerly, one of the architects of the CCRI. According to Connerly, however, America is no longer the inherently racist society it was in the days of Jim Crow. Statistics cited by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, authors of America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, appear to back Connerly's notion that the situation for black Americans has vastly improved. According to the Thernstroms, 40 percent of black Americans now ...