Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Making public policy
relationships between groups and entities, they also embrace the idea that
networks of relationships affect policy outputs and outcomes. 7
• Exogenous approaches, which assert that factors external to the political system
determine the decisions of public actors and affect policy outputs and outcomes. 8
• Rational actor approaches, which claim that the preferences and bargaining of
actors explain decisions and outcomes. This approach is often called ‘rational
choice’. 9
• Ideas-based approaches, which hinge on a view that ideas about solutions to
policy problems have a life of their own, and that ideas circulate and gain
influence independently in the policy process. 10
Theoretical perspectives such as these are useful in helping us to understand the
policy-making process as a social, cultural, historical and political phenomenon.
Each allows us to consider some facet of policy making and to understand the
nature of the environment in which policy occurs.
While each of these approaches serves a particular intellectual purpose and
reflectsparticular‘truths’abouthowpolicycomestobe,nonetellsthewholestory.
Nor are they necessarily mutually exclusive (e.g. many institutional accounts also
rely heavily on rational actor thinking).
The reality is that making public policy is a complex social behaviour and any
given policy exhibits the influences of multiple institutions, groups and networks,
exogenous factors, preferences and ideas generated within epistemic communities.
A marketplace of ideas
Public policy might best be described as a marketplace of ideas and prescriptions
for the broad and diverse array of matters that need to be actively governed in order
for human society to function. It involves making difficult choices and negotiating
multiple trade-offs between competing options. Moreover, this is a highly contestable
marketplace, especially in liberal democratic societies like Australia’s.
Policy practitioners need to be mindful of the ideological leanings and philosophical
underpinnings of governing parties. It is also important for them to
understand the policy leanings of non-governing opposition and minor parties in
order to anticipate possible resistance to policy proposals and advise government
about policy compromises that might be broadly acceptable to legislatures.
Although Australia’s polity is often portrayed as a ‘two-party system’, our
parliaments are generally made up of representatives from multiple parties as well
as independents who have no formal party affiliation. And although electoral
7 Dowding 1995; Howlett, Mukherjee and Koppenjan 2017; Sabatier 2013.
8 Howlett 2009; Howlett and Cashore 2009.
9 Hall and Taylor 1996; Hill 2014.
10 Braun and Busch 1999; John 2003.
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