One idea that we're going to keep coming back to in our study of government is the notion of public policy and how public policy is actually made. And what we're going to end this video is focus on what you could consider to be the five stages of the policy process. And I'll use a very simple example to make those stages tangible. So the first stage of the public policy process is identifying issues or agenda setting. So agenda setting right over here, or identifying issues. And an example of that, and this is actually something that is going on and near my house right now, is that there is an intersection about two blocks from my house. So let me see if I can draw this intersection. So it looks something like this. And it's a two-way stop sign, so you have a stop sign right over there. You have a stop sign right over there. And the problem is you have this large park in this corner right over there, and there's also a school here. And so in the morning, there's a lot of kids and parents going on their bicycles or walking to school. But the problem is there's also a lot of parents who might be late for school and they're going in their cars, and they're going quite fast down this road. And it's a two-way stop, and so even though that there's a lot of kids that are waiting to cross right over here and there's no crossing guard. So there's a lot of kids and parents walking right here, they have to wait. And you could imagine, this is an elementary school. These cars are going by really fast. It's quite dangerous. So the agenda here is, is that, well, how do you make this safer and easier for families to cross the street on the way to the park? So the example here, how to make easier to cross the street at that intersection? Now once you determine the problem that you want to solve, you do the agenda setting. The next step is to formulate some type of a policy. So I'll call that step 2, would be policy formulation. So one potential idea here is, well, why don't we just make this into a four-way stop? So we could put some paint here to make it clear that people are going to cross on all sides. And we'll put two more stop signs to make this a four-way stop. So let's say that this is our current plan as we say hey, making this tangible, we're going to implement a four-way stop at that intersection. That's not the only solution that's possible. Maybe some type of speed bumps might be in order right over here and right over here. Maybe implement some type of crossing guard, or maybe you put up one of those flashing blinking signs that tell people their speed limit so that they go slower. So there's many different ways to formulate ideas that will address this agenda, that will address these problems. But let's say that we do a study and we decide that a four-way stop is the policy that we want to pursue. Well, then the next step after that is to convince other people that this is a good idea. So step 3 right over here, we could call policy adoption or legitimization. In my context, it might involve going to the city council, maybe with some traffic experts, some safety experts. Maybe I can go gather the community here, petition so that a lot of people in the community here agree that a four-way stop would be in order. And let's say the city council, and the police department, and all the various stakeholders who have to buy in say yes, we are going to implement a four-way stop here, and then they implement it. And so once the policy is adopted, the next thing is well, you got to actually implement it. So I'll call that step 4, policy implementation. And in this case, it's pretty straightforward. Someone needs to show up and install those stop signs. Maybe they're going to paint, put some markers over here to make it more clear that people are going to cross the street as they go on to the park, but that would be the implementation. Now the last step in this public policy cycle or this process, and we'll see it really is a cycle, is to just assess it, to evaluate how things are going. So the next step, we'll call this step 5 right over here, would be policy assessment or evaluation. And so one possibility is to go survey people in the community. Has that solved the problem, has it created new problems? Is there a traffic issue now because people have to go to the four-way stop? And whatever the assessment says, the assessment might say, hey, everything's perfect now. And then you don't really have to worry about the this problem anymore, but maybe there's a new traffic problem. And now that'd be another issue to address and you would have to go through the cycle again. Or maybe it hasn't addressed the speed issue. And so maybe you need to think about, well, how do we slow cars down or whatever else? And we would keep going through this public policy process or really this cycle that we're talking about. Now the example that I just gave, this is a very simple example at a corner two blocks from my house and this is actually something I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about going to the city council about this. But as you can imagine, as we go into much deeper things that are affecting people at the federal level, healthcare, taxes, whatever else, each of these steps can be quite involved, and it could even take years to do any one of these steps.
