What Is Public Policy? Public policy affects nearly every activity of an individuals life.

Take a moment to explore your immediate surroundings. The room you are sitting in is being heated or cooled by energy that is regulated by government in terms of the price charged and environmental requirements related to its production, among other actions. The snacks you are eating have been screened for health purposes or labeled to provide you with the information that helps to determine the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of the food. The car parked outside is required to have certain safety features installed; it must also use unleaded gasoline; and get a certain number of miles per gallon as stipulated by federal fuel efficiency requirements. Even your higher education is being affected by public policy in a number of ways. You may be receiving a Pell Grant or guaranteed student loan, or attending a public institution in which the state is partially financing your tuition. Or, you are pursuing an education major and in order to be certified, you must take certain courses in the curriculum. You do not have to look far to experience the influence of public policy on your life. Public policy is the sum of all government activities that affect citizens. These policies can come from a variety of institutions at all levels of government (federal, state, local). In some cases these policies are restrictive, such as speed limit laws or criminal laws that govern conduct. Public policies may also provide services such as public education, national defense, and police protection. In other cases, direct government payments such as Social Security or research grants to universities represent another form of policy. While most think of public policies as laws, it is important to recognize the variety of public programs governments create and the different ways in which they affect our daily lives. What we hope to do in this book is to help students develop a fuller understanding of the importance of public policy and the potential impacts on their lives. We do this by providing readers with the appropriate information and tools to help them analyze and evaluate public policies as well as the processes through which policies are developed and implemented. The focus of the book is the foundations of the public policy process, including key elements of policy analysis. We believe such knowledge will better serve students in the long run than coverage of the details of policy history, the present legal requirements in various programs, or a summary of current policy debates. Those who understand the basic principles of policymaking and policy analysis will be far better equipped to apply such knowledge to a wide range of problems they may face in the future in their personal lives and careers, and as citizens.