Participants in Policy Process - Essay Example

Public policy may be implemented in various aspects of one's public and domestic life, including welfare, health, justice, feminist policies, and interest group conflict, among various others. (Dye, 2001, p. 4 to 7)In this context, the participants in the public policy process may be segregated into two categories. The first is the official participants comprising of government officials, authorities as well as political players. On the other hand are the nongovernmental or unofficial participants who come in the form of social workers, individuals lobbying for the interests of certain pressure groups, and even the average citizen.

In the course of this paper, we will try and differentiate between these two groups of participants in the policy process. To do so, we will start by delving into the various aspects of the policy process. When embodied in a person's life as a profession, the policy process becomes a matter of drawing on statistical information and basing decisions on various kinds of analysis before arriving at the factors that will influence the elements to be included in a certain policy. Considering the fact that this will greatly influence a normal citizen's life in various ways, the policymaker has to be doubly sure of the facts as he is responsible for a lot of people.

In this context, an unofficial participant comes in where a reaction is required in order to point out any deviation from the larger aim, from the official participant's end. Also, when proposing the nuances of the issue to be dealt with, the unofficial participant may put forward his views on how it should be dealt with in respect of the particular interest or group he is representing. It depends on how the official participant decides to make use of these views in the policy process. But the fact remains that in today's world, the unofficial participant's voice has greater reach due to globalization and the rise of the public sphere through the advent of the media, which further lends significance and forces the official participant to pay attention to the needs represented by the unofficial participant.

Further, while the official participant might seek to primarily set up a coordinated framework for dealing with the issues at hand, the unofficial participants simply choose the inroads that it may take in reaching its suggestions and views to the official participants. Another important difference is the fact that the official participant might follow the lawful method for reaching a goal, while the unofficial participant might adopt more creative methods and make use of the media, coalitions, etc, for reaching the same goal.