Contribution to Policy-Making Initiative - Admission/Application Essay Example

Contribution to Policy-Making Initiative Introduction Policy initiatives are conceptual frameworks used in addressing underlying problems. Policies define the scope of a problem, evaluate alternatives of dealing with a problem, and eventually implements suitable alternatives. Policy initiatives find extensive application in political, social and economic environments. Politically, public policies are pathways towards mitigating public problems like crime, poor governance and inadequate community developments. Law makers and other relevant technocrats usually occupy the central position in formulation of policies. Besides the technocrats, members of the public may be randomly selected to enhance inclusivity and objectivity of policies. In the US, Congress, federal bureaucrats and state agencies participate in formulation of national policies. At the community level, policy construction requires coordinated efforts of local organizations like churches, interest groups and representatives of community members. In case a policy initiative impacts an entire community, no single party will dominate in formulation deliberations. Each of the parties involved gets a proportionate chance of contribution (Adrian, 2007). Theory of Policy-Making Professionally, development of a policy initiative follows procedural steps. The first step involves recognition of a problem. At the community level, common problems may include increase in drug addiction among the youth, rise in mugging incidents, and poor community policing among others. The second step involves setting the agenda, also referred to as criteria development. Agenda setting entails appraising the depth and breadth of the problem in order to develop a prioritization scale. Thirdly, a policy is formulated based on information from the developed agenda. Development of a policy involves explicitly defining the course actions needed to achieve a desired goal. The fourth step of policy development is adoption and implementation of the course actions. For successful implementation, distinct parties will be tasked with ensuring execution of specific action plans. Lastly, the policy process is evaluated in order to ascertain its effectiveness, and necessary corrective actions performed (Smith, 2013). Politics and Community Policy-Making Personally, I would be at the forefront in any policy making initiative concerning my community. As insinuated earlier, some policy initiatives within a given community has the potential to impact all members. In this case, inclusive contribution will ensure representativeness of adopted action plans. In my community, there is a remote yet distinct possibility that policy initiatives in the political environments may be subjective. Politicians, even those at the community levels, are known to harbor inherent preferences in the pursuit of selfish interests at the expense of the public (Gregory & Hayden, 2006). Politicians occupying certain offices may wish to minimize the cost involved in implementing policies so as to siphon remaining funds for personal use. In such cases, inadequate allocation of funds and other resources to policy making activities will yield unreliable findings. Consequently, unreliable findings will yield correspondingly unreliable outcomes. However, influence from members of the public will bring selflessness and sanity into decision making processes. Problem Identification Currently, I am thoroughly conversant with ideal components of policy formulation processes. As mentioned earlier, the first step involves recognition of a problem. My community suffers from increased cases of drug addiction among the youth. Previously, politicians from federal and state offices have implemented policies meant to curb the drug menace. Unfortunately, these policies proved inefficient. There is an urgent need to partner with relevant political and social institution in counteracting the unprecedented rise in drug abuse. With respect to the first step of policy development, I will voluntarily participate in any research exercise meant to foster objective comprehension of the underlying problem. At first, a problem is perceived as a hypothesis until approved by relevant facts (Gregory & Hayden, 2006). The issue of increasing drug addiction may be hypothetical in nature. In order to understand it, data and information must be obtained from primary sources, specifically drug addicts in the streets. Such fact finding missions may entail interacting with drug addicts and administering survey questionnaires in relevant settings like schools. Agenda Setting After objectively understanding a problem, the subsequent step involves development of agenda. Admittedly, understanding the problem is only restricted to ascertaining the truth of a hypothetical claim. Problem recognition may also involve a detailed analysis of depth and breadth of the problem. The agenda-setting step involves analyzing the causal-effect relationship, plus the influential factors. Typically, government institutions sponsor research-based approaches of unearthing the causes of drug abuse among the youth (Gregory & Hayden, 2006). In the context of policy making initiatives, understanding the main causes of a problem is instrumental in developing a prioritization list of suitable courses of actions. Personally, I am aware that scientific and statistical analyses are important in understanding a causal-effect relationship. For example, most youth are aware of the adverse effects caused by drugs. Despite their knowledge, youth still demonstrate a compulsive habit of drug seeking (Smith, 2013). In this case, it is possible that hidden causes like weak morals and peer pressure are fueling compulsion towards drug abuse. Therefore, I will contribute to agenda setting by actively participating in scientific processes meant to establish the main causes of increasing drug addiction in my community. Selection of Alternatives After ascertaining the major causes of the problem, the next step will involve selecting and adopting the most appropriate courses of action. Actually, this is the policy creation step. Selected courses of action coupled with procedural guidelines used in implementing the courses of action forms a policy framework document. As aforementioned, this is the step where politicians will selfish interests exert influence on policy making initiatives. In formulation of policy frameworks, several conflicting factors come into play. These factors may include financial cost, adequacy of personnel resources and legal provisions within a local community (Grodach & Silver, 2012). In addition, there can be several courses of actions identified. Each of the identified courses of action contains varied degrees of advantages and setbacks. Politicians, social groups, interest groups and individuals have distinct interests and preferences on the myriad of action plans. In this step, rushed selection and adoption of course actions may undermine the long term effectiveness of a policy initiative. Therefore, prioritization and selection of action plans should be performed objectively. As a participant in the policy making initiative, I would advocate for sustenance of goal-oriented deliberation. The main goal of the initiative in my community would be to mitigate and stop the rising cases of drug abuse. In this context, one must acknowledge that mitigating the course of a trend is not synonymous to addressing effects of a trend. For example, some alternatives indentified, especially rehabilitation, may be effective in reducing the health effects of drug addiction. However, alternatives like prevention of drug abuse among the youth feature as a more suitable solution to the problem of increasing drug addiction compared to rehabilitation. In selecting and adopting alternatives, I will assert that no solution is perfect. Rather, suitability of an alternative should be based on the probability of that alternative to address a problem (Grodach & Silver, 2012). In order to enhance a better understanding of probability aspects of alternatives, graphical representations of variables must be used. Each alternative must be plotted against the perceived probability level of addressing the underlying problem. Eventually, alternatives with the highest probabilities are adopted while those with the lowest probabilities are disregarded. Implementation Upon adoption of suitable alternatives, the policy making process progresses to the implementation step. This step is the application of courses of action in an actual environment. Implementing policies involves organizing the policies, interpreting them and eventual application of the policies. With respect to organization, each course of action must be assigned to relevant authorities for interpretation and subsequent application. Organization of policy provisions is beneficial in ensuring objective delegation of duties to respective stakeholders. With respect to the problem of increasing drug addiction, policy provisions must be assigned to stakeholders like the police, parents, teachers and peers. Parents are responsible for their teenage children at home. However, parents may not monitor and control the harmful habits of youth while in school (Gregory & Hayden, 2006). Teachers are tasked with ensuring sustainable enforcement of school rules to minimize occurrence of negative behaviors among students. Therefore, organization of policy provisions involves categorizing stakeholders together with their respective roles. Procedurally, organization of policy provisions is succeeded by interpretation and application steps. Interpretation entails explicit definition of a provision’s intentions and operational guidelines meant to facilitate achievement of intended outcomes (Adrian, 2007, p. 81). For example, the policy initiative in my community would strive to reduce new cases of drug addiction through prevention of drug abuse. It emerges that increase in drug addiction is attributed to ease of access to alcohol and other conventional drugs among school teenagers. In this case, preventive measures that can curb underage alcohol consumption will be beneficial in providing a solution. Personally, I will participate in interpretation of policy provisions through online interactions with stakeholders like students, teachers and parents. Presently, there are numerous online forums involved in campaigns against drug abuse. Therefore, I can contribute to the interpretation step by participating in online educational discussions. Application is the last step of policy implementation stage. Application entails allocation of resources to stakeholders involved in implementing the action plans. Resources needed include money, personnel and relevant logistics like drug detection kits. Prevention of drug abuse involves rolling out preventive strategies like restriction of underage access to drug joints, dissemination of information relating to punitive actions for drug possession in the community, and taking legal action against those found violating existing rules and regulations. Actually, this is the step where community policing comes in handy (Smith, 2013). Police and other law enforcement personnel may not possess inside information relating to drug trade in a community. Residential members of a given community know who sells the drugs and where these drugs are sold to the youth. In this case, I will contribute to the initiative by providing useful information to relevant authorities, especially the police. I will use any toll free line available to make phone calls that will lead to arrest of drug offenders in the community. Evaluation Finally, the policy making initiative terminates at the evaluation step. The entire policy implementation process may take at least two months to be felt by the community. In order to determine effectiveness of the policy framework, appropriate evaluative techniques will be used. One technique of determining effectiveness is cost-benefit analysis (Adrian, 2007, p. 78). Formulation and implementation of the drug addiction policy requires substantial resources. Success of the policy can be measured by comparing the cost incurred against benefits obtained. Admittedly, measuring benefits can be hard. Fortunately, the created policy will not operate in isolation. Benefits can be in form of reduced number of new addiction cases in local rehabilitation centers, and reduced cases of drug possession reported in local schools. Reduction in these variables will be provided in statistical forms. Most likely, the policy making committee will need data from rehab centers and schools to gauge the intended benefits of the policy initiative. In this context, I will contribute to the evaluation step by participating in data acquisition processes. Aside from perceiving success in terms of reduced cases of drug abuse among the youth, benefits can manifest in form of reduced spending compared to other previous policies. Almost every community in the US is implementing policies meant to curb the vice of drug addiction. Policies in these communities have unique characteristics in terms of costs incurred in policy making and subsequent benefits of the policy initiatives (Smith, 2013). In this context, I will participate actively in acquiring the cost and benefits characteristics of policy initiatives from other communities. Subsequently, I will help in gauging success of our policy by establishing comparison between the cost-benefit aspects of the local policy with cost-benefit aspects of policies from other communities. Conclusion In conclusion, it is evident that policy development is carried out procedurally. Each step plays a significant role in ensuring objectivity of the final outcomes. Absence of one step or inadequate execution of a single step, for example the problem identification step, will lead to development of faulty alternative courses of action. Eventually, inadequate coverage of each step will yield an inefficient policy initiative that cannot address an underlying problem in a satisfactory manner. In addition, it is acknowledgeable that policy making initiatives need contributory efforts from diverse parties. Diversity of a policy making committee is important in facilitating formation of objective public policies. References Adrian, H. (2007) Accommodation of diversity in European Policy-Making and its Outcomes: Regulatory policy as a patchwork. Journal of European Public Policy, 3(2), 78-92. Gregory, M. & Hayden, F. (2006) Policy-making for a Good Society: The social fabric matrix approach. Pittsburg: Springer Sciences & Business Media. Grodach, C. & Silver, D. (2012) Politics of Urban Cultural Policy: Global Perspectives. London: Rutledge Publishing. Smith, S. L. (2013) Characterizing Community Participation in Policy-Making. Edinburgh, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Read More