60 5.7 POLICY FORMULATION AND DECISION-MAKING THEORIES

POLICY FORMULATION AND DECISION-MAKING THEORIES

Policy formation is the act of developing alternatives for managing public problems on the policy agenda (Dye, 2013). It is the stage in the policy process where “pertinent and acceptable courses of action for dealing with a public problem are identified and enacted into law” (Anderson, 1990). As we have discussed in previous chapters, public problems are not easily defined, and solutions are numerous. Policymakers must often choose between many options to solve a problem. The act of choosing between alternatives is, at its core, decision making. Here we present several of the most well-known models of decision making.