POLICIES
This chapter
considers how, in liberal democracies, such as Britain, public policies
should be made and implemented, how they are made, and the
problems of evaluating the public policy process. Before any such
discussion, however, it is important to consider the extent to which
the state – especially the national government – should make deci-
sions on behalf of the whole community. Finally we return to the
extent to which it is possible and desirable for the individual to
influence political policies and events.
Public policy problems and solutions
In Chapter 1 we saw that Bachrach and Baratz (1970), writing in a US
context, stress the domination of WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants) in setting the agenda of US politics. In Britain we could
perhaps go further and suggest that the ‘chattering classes’, who
dominate politics, the media, academic and professional life, and the
Civil Service, are predominantly still London-resident public school/
Oxford or Cambridge arts graduates and the like. What such people
define as urgent problems are not necessarily the same as what people
who left school at the minimum leaving age, who are employed in