people centred or „human centric‟ principles in decision making process. The human centric perspective appears in the western democratic culture to allow peoples involvement in taking decisions in areas such as education, business and social services programmes. This is advanced to be a paradigm of people first which challenges the concept of „small is better‟ that is commonly associated by elitist policy making projection.
The importance of public participation in decision making was also emphasised in 1990 through the African Charter for Popular Participation in Development and Transformation held in Arusha, Tanzania. The Charter was endorsed by the Economic Commission for Africa and Sixteenth meeting of the Economic Commission for Africa Conference of Ministers responsible for Economic Planning and Development. The central concern to embrace public participation in decision- making is to enhance human development. This has led to the establishment of International Association for Public Participation.
However, the contention has always been what constitutes public participation? How can public participation in decision-making be increased? In response to this, Dalton (2004) argues that the reduction in voters turn out in Western Europe was an indication of citizens‟ frustration in government policies. This was interpreted to be a gap between decision makers‟ policies and citizens‟ real needs, which might result to legitimacy crisis of the government. Based on this, three principles must be met to determine public participation in decision making process. These are:
Transparency: The government activities must be subjected to public scrutiny Accessibility: Public information should be accessible to the people at any point in time
Responsiveness: The new demands from the people must be efficiently responded to by the government
3.2 SPECIAL INTEREST AND POLICY MAKING
The issue of interest in public policy is key and this creates room for contention of who actually benefits from a policy. For a policy to gain momentum among the decision makers, such policy tends to serve interest of specific stakeholders. The argument here is that no policy gets attention from the actors except it favours their interest. This leads to the question that, whose interest does a policy serve? Does a policy actually enjoy popular support? Be that as it may, special interest in decision making exposes the self –centeredness of policy makers.
Basically, policy analyst needs to identify the salient interest a policy intends to serve. The more the populace lobby their demands to suit the interest of the deciders, the better for decision making. However, the issue of special interest in policy making has been criticised thus:
1. It gives space for policy abuse and corruption.
2. The policy makers become autocrats
3. The principle of special interest in policy making defeats democratic tenets of accountability and transparency
4. The special interest negates public interest
In the final analysis, for a good understanding of public policy, it is pertinent to understand the interest involved in a policy. This requires understanding the political dimension of decision making. Given this, one can situate the rationale behind allocation of values in the society
3.3 POLICY CHANGE AND POLICY TERMINATION
Policy termination is very important in policy analysis. Termination means the end of something, conclusion or cessation, a result or outcome of something.
Termination in public policy analysis means the deliberate stoppage or cessation of government policy or program. There is also partial termination of government program. In this scenario, government services are significantly redirected in order to justify its continuous existence.
By the inclusion of termination option, it is an indication that a policy needs not to live longer and this calls for policy change. It means a policy objective has been reached and there is need to replace the policy with another one. So, the previous one would be terminated and new one designed to enhance policy change. An example is the issue of coronavirus that emanated from China in 2019 which later transmitted to various countries in the world. Nigeria as a member of World Health Organisation (WHO) through the Ministry of Health, and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) introduced a policy of social distancing among people in order to curb the spread of the virus. Such policy seized to exist and became terminated when the fight against coronavirus was over and vaccine developed to tackle the infection.
This indicates that social distancing as a policy was no more relevant and had to be changed.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE Explain the concept of policy interest
4.0 CONCLUSION
Public policy allows multiple dimension to its analysis. This places the field to be scientific as researchers have diverse instruments to identifying motives and implications of decision making. Asides having basic knowledge on decision making processes, the participants in public policy can be ascertained.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, we have explained policy participation and the dynamics of decision making using the public participation, policy interest and policy changes as yardstick of understanding decision making.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENTS (TMAs)
1. Describe the perception phase of public policy analysis 2. Explain the design phase of public policy analysis
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Eneanya, A.N. (2010). Policy Research, Analysis and Effective Public Policy-Making in Nigeria. Lagos: Concept Publications Ltd.
Dalton, R (2004). Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies New York: Oxford University
Warren, M.(1996) Deliberative Democracy and Authority Annual Review Political Science Vol 7