What is public policy?

Your day, governed

Before any definition: trace one ordinary school day. Tap each moment to see the policy hiding inside it.

Try it: define a pencil

Before we define public policy, define something you have held almost every day of your life. In one sentence: what is a pencil?

Now test your sentence against four answers that come up every time.

• "A pencil is something that helps us write." So does a pen, and so does a marker.
• "A pencil is made of graphite." Its core is graphite mixed with clay, and there has never been any lead in it. Change the material and it would still be a pencil.
• "A pencil is a cylindrical tool." Many pencils are hexagonal, and some are triangular.
• "A pencil can be erased." True. But why?

Each answer describes a feature. None names the principle. A pencil works by friction: as you drag it across paper, tiny flakes of the core rub off and cling to the surface of the page. The mark sits on top, so an eraser can lift it off. Ink from a pen soaks into the paper, so it stays.

A sharper definition: a pencil is a writing tool whose core rubs off onto paper by friction, leaving a mark on the surface that can be erased.

The features change from pencil to pencil. The principle does not. I use a phrase for this habit: principles before personalities. Understand why a thing works before you describe what it looks like. And choose every word with care: one careless word, like cylindrical, makes a definition wrong.

Your turn. In 12 words or fewer, define public policy. Do not search for it. Write the principle, not a list of features.

Now read on and compare yours with one of the most quoted definitions in the field. Which of your words did Dye leave out? And which four words did he include that most people miss?

When does a government choose to do nothing?

Dye's definition has four small words that change everything: or not to do. Silence is a decision, and it has consequences.

Think of the Covid-19 pandemic. In March 2020 the Union government ordered a nationwide lockdown. When the second wave struck in 2021, it did not order another; states imposed their own. When the Omicron wave came in early 2022, with most adults vaccinated and hospitals better prepared, there was no national lockdown at all. The same virus met three different decisions, and the last was a decision not to use the strongest tool.

Governments usually hold back because a problem may fix itself, or because acting would cost more than it saves. Sometimes nobody in power has noticed the problem, or it is too politically risky to touch.

Making public policy more fun

Vass Bednar, a Canadian policy researcher, on why policy belongs to everyone and how play gets people into it. TEDxToronto.

Two kinds of policy: big P and small p

In her TEDxToronto talk of 2012, the Canadian policy researcher Vass Bednar draws a line worth writing in your notebook.

Big P policy is the formal kind: bills, laws and acts, usually regulated and made by people with official power. Even big P can be daring. In 2011 Iceland drafted a new constitution in public, posting each draft online and inviting citizens to comment. In 2012 about two-thirds of voters in an advisory referendum backed using it as the basis of a new constitution, though Iceland's parliament has not adopted it.

Small p policy is the informal kind: a standard, or a better way of doing something, usually unregulated and often invented by ordinary people. Her examples: Rocket Radar, an app built by a private developer that told Toronto riders to the minute when the next tram was coming, possible only because the city's transit agency opened its data; and clinics that text you when it is your turn, so you are not stuck for hours in a waiting room. Small p, she says, is a sandbox for the public good. And when small p works, big P often takes note.

Her third P is play. In 2011, players of an online puzzle game called Foldit helped solve the structure of a protein from a monkey virus related to HIV, a problem that had stumped scientists for more than a decade. It took them about three weeks. In 2007, Americans played World Without Oil, a game that asked them to imagine an oil shortage and invent ways to live through it. No government ordered either.

That is the idea behind Model NITI Aayog: policy is not only for officers and ministers. You can play your way into it.

Policy or not?

Public policy is made by public authorities, for the public. Tap your answer for each.

One law, one charger

Up to the iPhone 14, Apple used its own Lightning charging port. From the iPhone 15 in 2023, it switched to USB-C, the port most other phones use. Why would a company that size give up its own design? A policy. In 2022 the European Union passed a law requiring a common USB-C charging port on new phones sold there from the end of 2024, to cut electronic waste and spare buyers a drawer full of chargers. A rule made in Brussels changed a phone sold in Bengaluru.

Whatever career you choose, business included, decisions made in rooms far away will shape it.

You already live under policy: at home

Economics has microeconomics and macroeconomics. Think of policy the same way. Macro policy is made by governments, for a country, a state or a city: that is public policy. Micro policy is made by families, schools and companies: your curfew, your school's rules on phones and AI, who decides tonight's menu when guests arrive. Usually there are many stakeholders and only one or two decision makers. And every rule, at home or in a country, is trying to do one of the same four jobs.