Policy formulation process: Significance and considerations of stakeholders and objective setting

Abstract

In today’s complex societies, there are many individuals and organizations with different interests, expectations, and demands with respect to a matter more or less concerned to them. The Education Policy is formulated for the people of a country and it addresses all those individuals, groups, communities, associations, organizations who are directly or somehow influenced by it. The present paper aims to delineate different steps considered for the formulation of a policy. This process of policy formulation has been demonstrated taking the example of education policy. The essentials and considerations of stakeholders, interest groups and objective setting explained in the text include: understanding interest group, the rise of interest groups (broad economic developments, government policy, religious and moralistic movements, the government activities), types of interest groups (economic interests, environmental interests, equality interest, consumer and public interest lobbies), an organization's political position and its members' interests (the homogeneity of the group, people's motives for joining, the size of the staff, the level of militancy and activity of the membership), influence of interest groups on policy (credible information, public support, money), the absence of trouble (lobbying, electioneering, litigation, going public), developing/determining objectives, importance of objectives for educational policy, characteristics of educational policy objectives, identify the barriers to achieving the goals, types of educational policy objectives, role of objectives in educational policy, formation of objectives for educational policy and considerations of formation of objectives for educational policy.

Keywords

• policy formation
• education policy
• stakeholders
• interest groups
• objective setting