The policy-making process involves multiple demands, conflicts, compromises, and decisions. They result in the adoption of particular objectives and strategies through actions (or inactions) of government.

This is a broad definition, for making policy is not the exclusive function of any one branch or level of government. Policy making often conflicts with commercial enterprises and directly affects economic and social functions, such as assuring the quality of the nation’s food supply or protecting citizens from overexposure to radiation. Policy-making is complex, characterized by a lack of centralized direction, a focus on interactions of foreign, national, state, and local governments, and involvement of private interests with specialized concerns.

The policy process is not a smoothly functioning, ongoing sequence with one phase predictably following another. Rather, it responds to pressures placed on it at many points along the way, so that policy usually reflects the influence of many economic and political forces. Where administrative agencies play a central role in the policy process, policy making can be described as occurring in four stages. The first is a legislative stage involving both Congress and the president (and often agency administrators), in which basic legislation is drawn up, considered, and approved as law.

The legislative stage normally centers on actions of the chief executive and of key legislators. But the role of higher-level administrators in formulating and proposing new policy options is also very important. Administrative involvement in subsequent stages of the policy process can assume a variety of forms. These include rule making, adjudication, law enforcement, and program operations. Rule making, a quasi-legislative power delegated to agencies by Congress. Rules may serve different functions—elaborating on general statutory provisions or indicating probable agency behavior in particular matters.

Adjudication is a quasi-judicial function involving the application of current laws or regulations to particular situations by case-to-case decision making, such as the FDA’s power to seek criminal penalties. The scope of such actions is much narrower than that of rule making but, collectively, they can have great impact on policy as a whole.

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