A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. The term is not normally used to denote what is actually done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by the Board of or senior governance body within an organization whereas procedures or protocols would be developed and adopted by senior executive officers. Policies can assist in both subjective and objective decision making. Policies to assist in subjective decision making would usually assist senior management with decisions that must consider the relative merits of a number of factors before making decisions and as a result are often hard to objectively test e.g. work-life balance policy. In contrast policies to assist in objective decision making are usually operational in nature and can be objectively tested e.g. password policy.

A Policy can be considered as a "Statement of Intent" or a "Commitment". For that reason at least, the decision-makers can be held accountable for their "Policy".

The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, and individuals. Presidential executive orders, corporate privacy policies, and parliamentary rules of order are all examples of policy. Policy differs from rules or law. While law can compel or prohibit behaviors (e.g. a law requiring the payment of taxes on income), policy merely guides actions toward those that are most likely to achieve a desired outcome.

Policy or policy study may also refer to the process of making important organizational decisions, including the identification of different alternatives such as programs or spending priorities, and choosing among them on the basis of the impact they will have. Policies can be understood as political, management, financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals.'''

Impact

Intended effects

The intended effects of a policy vary widely according to the organization and the context in which they are made. Broadly, policies are typically instituted to avoid some negative effect that has been noticed in the organization, or to seek some positive benefit.

Corporate purchasing policies provide an example of how organizations attempt to avoid negative effects. Many large companies have policies that all purchases above a certain value must be performed through a purchasing process. By requiring this standard purchasing process through policy, the organization can limit waste and standardize the way purchasing is done.

The State of California provides an example of benefit-seeking policy. In recent years, the numbers of hybrid cars in California has increased dramatically, in part because of policy changes in Federal law that provided USD $1,500 in tax credits (since phased out) as well as the use of high-occupancy vehicle lanes to hybrid owners (no longer available for new hybrid vehicles). In this case, the organization (state and/or federal government) created an effect (increased ownership and use of hybrid vehicles) through policy (tax breaks, highway lanes).

Unintended effects

Policies frequently have side effects or unintended consequences. Because the environments that policies seek to influence or manipulate are typically complex adaptive systems (e.g. governments, societies, large companies), making a policy change can have counterintuitive results. For example, a government may make a policy decision to raise taxes, in hopes of increasing overall tax revenue. Depending on the size of the tax increase, this may have the overall effect of reducing tax revenue by causing capital flight or by creating a rate so high that citizens are deterred from earning the money that is taxed. (See the Laffer curve.)

The policy formulation process typically includes an attempt to assess as many areas of potential policy impact as possible, to lessen the chances that a given policy will have unexpected or unintended consequences. Because of the nature of some complex adaptive systems such as societies and governments, it may not be possible to assess all possible impacts of a given policy.

Policy cycle

In political science the policy cycle is a tool used for the analyzing of the development of a policy item. It can also be referred to as a "stagist approach". One standardized version includes the following stages: # Agenda setting (Problem identification) # Policy Formulation # Adoption # Implementation # Evaluation

An eight step policy cycle is developed in detail in ''The Australian Policy Handbook'' by Peter Bridgman and Glyn Davis: (now with Catherine Althaus in its 4th edition)

# Issue identification # Policy analysis # Policy instrument development # Consultation (which permeates the entire process) # Coordination # Decision # Implementation # Evaluation

The Althaus, Bridgman & Davis model is heuristic and iterative. It is intentionally normative and not meant to be diagnostic or predictive. Policy cycles are typically characterized as adopting a classical approach. Accordingly some postmodern academics challenge cyclical models as unresponsive and unrealistic, preferring systemic and more complex models. They consider a broader range of actors involved in the policy space that includes civil society organisations, the media, intellectuals, think tanks or policy research institutes, corporations, lobbyists, etc.

Content

Policies are typically promulgated through official written documents. Policy documents often come with the endorsement or signature of the executive powers within an organization to legitimize the policy and demonstrate that it is considered in force. Such documents often have standard formats that are particular to the organization issuing the policy. While such formats differ in form, policy documents usually contain certain standard components including :

A purpose statement, outlining why the organization is issuing the policy, and what its desired effect or outcome of the policy should be.

An applicability and scope statement, describing who the policy affects and which actions are impacted by the policy. The applicability and scope may expressly exclude certain people, organizations, or actions from the policy requirements. Applicability and scope is used to focus the policy on only the desired targets, and avoid unintended consequences where possible.

An effective date which indicates when the policy comes into force. Retroactive policies are rare, but can be found.

A responsibilities section, indicating which parties and organizations are responsible for carrying out individual policy statements. Many policies may require the establishment of some ongoing function or action. For example, a purchasing policy might specify that a purchasing office be created to process purchase requests, and that this office would be responsible for ongoing actions. Responsibilities often include identification of any relevant oversight and/or governance structures.

Policy statements indicating the specific regulations, requirements, or modifications to organizational behavior that the policy is creating. Policy statements are extremely diverse depending on the organization and intent, and may take almost any form.

Some policies may contain additional sections, including:

Background, indicating any reasons, history, and intent that led to the creation of the policy, which may be listed as motivating factors. This information is often quite valuable when policies must be evaluated or used in ambiguous situations, just as the intent of a law can be useful to a court when deciding a case that involves that law.

Definitions, providing clear and unambiguous definitions for terms and concepts found in the policy document.

Typologies

Policy addresses the intent of the organization, whether government, business, professional, or voluntary. Policy is intended to affect the 'real' world, by guiding the decisions that are made. Whether they are formally written or not, most organizations have identified policies.

Policies may be classified in many different ways. The following is a sample of several different types of policies broken down by their effect on members of the organization.

Distributive policies

Distributive policies extend goods and services to members of an organization, as well as distributing the costs of the goods/services amongst the members of the organization. Examples include government policies that impact spending for welfare, public education, highways, and public safety, or a professional organization's benefits plan.

Regulatory policies

Regulatory policies, or mandates, limit the discretion of individuals and agencies, or otherwise compel certain types of behavior. These policies are generally thought to be best applied when good behavior can be easily defined and bad behavior can be easily regulated and punished through fines or sanctions. An example of a fairly successful public regulatory policy is that of a speed limit.

Constituent policies

Constituent policies create executive power entities, or deal with laws. Constituent policies also deal with Fiscal Policy in some circumstances.

Miscellaneous policies

Policies are dynamic; they are not just static lists of goals or laws. Policy blueprints have to be implemented, often with unexpected results. Social policies are what happens 'on the ground' when they are implemented, as well as what happens at the decision making or legislative stage.

When the term policy is used, it may also refer to:

Official government policy (legislation or guidelines that govern how laws should be put into operation)

Broad ideas and goals in political manifestos and pamphlets

A company or organization's policy on a particular topic. For example, the equal opportunity policy of a company shows that the company aims to treat all its staff equally.

The actions the organization actually takes may often vary significantly from stated policy. This difference is sometimes caused by political compromise over policy, while in other situations it is caused by lack of policy implementation and enforcement. Implementing policy may have unexpected results, stemming from a policy whose reach extends further than the problem it was originally crafted to address. Additionally, unpredictable results may arise from selective or idiosyncratic enforcement of policy.

Types of policy analysis include:

Causal (resp. non-causal)

Deterministic (resp. stochastic, randomized and sometimes non-deterministic)

Index

Memoryless (e.g. non-stationary)

Opportunistic (resp. non-opportunistic)

Stationary (resp. non-stationary)

These qualifiers can be combined, so for example you could have a stationary-memoryless-index policy.

Types

Company Policy

Communications and Information Policy

Human resource policies

Privacy policy

Public policy

* Defense policy

* Domestic policy

* Economic policy

* Education policy

* Energy policy

* Environmental Policy

* Foreign policy

* Health policy

* Housing policy

* Information policy

* Macroeconomic policy

* Monetary policy

* Population policy

* Public policy in law

* Science policy

* Security policy

* Social policy

* Transportation policy

* Urban policy

* Water policy

Other uses of the term

In enterprise architecture for systems design, policy appliances are technical control and logging mechanisms to enforce or reconcile policy (systems use) rules and to ensure accountability in information systems.

In insurance, policies are contracts between insurer and insured used to indemnify (protect) against potential loss from specified perils. While these documents are referred to as policies, they are in actuality a form of contract - see insurance contract.

In gambling, policy is a form of an unsanctioned lottery, where players purport to purchase ''insurance'' against a chosen number being picked by a legitimate lottery. Or can refer to an ordinary Numbers game

In artificial intelligence planning and ''reinforcement learning'', a policy prescribes a non-empty deliberation (sequence of actions) given a non-empty sequence of states.

In debate, the term "policy" is slang for policy or cross-examination debate.

See also

Mandate (politics)

Overton window

Policy alienation

Policy analysis

Policy studies

Political science

Program evaluation

Public administration

Public health

Public policy (law)

Public policy schools

Public services

Social contract

Social welfare

Social work

Think tank

References

Howard, Cosmo. "The Policy Cycle: a Model of Post-Machiavellian Policy Making?" The Australian Journal of Public Administration, September 2005.

Stone, Diane."Global Public Policy, Transnational Policy Communities and their Networks", ''Journal of Policy Sciences'', 2008

External links

Category:Government * Category:Politics by issue Category:Decision theory

da:Policy de:Policy ko:정책 hi:नीति id:Kebijakan it:Policy (politica) he:מדיניות nl:Beleid ja:政策 sv:Policy yi:פאליסי zh:政策

name	Joe Higgins
honorific-suffix	TD
nationality	Irish
office	Teachta Dála
term start	February 2011
term start2	June 1997
term end2	May 2007
constituency2	Dublin West
office3	Member of the European Parliament
term start3	7 June 2009
term end3	9 March 2011
constituency3	Dublin
birth date	May 20, 1949
birth place	Lispole, County Kerry,Ireland
party	Socialist (since 1996)
otherparty	Labour Party, United Left Alliance
alma mater	University College Dublin
website

Joe Higgins (born 20 May 1949) is an Irish Socialist Party politician. In the 2011 general election he was elected to Dáil Éireann as Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin West constituency, having previously served in that capacity from 1997–2007. He was also a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency from 2009 to 2011, the first Socialist Party MEP.

Early life

One of nine children of a small farming family, he was born in 1949 in Lispole, part of the Dingle gaeltacht in County Kerry. He went to school in the Dingle Christian Brothers School, and after finishing he enrolled in the priesthood. As part of his training he was sent to a Catholic seminary school in Minnesota, U.S. in the 1960s.

It was against the backdrop of anti-Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement that Higgins was politicised.

He is a brother of Liam Higgins who played football with the Kerry GAA senior team in the 1960s and 1970s.

Higgins is bilingual in English and Irish,

Political career

Early activism

Higgins returned to Ireland and attended University College Dublin studying English and French. For several years he was a teacher in several Dublin inner city schools. While at university he joined the Labour Party and became active in the Militant Tendency, an entryist Trotskyist group that operated within the Labour Party. Throughout his time in the Labour Party he was a strong opponent of coalition politics along with TDs Emmet Stagg and Michael D Higgins. He was elected to the Administrative Council of the Labour Party by the membership in the 1980s. In 1989 Higgins was expelled alongside 13 other members of Militant Tendency. ref name="barryroche-irishtimes-19february2011">Roche, Barry. "Socialist Party candidate raises red flag in the heart of Cork's north side". 19 February 2011. ''The Irish Times''. The group eventually left the party and formed Militant Labour which became the Socialist Party in 1996.

Higgins spends over half his salary on his political party, the Socialist party and causes he supports. His post contribution salary equals the industrial wage. Higgins was elected to Dublin County Council in 1991 for the Mulhuddart electoral area and was until 2003 a member of Fingal County Council, at which point his seat was taken by fellow Socialist Party member Ruth Coppinger. In 1996, he campaigned against local authority water and refuse charges and contested the Dublin West by-election, eventually losing narrowly to Brian Lenihan, Jnr.

Dáil Éireann (1997–2007)

Higgins was first elected to the Dáil at the 1997 general election and re-elected at the 2002 general election. He lost his seat at the 2007 general election, but regained it at the 2011 general election. From 2002 to 2007 he was a member of the Technical Group in the Dáil which consisted of various Independent TDs, Sinn Féin and the Green Party grouped together for better speaking time.

In 2003, Higgins accused Taoiseach Bertie Ahern of having "blood on his hands" in relation to the use of Shannon Airport by American troops. He spoke out against the Iraq War while a TD and addressed the Dublin leg of the March 20, 2003 International Day of Action.

In April 2003, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell addressed Higgins during a Dáil debate, saying "I do not take lectures on democracy from a Trotskyite communist like Deputy Joe Higgins." Higgins was demanding an explanation from the minister after being dragged from the gates of Leinster House by riot police while attending an anti-war protest. He questioned why the riot police were not wearing identification numbers.

On 19 September 2003, Higgins was sentenced to one month in Mountjoy Prison as a result of his protest against the non-collection of refuse in his constituency during the Anti-Bin Tax Campaign. He was also prominent in the successful 2005 campaign to bring Nigerian school student Olukunle Eluhanla back to Ireland after he had been deported. Higgins remains an opponent of the deportation policy.

When President Mary McAleese telephoned Higgins in 2004 to inform him of her decision to seek re-election, he told her that her office was "superfluous and should be abolished". President McAleese was reported to have been left speechless.

At the 2004 European Parliament election, Higgins received 23,200 (5.5%) votes in the Dublin constituency, double his 1999 result, but did not win a seat.

Higgins used his platform in the Dáil to raise the issue of exploitation of migrant and guest workers in Ireland. He and others claimed that many companies were paying migrants below the minimum wage and, in some cases, not paying overtime rates. In March 2005, Higgins and a delegation of Turkish ex-employees of GAMA Endustri, a Turkish construction firm working in Ireland, travelled to Amsterdam where they discovered that GAMA had been secreting up to €30 million in workers' wages without their knowledge. He expressed opposition in the Dáil to the jailing of the Rossport Five in July 2005. He raised the outsourcing of jobs by Irish Ferries in the Dáil in November 2005, requesting new legislation to regulate what he described as "these modern slavers".

In May 2006 Higgins boycotted an address to the Dáil by Australian Prime Minister John Howard because of Australia's role in the Iraq War, the country's "criminal" legislation on worker's rights and its theft of oil and gas from the poor people of East Timor, describing it as "reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher".

In October 2006 Higgins requested the suspension of normal business in the Dáil after it emerged that Ryanair had upped its share in Aer Lingus overnight, amid concerns for workers' rights and passenger welfare.

In 2008 Higgins was a political opponent of the Irish government's first Treaty of Lisbon referendum. He described the success of the "No" campaign as "a huge rebuff to the Irish political establishment".

European Parliament (2009–2011)

Higgins successfully contested the 2009 European Parliament election for the Dublin constituency, beating two incumbents, Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin and Eoin Ryan of Fianna Fáil, for the third and final seat. On the same day he was elected to the Fingal County Council for the Castleknock electoral area, topping the poll. Due to dual mandate rules, Higgins vacated this council seat in July 2009 and was replaced by Matt Waine. He was a member of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (EUL–NGL) group in the European Parliament, the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade, the delegation for relations with the countries of South Asia. He was also a substitute member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, the Committee on Petitions and the delegation for relations with the Mercosur countries.

In 2009 Higgins was a political opponent of the Irish government's re-run of the Treaty of Lisbon referendum. He said the guarantees did not change the Treaty. Higgins said, "The overall agenda here is quite simply the ruling classes, or the classes of Europe intend to stride on to the world stage as a powerful economic entity. And they want to be as powerful as the US, meaning they want a stronger foreign policy and a military wing to back them up." He also spoke out against Ireland's Catholic bishops, who claimed neither a "Yes" nor a "No" vote would threaten the unborn, saying that EU spending on arms ought to be enough for the bishops to join the "No" campaign.

On 23 November 2010, Higgins walked out of a meeting of Irish MEPs with EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn after two minutes in Strasbourg, prompting criticism from Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell. Higgins said he walked out as information Rehn was giving was to be confidential and that he felt it would have been a betrayal to stay, calling it "unacceptable".

During a debate at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Higgins described the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), as “''nothing more than another tool to cushion major European banks from the consequences of their reckless speculation on the financial markets''”. Higgins claimed the EFSF was a "''mechanism to make working class people throughout Europe pay for the crisis of a broken financial system and a crisis-ridden European capitalism''”. He accused Barroso and European Council president Herman Van Rompuy of effectively transferring tens of billions of euros of private bad debts “on to the shoulders of the Irish people”. Barroso rejected the claims, instead blaming Irish banks and lax regulation for Ireland's problems, saying: “To the distinguished member of this Parliament who comes from Ireland, who asked a question suggesting that the problems of Ireland were created by Europe, let me tell you: the problems of Ireland were created by the irresponsible financial behaviour of some Irish institutions, and by the lack of supervision in the Irish market”.

Paul Murphy replaced Higgins as an MEP when Higgins was re-elected to the Dáil.

Dáil Éireann (2011–present)

Higgins was elected again as TD for Dublin West at the 2011 general election. He won the third seat (of four) with 8,084 first preference votes. In his first speech of the new Dáil he opposed the nomination of Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. Higgins announced that he would "put up a principled opposition to the Fine Gael-Labour coalition which is most likely", since they are "going to carry on with the same policies as Fianna Fáil, making working class people pay for the bankers' bad gambling debts". He promised to work with the other United Left Alliance TDs "as a coherent, principled opposition". He is one of the people who have suggested the creation of a national exploration company which would allow the state to retain any profits obtained from natural resources.

Ahead of the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II's visit to the Republic of Ireland in May 2011, Higgins asked Enda Kenny in the Dáil if "the queen of England might be politely asked to contribute to the cost of her bed & breakfast during her visit to Ireland," observing that "the Irish people needed the financial help since they could soon be sleeping rough, as the country faced bankruptcy to pay off the debts of German and French banks which had recklessly gambled and lost in the Irish property bubble". On 4 May 2011, Enda Kenny was forced to apologise to Higgins in the Dáil after falsely accusing him of being a supporter of Osama bin Laden after Higgins offered criticism of his assassination by the CIA. Higgins had asked the Taoiseach: “Is assassination only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?”.

Higgins expressed his view on the imprisonment of pensioner Teresa Treacy, saying "It is outrageous that [the ESB] is oppressing a powerless citizen in this way". Higgins made a personal visit to the site of the dispute. He vowed there would be a nationwide campaign of "people power" against any household and water charges. In September 2011, Higgins committed to facilitating the nomination of Senator David Norris for a place on the ballot paper ahead of the 2011 Irish presidential election despite multiple controversies enveloping the candidate. On the occasion of the publication of the Keane report on mortgage arrears in October 2011, Higgins criticised Enda Kenny's government and said the report was “a banker's charter written by bankers”. His description of allowing the banks to solve their own problems as being "like sending a bunch of marauding foxes that had raided a henhouse back to give mouth-to mouth resuscitation to their victims" was quoted several times by other commentators in the media. Higgins addressed "The EU in Crisis" public debate, held at the Ireland Institute in Dublin in October 2011. He served as Ruth Coppinger's election agent in the 2011 Dublin West by-election, held alongside the presidential election. At her campaign launch Higgins said Taoiseach Enda Kenny was engaging in a “cynical manipulation of the political agenda” by delaying the publication of his government's comprehensive spending review until after the elections.

In the Dáil, Higgins accused Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore of doing nothing for the 14 Irish citizens being held "incommunicado" by Israel in November 2011. In December 2011, Higgins described as a disgraceful campaign of intimidation the fines imposed by the government on people who were unable to pay a new household charge brought in as part of the latest austerity budget and said to Enda Kenny that he would be "the new Captain Boycott of austerity in this country". He asked that Minister for Finance Michael Noonan provide EBS staff with the 13th month end of year payment they were being denied.

In February 2012, a spokesman for Higgins told the ''Irish Independent'' to mind its own business when asked if Higgins had private health insurance.

See also

Committee for a Workers' International

List of imprisoned members of the Oireachtas

References

External links

Mr Higgins Goes to Brussels, Kathy Sheridan, The Irish Times, 13 June 2009

Joe laughs all the way to bank, Shane Ross, Sunday Independent, 28 September 2008

Message of solidarity from Joe Higgins MEP to Tunisian trade unionists, socialists and democracy activists

European Parliament profile

{{s-ttl|title = Socialist Party Teachta Dála for Dublin West |years = 1997–2007}} {{s-ttl|title = Socialist Party Teachta Dála for Dublin West |years = 2011–present}} {{s-ttl|title = Member of the European Parliament for Dublin |years = 2009–2011}}

Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:Irish Trotskyists Category:Labour Party (Ireland) politicians Category:MEPs for the Republic of Ireland 2009–2014 Category:Members of the 28th Dáil Category:Members of the 29th Dáil Category:Members of the 31st Dáil Category:People from County Kerry Category:Socialist Party (Ireland) MEPs Category:Socialist Party (Ireland) politicians Category:Teachtaí Dála

de:Joe Higgins fr:Joe Higgins (homme politique) ga:Joe Higgins pl:Joe Higgins ru:Хиггинс, Джо