Policy and Visions of Governance

This chapter aims to provide a working definition for public policy. It outlines the normative foundations of public policy through a discussion of classical and modern liberal thought. The writings of John Locke, particularly his Second Treatise on Civil Government, serve as a logical starting point for the discussion of classical liberalism and its role in shaping public policy. Classical liberalism was developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the earliest approach to liberal government; modern liberalism is a twentieth-century approach to liberal government. The Republican Party tends toward classical liberalism and is often opposed to the growth of government programs that are seen as performing a social welfare function. In the contemporary policy environment, many classical liberals believe that the growth of government has paralleled a decline in natural human civility. Some political scientists use economic theory and classical liberalism as the basis of their analyses of public policy.