Years ago I knew a University at Albany professor by the name of Thomas Birkoff who used describe public policy as what government chooses to do and what it chooses not to do. That is a good description, far better then the limited definition of my current professor Hiroshri Itoh that claims that law and public policy are one in the same thing.

Both definitions would be okay if the government only followed the law, and there was complete compliance with the law. Yet, if that was true then we wouldn't bother to create any sanctions for violations of law or even define it for that matter. We need a better definition that takes in account the fact that public policy is the indirect result of government action and inaction, and not solely what is proscribed by laws or acted on by government.I propose the following definition for public policy:

Public policy is what results from governmental action, threat of action, or inaction.

I emphasize the fact that it is what results from governmental choices, not what government specifically does or threatens to do. A government can make it illegal to use non-handsfree cellphones while driving, but that won't stop people from doing that necessarily even if the chances of getting caught are high and so is the penalty. We should ultimately focus on human behavior and it's results when creating governmental policy, that then analyze that after the fact.Specially when looking at governmental policy we must remember the following things:

• Administrative agencies rarely follow the law to statutory letter of the law, and more often then not laws contain a great deal of vagueness and ambiguity
• Bureaucrats that administer the law tend to have their own agendas that are different from those who created it. Bureaucrats might come from the industry they regulate, or from a lobbying group opposed to it (like anti-smoke stack environmentalists).
• Different bureaucrats in the same agency can come to different conclusions based on their experience.
• Political pressures play a number of different roles at influencing how policies actually play out.

Ultimately it seems that the question of public policy is the actual results. Compliance with a policy is always a far more desirable goal then just proscribing one idea or another. We must remember that all laws and programs passed by government are administered by people on people, so that there are extensive political pressures influencing the way it ultimately works.