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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.
There is often a gulf between stated policy (i.e. which actions the organization intends to take) and the actions the organization actually takes. 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 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.