Social policies are an elaborate set of rules and guidelines affected by political or judiciary systems to provide reprieve and solutions to social life challenges. Such policies tackle problems originating from economic, religious, and political challenges or environmental factors within a region.
Policy-making is an elaborate process that follows predetermined stages. Initially, there is a springing up of a problem where a new social problem emerges or increases to levels considered outside of the norm. The second stage is agenda-setting, initiated once the social problem comes to the attention of policymakers. After the agenda-setting, the next step involves the formulation of the policy. In this stage, solutions are pooled from interest groups and stakeholders and subjected to the adoption stage. The adoption stage may involve a political process or judicial approval. Upon adoption, the policy goes into action through an implementation stage and later evaluated to determine its efficiency. The evaluation process involves a lengthy cost-benefit analysis (Jordan, 2001). The final step is either policy continuation or termination. Termination of policies occurs when the evaluation concludes they are not working or fail a cost-benefit analysis logic (Peters, 2005).
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Policy analysts should first research on possible causes of the social problems before the formulation stage of the policy-making process. Prior research provides data that serves as evidence on the workability of policies before adoption. The evidence-based policy-making approach, therefore, has the advantage of minimizing the chances of adopting a non-workable policy. The strategy serves as an assured reprieve to the affected persons and policymakers. Additionally, the approach eliminates negative results after a cost-benefit analysis of the evaluation stage. A positive cost-benefit study reduces the loss of finances that would have incurred through the implementation of policies that terminated in later stages.
On a different approach, policy analysts should come up with policies that offer solutions to social problems without having to research on possible causes of the issues. Implementation of policies without research is crucial towards solving social problems that arise as a sudden surge. An example is a sudden increase in violent crimes and murders within a territory. Researching on causes of the rise in crime implies that more victims are left exposed to the vice before a solution is forged and implemented. Quick implementation of policies without research saves time and reduces the number of causalities. Notably, causes of social problems are complex and vary with regions, religions, and cultures (Mago et al., 2013). Immigration is an example of a global social issue that has varying economic, political, environmental, and religious causes (Dundar Aravacik, 2019). Problems affecting immigrants are better dealt with without unnecessary research on their roots, which are complex and require integration of policies from different states. It is, therefore, advantageous to implement such solutions as a single state and evaluate their performance to avert an increase in the number of causalities.
References
Dundar Aravacik, E. (2019). Social Policy and the Welfare State. Public Economics and Finance . doi:10.5772/intechopen.82372
Jordan, A. (2001). Environmental Policy: Protection and Regulation. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences , 2 , 4644-4651. doi:10.1016/b0-08-043076-7/04176-0
Mago, V. K., Morden, H. K., Fritz, C., Wu, T., Namazi, S., Geranmayeh, P., … Dabbaghian, V. (2013). Analyzing the impact of social factors on homelessness: a Fuzzy Cognitive Map approach. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making , 13 (1). doi:10.1186/1472-6947-13-94
Peters, G. B. (2005). The Problem of Policy Problems. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 7 (4), 349-370. doi:10.1080/13876980500319204
