Chapter 10: Conclusion and Recommendations
3.3 CATEGORIES OF PUBLIC POLICIES
policies. For Polokwane Municipality to be successful in managing the informal business sector, it should first adopt a policy that will clearly define its objectives and how the objectives will be attained. Once the policy has been adopted, the municipality will be able to develop programmes and projects informed by the long- term objective.
It is important to distinguish between a decision and policy as the two are related but not necessarily the same. According to Anderson (2000: 5), while a decision can be a once-off thing, a policy takes the decision further by indicating courses of actions, which might include other decisions. For example, the Polokwane Municipality Council might take a decision to support informal businesses. In implementing this decision, a policy will then have to be developed indicating various actions and subsequent decisions on what would be undertaken as part of implementing the Council‟s decision. This implies that if institutions are to be successful in their mandates, their policies should be relevant and address the real needs (problems) within the available (scarce) resources. Furthermore, such policies should take into consideration the conflicting needs of the populace and be able to reach a compromise in this regard (Rakodi in Devas & Rakodi, 1993: 207).
Depending on the state of affairs in a community, policies can be reactive or proactive. The objective of the policy will also determine the type of policy that will be developed, as outlined in the following section.
study. For example, to control or regulate the behaviour of street vendors within Polokwane Municipality, an appropriate regulatory policy would have to be developed. Furthermore, since the problem of street vending already exists, the policy that would be developed would be a reactive regulatory policy. This section looks at the various categories of policies, their differences, as well as the different purposes of public policies:
3.3.1 Distributive, Redistributive, Self-regulatory and Regulatory Policies
One common characteristic of this typology of policies is their effect on the communities as well as the relationship among the people that are involved in policy formulation.
According to Anderson (2000: 9), distributive policies are developed with the aim of allocating services or benefits to a certain group of the population. In the South African context, an example of this type of policy would the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Framework, which aims too enable people that were previously disadvantaged to participate in the economic development of the country.
Redistributive policies in contrast, would be developed with the objective of shifting wealth, resources or property from one sector of the community to the other (Anderson, 2000: 12 and Greene, 2005: 273). An example of such a policy would be a land reform policy where land is repossessed from the rich owners to the poor people.
The principle here, as Anderson (2000: 12) puts it, is “not equal treatment but equal possession”.
Regulatory policies intend to regulate some type of behaviour. The aim is to impose certain restrictions or limitation to a specific behaviour of individuals or groups.
Examples of such policies would normally relate to business regulation, or pollution control (Anderson, 2000: 12 and Greene, 2005: 273). A policy on managing street vendors would fall within this category of policies.
3.3.2 Substantive and Procedural Policies
There is a strong link between these types of policies. Substantive policies indicate what government will do (such as paying social grants to children under 7 years), while procedural policies focus on how something will be done or who will take what action. An example of a procedural policy could be a law providing for the establishment of the South African Social Security Agency. Accordingly, Anderson (2000: 9) maintains that a procedural policy could actually have substantive consequences in that how something is done may determine what is done.
3.3.3 Material and Symbolic Policies
Material policies are developed with the objective of providing resources or power to the beneficiaries. Such policies might also affect other parties negatively (Anderson, 2000: 14). An example of such a policy would be a law that prescribes minimum wages. Such a policy would benefit the workers while negatively affecting the business owners.
Symbolic policies do not have any material impact on people, but rather address people‟s values on intangible benefits such as safety, peace or social cohesion.
3.3.4 Policies Involving Public Goods or Private Goods
Some of the public policies are developed in order to provide public goods such as national defence, public safety or clean air. In this instance, everybody benefits from such a policy. Private goods, however, are not freely available to everybody, but instead there are intended beneficiaries, or one has to pay to receive the benefits (Anderson, 2000: 15). Goods in this category could be social housing, toll-roads or postal service.
Irrespective of the problem that needs to be addressed, policies are not developed in a vacuum. There are various factors that would affect the approach that would be
adopted to address the problem at hand. The different hierarchies in the policy development process are critical and need to be well understood by any institution developing a policy. Such an understanding will ensure alignment and integration among political and administrative priorities.