Does the Policymaking Is the Preserve of Decision-Making Elites Essay

Does the Policymaking Is the Preserve of Decision-Making Elites - Essay Example This paper illustrates that to suggest that public policy is a technical aspect of politics is insufficient, instead it should be viewed as a multi-faceted, interactive system that is directly influenced by social and political inputs that are highly diverse. For elite policymakers to promote only a singular agenda which is aligned with elitist perspectives would lead to backlash or outrage by other societal stakeholders (i.e. community citizens or special interest groups). Hence, to state that policymaking is the preserve of elitist groups would be both irresponsible and impractical. This essay explores the notion of policy-making under an elitist agenda, offering case studies which refute the notion that bargaining, negotiation, and accommodations cannot supersede an elitist agenda. A policy is a shared resource with many multi-faceted inputs influencing policy, including the responsibility to maintain social cohesion and responding to different systemic pressures that impact multi ple societal stakeholders. Elite statesmen maintain the absolute responsibility to incorporate conceptions of brotherhood, justice, social cohesion and ensuring the proper allocation of states’ resources to provide the most benefit to all society members that maintain a vested interest in policy-making outcomes. The idea that a single elitist group can create the policy that preserves its own ideas and intended outcomes of policy does not take into consideration that maintaining unitary power in policy-making would be challenged by other societal stakeholders that have the ability to pressure or coerce policy outcomes. One can consider a policy-making situation in New Haven, Connecticut in which there were imbalanced power resources (such as wealth, knowledge and social standing) in a policy-making scenario. Even in an environment in which voters were apathetic and power resources were concentrated with the privileged and influential, city politicians considered demands impos ed by activists to develop the relevant public policy that would satisfy not only the agenda of the privileged politicians but a broader group of stakeholders as well. This represents the notion of pluralism in policy-making that must respond to diverse needs and expectations which may not always be congruent with elitist agenda.