Public Policy Timing in a Sustainable Approach to Shaping Public Policy

Dorota Korenik,Maria Węgrzyn

doi:10.3390/su12072677

Abstract

This study addresses the problem of optimal public policy timing and the relation to public health policy. Ways of recognizing this problem are presented, as well as the role of public policy timing, which is perceived or can be performed from various economic theories and concepts, mainly: regulation theory; the concept of adaptive public policy; and the theory of policy timing based on the concepts of option value and the transaction costs of the political process. The approach of methodological pluralism adopted by the authors made it possible to reach for various cognitive inspirations borrowed from numerous theoretical approaches, in order to create a comprehensive and coherent theoretical foundation for the purposes of analyzing the role of timing in applied public policies. Next, an attempt was made to define the role of public policy timing in the applied approach, i.e., the case of Polish policy towards the public hospital care sector. The final conclusion is that the role of timing is marginalized in Polish public health policy. The time dimension of its creation was ignored or treated as an exogenous event in relation to the rest of the policy formulation process. There is no political approach that adaptively links the right combination of resources and regulatory activity to timing for specific stages of development or growth in public hospital care.

Highlights

It can be assumed that with good public policy conditions, i.e., sustainable public policy conditions, the achievement of a sustainable net benefit may be enjoyed by society in the form of an optimal and possibly long-term solution to a specific public problem
In the process of public policy timing, better information is generated for the purposes of creating a timetable that takes into account the concepts of keiretsu for introducing changes and undertaking actions that modify or reform the functioning of the sector and the formal framework of annual financial budgets, as well as, where possible, general elections
3) The method and scope of the reform of the operation and financing of hospitals included in the so-called public hospital network were contradictory in light of adaptive policy theory, a policy approach that adaptively links the right combination of resources and regulatory activity to timing for specific stages of development or growth in public hospital care

Summary

Introduction

It can be assumed that with good public policy conditions, i.e., sustainable public policy conditions, the achievement of a sustainable net benefit may be enjoyed by society in the form of an optimal and possibly long-term solution to a specific public problem. The same section describes the results obtained with the approach practiced by decision-makers in Poland regarding the creation and realization of policies in the public hospital sector.

The State of the Theoretical Thought Regarding “Public Policy Timing”

The Concept of Public Policy is Closely Linked to Public Policy Timing

Systemic Context for Healthcare Policy in Poland

Conclusions