Policy by the Way: When Policy is Incidental to Making Other Policies

Abstract

My aim is to explore an important feature of public policy that has been somewhat neglected: many policies are largely made by the way of making other polices. To examine this idea and tentatively explore some of its implications, I shall employ the notion of ‘policy by the way’. What I wish to convey with the help of this concept is the reality of many areas of concern which are touched by public policy entirely or primarily by the way of focusing on other areas of concern. The notion of ‘policy by the way’ is anticipated in some key concepts of policy research and policy analysis, but its specific features still seem to deserve more focused attention. I gradually build up the notion of policy by the way with the help of well-known contributions to the field and a few examples from Israel, albeit no claim is made that Israel is in any way representative of other western democracies. It is quite possible, however, that the reality of public policy as a byproduct, which I believe is universal, is more easily discerned due to the special politics of Israel, basically, a fragile coalition government with strong turf orientation and weak coordination.