Designing and Implementing Public Policy in Contemporary Society

Public policies are an arena of collective actions that respond to the main problems of society. They are understood as a cycle of decisions and actions of public administration aimed at achieving the desired benefits in the future. They are mostly used when market mechanisms fail and are not able to deal with the problem on their own, or when they do not work effectively enough. The multiplicity of problems and the inadequacies in their solutions create opportunities for the emergence of new sectoral policies and interventions that address both entirely new and traditional phenomena of social life, but require a new approach that recognizes the special importance of political factors. The main objective of sectoral policies is to support the development of the identified key areas of development. This anthology presents the ways of creating and implementing public policies related to educational, demographic and social problems.

Dr Dorota Szaban, Associate Professor, is Director of the Institute of Sociology, University of Zielona Góra, Poland.