Public Policy Models in Deep Time

Influential policy models developed over the past half-century tend to incorporate “time” implicitly, rather than as an explicit factor that affects policy processes. As a result, many these models do not obviously accommodate political and policy questions extending across a generation or more. Policy models should distinguish policy time, the natural timeline of a policy problem, from political time, the timeline of public and institutional attention paid to a particular issue. This article addresses the ability of current policy models to account for this important distinction and introduces a framework for consideration of political time. Expressly accounting for short-term and long-term political time could reveal opportunities for altering the design and implementation of policies with deep-time consequences.

• Richard Barke

• Program Evaluation, Public Management and Administration

• School of Public Policy