When taken alone or in aggregate, public policies are the official decisional output of a politico-managerial system, encapsulating the government's programs, aims, and purposes. These may take many different forms, such as statutes, bylaws, judicial rulings, presidential directives, administrative regulations, and so on. Policymaking follows the same general pattern of decision making, as described by Herbert Simon. In all cases, one must make intelligent decisions based on one's available options. As the volume of labor associated with formulating policies has grown and the field of policy analysis has become more specialized, bureaucrats have begun to make an appearance in the policymaking and assessment processes as well. The study emphasizes the importance of bureaucracy in both the planning and execution stages of policymaking.

Bureaucracy, law, policies, governmental rule, executives orders