Overview of Public Policy Process – Case Example: Anticorruption Policy Making in Afghanistan
AIAS arranged a talk for Dr Saeed Parto at the American University of Afghanistan titled an overview of Public policy process-Case Example: Anticorruption Policy Making in Afghanistan on 25th of November 2019.
Saeed Parto is the co-founder and Director of Research at Afghanistan Public Policy Research Organization (APPRO). He has over 25 years of experience in academic and consultancy work and holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Waterloo (Canada), specializing in policy analysis.
Dr Parto started his talk with an overview of policy analysis as a cross-cutting discipline which has roots in political science, economy, political economy and sociology. Dr Parto explained the concept of policy analysis and its dynamics which are and should be always taken into account in policy development or analysis process. These dynamics are the physical and material conditions, attributes of community, decision-making style, formal institutional context, patterns of interaction and policy. One of the major points in policymaking is that at the end of every policy-making process either you identify new problems or you create new problems which mean policymaking is a never-ending process and it works like a circle. Dr Parto pointed out that the decision-making style very much depends on the context in which the decision is made. One of the reasons most of the policies made in Afghanistan neither solved a problem but created new problems is that these policies are made by a number of consultants which were not policymaking experts and they have not studied and have not taken in to account the first set of policy-making dynamics which are physical and material conditions, attributes of community, decision-making style.
In the case of corruption which is one the hottest topics of study In Afghanistan the most important part to study is the actors that are in the process and are the major parts of the creating a corrupted system. As evidence of recent research shows these actors are the general public, private sector and in some cases the international donors and the most important reasons that these actors have played a major role in creating a corrupted system is that they intensively want to avoid confrontation instead of fighting against the corruption.
