Policies are not laws
Who can create Policy?
A: Anyone
Who can create laws?
A: Whoever created it
But not anybody who created it can enforce it?
Legislators hold a special place in the government as law makers but unfortunately, we refer legislators
to be policy makers rather than law makers.
Legislators are not policy makers
Legislators are law makers, they create bills which become laws, laws that are implemented by agencies
through policies.
To refer to legislators as simply policy makers implies that number
1. that they set the policy agenda or slate of our values for the country or the state or the
community.
2. They can create policy or mandate regulation that we have to fallow on a whim
refer legislators as policy makers takes the public out of the legislator process, we start to willingly
comply with the social construction.
Instead if we refer and recognize legislators as lawmakers this recognizes the system of checks and
balances involved in creating laws. Other wise known as representative democracy and separation of
powers which is outline in our Philippine constitution.
By seeing legislators as lawmakers, we put the public back into government as the body who sets the
values for the country or the state and recognize that legislators cannot simply makes laws on a whim.
The deliberate use of language is as basic as reclaiming legislators as lawmakers instead of policy
makers. However, this deliberate use of language would also make the public you and I culpable in the
lawmaking process would have to recognize our role in the laws we follow we would have to grapple
with the values propagated by society, otherwise known as us, and we would have to sit with the reality
that making laws is a tedious dawn-out much debated in pubic process by which we the public are
constitutional bound to participate in.
Recognize the lawmaking process as one where legislators and the public are equally responsible,
connect your displeasure with the legislature to an identifiable agent you.
Some people argue that judges are both policy makers and law makers but Judges are not policy makers
or law makers, they interpret the laws about cases before them or decisions made in other courts.
The difference between policy and laws isn’t just semantic it does shape how we view the role of
government and exposes we as the public have decided holds the most power and influence over our
lives.
Policy vs Law
Who has more power and influence, policies or laws?
Policy
1. Policy implement the laws and make them real - we all make public policy happen, public
servants and stakeholders alike. Policies are just one of many tools to carry out decisions they
are the tools of our governance. However policies ay not be the right tool for the job.
Exp: If I want to get speed bumps installed in my neighborhood I can go through the traffic calming
program and follow their policies. However, if I want to get the speedi limit reduced in my neighborhood
from 25 miles/hr down to 15mile/hr, I need to go to city council to change a law. The scenario is the
same no matter which tool I use. The problem identified is that the people are driving too fast in my
neighborhood, the outcome I want is to slow them down. But the consequences are drastically
different, the policy approach hopes to alter the drivers behavior with the intervension of speed bumbs
while the speed limit Law changes gets at altering drivers behavior with the possibility of punishment.
The point is to be sure to end up with the right tool for the right solution. A law can have more teeth
than a policy but a policy is much more easier to implement.
