REVIEW: COMPARATIVE PUBLIC POLICIES

Abstract

When analyzing a public policy, it is important to understand that it arises from a social demand. This means that there is a historical construction that justifies the creation of the public policy and places it on the political agenda, only to be formulated, implemented, evaluated, enabling comparisons, analyses, etc.
The term "public policy" can take on different meanings, according to Oliveira et al (2019, p. 325), depending on the approach followed and the country in which it operates. Therefore, the search for analytical processes aids in the process of understanding specific policies.
Among the existing views is the structuring of public policy as a "cycle," which has the following phases: agenda formation, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation.
Public policy evaluation is the stage that can contribute to verifying the use of funds applied/conditionalized to the policy; measuring the impact of the policy on a given community; presenting data on whether or not the policy should be maintained or even reformulated. According to Oliveira et al (2019, p. 328) cited in Farias (2005), four types of evaluation uses can be presented: instrumental, conceptual, persuasive, or clarification.
For each use, there is an objective, and methodologies are available to evaluate public policies, using both quantitative and qualitative techniques, which contribute to greater analysis effectiveness.
Evaluation can also be classified as "ex ante," when it is considered at the time of policy formulation, enabling the use of randomized quantitative statistical analysis methods (the gold standard); and evaluation, which occurs "ex post" to the implementation of public policy. For this type of evaluation, other types of analysis methodologies are available, such as the quantitative matching technique; difference-in-difference; regression discontinuity; and/or a combination of more than one technique.