European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 209

European Policy Analysis

Figure 3: The first 32 “hits” when performing a Google Image search for “policy cycle”
(8 March 2016)

introduced above. Although this cyclic
metaphor may be useful for analytical
purposes, the notion that there is a linear
logic to policy processes may cloud and
hamper the actions of actors at the policy
development coalface.

It is not just that one stage or step
coincides with another (for instance, the
specification of policy alternatives may
interface with the selection of policy
instruments/interventions). In fact, often
a step that comes “later” in the stages
heuristic in fact precedes an earlier phase
in the cycle. A “real life” example would be
policy implementation. Implementation
is driven by a wide array of contextual
factors, including shifting power relations.
Even when the policy problem is debated
(as a first “agenda setting” exercise), actors
in the system implicitly, or by default,
know that some implementation strategies
will be impossible to develop. Regardless
of how well planned and analytical

earlier stages in the policy process are,
only certain types of interventions can
be favored (Pressman and Wildavsky
1983). In a comprehensive review of
the literature on policy instruments and
interventions, Bemelmans-Videc, Rist,
and Vedung (1998) formulate the “least
coercion rule”: policy-makers favor
the intervention that is least intrusive
into individual choice (as evidenced for
obesity policy by, for instance, Allender
et al. (2012)). Thus, despite following the
policy planning process conscientiously,
the outcome in implementation terms
favors communicative over facilitative
or regulatory interventions. Steps in
the cycle are therefore in reality rarely
sequential or with feedback loops between
sequential stages: often the process jumps
a few steps ahead, to return to a previous
step, or it finds itself going both clockwise
and counter-clockwise for only sections
of the cycle.

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