Examination of the public policy in process in Libya

Ahmed, AM

Abstract

Although the study of public policy and the policy process, as an academic and distinctive area, has received much attention in the West, it is still far from being the case in the Arab states, including Libya. Indeed, the policy process in Libya is still ill-defined and not well documented, and there is also an absence of detailed research work related to the policy process in the Libyan context. Therefore, this study aims to examine the practice of the policy process in Libya and compare with the policy process as defined in the conceptual framework developed from the Western literature. Policy initiation, formulation, implementation and evaluation were typically identified as the principal processes. Each of these was examined as a distinctive type of government activity in order to get a better understanding of how the Libyan government developed and put selected policies into effect, and took actions to implement them to bring policy outputs into existence. This was done by investigating the various activities and actors involved in each process so as to determine their characteristics and the factors affecting their effectiveness in achieving policy objectives.

A case study was selected as an appropriate strategy for explorative and descriptive analysis. The main sources of evidence were provided by semi-structured interviews with key people from different policy areas and government agencies who have been involved in the policy process, supplemented by a literature and documents review to achieve a higher degree of validity and reliability of the research. Collected data was analysed using matrix format and cognitive mapping.

The findings of this study have shown that the central planning has been adopted by the government as an appropriate method for policy planning and preparation. The policy process in Libya has experienced some defects due to certain internal and external factors. Internal factors mainly refer to the inappropriate selection of the implementation means, adoption of overambitious objectives, mismanagement, instability of the administrative structures, and insufficiency of some existing legislation in particular the one related to the national urban planning system. They also refer to the lack of feedback information as well as shortage of technology and professional skills in the policy implementation and evaluation. As for the external factors, they were concerned with the changing international oil markets and prices and the foreign sanctions that were imposed on Libya, all of which directly affected the implementation of the selected policies since they were largely financed from oil revenues.

Citation

Ahmed, A. Examination of the public policy in process in Libya. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 23, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 23, 2013
• Keywords: Public Policy