Day: August 7, 2025

Governments and their policies are central to ensuring that essential services like education, health care and justice remain available to all citizens, while also regulating the economy and protecting the environment. Often, the development of government policy involves extensive research and consultation. Governments create policies to achieve particular goals or objectives, such as stimulating economic growth, reducing poverty, or maintaining law and order. These policies are implemented through various mechanisms, including laws, programs and funding initiatives.

A government’s choice of policy responses depends on the level at which a policy is developed and the resources it has at its disposal. For example, a country might choose to respond to an economic crisis with fiscal stimulus measures to boost spending or tax cuts to stimulate the economy, or monetary policy to control inflation or the exchange rate.

Developing effective policy requires a complex set of factors to align and guide the process, from agenda setting through evaluation. This includes the influence of political parties, considerations of national interests, and decisions about how to allocate resources in a limited timeframe. It also involves the identification and prioritization of issues that require action, as well as a clear understanding of what it means to ‘be a policy maker’.

In addition, today’s policy makers are collaborating with stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to identify and craft solutions to the most pressing challenges. This can include interest groups, private sector organizations, academic researchers and diverse constituency groups. Strong evidence-informed policy platforms that are supported by knowledge translation can facilitate this collaboration, enabling multisectoral actions to be designed, implemented and evaluated.

A broad field of study that examines the interactions among nations, encompassing such subfields as international law and politics, economics, history, geography and philosophy. It is a major multidiscipline in the social sciences, with prominent schools of thought ranging from realism to liberalism.

The practice and profession of managing international relations, typically by representatives abroad (see ambassador). As the United States has interests in more than 190 countries, its diplomats and other personnel involved in foreign policy must deal with a wide range of issues.

In a country, supreme power over the territory it governs. This idea is the basis of the modern international system outlined by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and embodied in the notion that nations–monarchs then, governments now–control what happens within their borders. See also sphere of influence, Responsibility to protect, Hegemon, Balance of power.

A group of nations or regions that share a common language, culture or religion. Historically, this has largely been a geographic term, but it is also used as an idea to describe a political bloc, such as the NATO-Warsaw Pact grouping of Central Europe or the BRICS intergovernmental organization that aims to promote economic co-operation in Africa.

The five largest emerging economies–Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa–plus Nigeria are a loosely-defined regional bloc that was formed in 1975. The group is dominated by Nigeria and has been moderately successful in promoting economic cooperation in the region and sending peacekeeping troops to other African countries beset by civil war.