Government policy is a collective set of laws, regulations, guidelines and programs that the government adopts to solve relevant and problematic problems. It is conceived by public or private groups who formulate strategy to bring about social change and is carried out by policymakers who implement policies as concrete programs and actions. Public policy is distinct from politics (although it is intertwined with it) and administration as it entails a civil service that takes politics/policy, codifies it and translates it into systems capable of being implemented in the field.
Policymakers are faced with a myriad of problems, some of which are more complex than others. Typically, the standard approach to problem-solving fails to address complex problems in an effective manner because it requires a degree of predictive capability, e.g. all possible options must be mapped out and their costs and benefits calculated. This is not feasible in a system that displays emergent phenomena, where the final outcome cannot be predicted but must be gleamed and understood by running the policy in a live environment.
Nevertheless, there are several areas of policy that have proven to be successful. For example, hospital accreditation, housing assistance programs, health insurance regulations and zoning reform. If those who believe in government action were to point out these success stories it would dispel the myth that all government efforts inevitably fail. Instead, they tend to focus on the negatives of a particular program or issue.