Abstract

Since government is the universally-accepted system that is responsible for midwifing the development and progress of nations and governance is mainly delivered through the making and implementation of public policy, it is imperative to develop a strategic policy view of the root-cause(s) of the bad governance that triggers the developmental disparities within and between nations which invariably engender national and regional instability across many corners of the globe. Developmental disparities within and between nations are especially important as the primary causes of national and regional conflicts as well as trans-national migration and sundry trans-national crimes such as human trafficking. In this article, I argue that public policy is so central to governance and pivotal to national development and progress that it must be recognized as the powerful force that can either unite polities around the pursuit of development and progress or leave them deeply-divided and starved of much-needed development. The crux of this argument is that national development and progress are impossible without national unity and regional stability. My second argument is that commitment to the practice of policy-led governance should be considered doubtful unless it can be proven by the prioritization of the institutionalization of Public Policy systems that are designed to, first and foremost, foster national unity and regional stability. The mission of this article is to introduce the novel concept of Public Policy Landscaping as the strategic means of making the governance landscape suitable for the development and deployment of the environmentally-sensitive public policy systems that can be relied upon to unite policy-led entities around the pursuit of national and regional development. Public policy does to the governance what landscape architecture does to natural land and this means that any neglect of public policy landscaping is bound to leave the governance landscape in a poor state that will invariably impede good policymaking and policy implementation.

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