The primary focus of public policy making is the establishment of an agreeable balance between liberty and order. Public policies are crafted (and frequently adjusted) to embody that balance.
One of the most important debates in the public policy process is often whether the government ought to do anything at all in response to a particular problem. The answer to this question has a direct impact on the balance between liberty and order in our political society.
At one end of the continuum, a complete absence of public policies would leave individuals free to do whatever they chose. At the other end, a set of public policies that dictated every action an individual took every moment of his or her life would produce a thoroughly ordered society. In either case, the liberty or order that existed could not be fully enjoyed without the presence of the other.
At the extremes, the number or reach of a nation's public policies can maximize either liberty or order. From this perspective, an alternative definition of public policy is the process by which a political society balances the freedoms against the need to create a structured environment in which those freedoms can be enjoyed in a meaningful way. This effort is something of a quest to establish just the right amount of government--not too little, not too much, but just the right amount.