“Political Impact of the Public Policy as an Academic Discipline in New Democracies: Case Study the Republic of Macedonia”

Abstract

New democracies, particularly post communist democracies, have faced many problems in the process of designing new institutions that restructure the role of the state in society. The challenge was how to build a distinction between institutions and policies: who governs and what governments do. In established democracies, institutions create and implement new policies, in new democracies the policies are focused on building new institutions. This process of transformation tested the democratic capacity of societies and was seen as a challenge for research by academics. Additional value to the complexity of this process was given by the cleavages in a society based on ethnic, linguistic, religious or political lines. " After institutionalizing Public Policy as an academic discipline at Political Science Department in the Republic of Macedonia, an environment for critical approach and theoretical resources has been created for public policy improvement. The deep ethnic and political cleavages in the Macedonian society created a complex power-sharing model where the institutional framework inherited from former Yugoslavia was not able to respond to policy making andimplementation of different policy designs. " The paper aims to present the political impact of the Public policy studies as an academic discipline in a new democracy, such as the Republic of Macedonia, over the institutional framework on policy decision-making. In addition, the paper presents how the institutional procedures interact with social and political circumstances in the country and the visibility of political impact in policy solutions in practice.