Active learning strategies and implementation

¶ … Operation Fast and Furious:

The United States Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms started Operation Fast and Furious as a gun running initiative that involved the sale of 1,026 weapons to members of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel. The Mexican drug cartels were provided with weapons worth over $650,000 such as caliber revolvers, AK-47's, pistols and Barrett. This initiative was geared towards tracking the movement of these guns and weapons from the Mexican drug cartel organizations. While the motive of Operation Fast and Furious was to help the U.S. law enforcement to examine the movement of guns into America through the Mexican drug cartels, the initiative had serious unintended consequences. These severe consequences emerged due to lack of sufficient mechanisms to track the weapons and prevent their use for illegal and violent reasons. As a result, the major unintended consequence of Operation Fast and Furious is that it resulted in the spread of violent crimes in the United States.

While the full extent of the unintended consequences of Operation Fast and Furious is unknown, the failure of the initiative to accomplish its intended purpose presents several lessons to policymakers in the U.S. First, the operation shows the need to ensure suitable coordination between law enforcement agencies on important policies and procedures in law enforcement agencies. Secondly, the most essential risk management principles must be established when developing policies and procedures in this field. Third, Operation Fast and Furious demonstrates the need to examine the intended and unintended consequences in policy making decisions.

The consequences of this operation can be prevented in the future through increased collaboration between law enforcement agencies and policy makers (Kimery, 2012). Lack of coordination is likely to contribute to severe impacts of a policy as evident in the fact that federal officials ignored several warnings from other agencies and officials that the initiative would fail.

Public Policy:

Before taking the course, I considered public policy as a concept that is similar to the process of making a bill into law. This implies that public policy involved the development and enactment of a bill into law in attempts to respond to major concerns and issues that emerge from the public. This course has enabled me to understand the actual description and meaning of public policy and its significant concepts. Generally, public policy is an action taken by the government through its executive branches in response to a specific public issue. Government agencies and organizations develop and implement public policy with the intention of protecting the society and providing benefits to the populations. Notably, such actions are taken based on the provisions in the Constitution and institutional traditions.

The most significant concepts learned in this course are the instrumentation, tools, and modes of operation of public policy. The significance of public policy instrumentation has been emphasized throughout the course because it shows the theoretical relationship between governing and the population. Secondly, knowledge regarding the tools and modes of operation of public policy has provided information on how every instrument comprise of strong knowledge regarding social control and various ways of implementing it (Lascoumes & Le Gales, 2007). Third, this course has provided knowledge regarding the relationship between politics and public policy in which the process of policy making is part of political initiatives.

This course is valuable in understanding the relationship between governing and the governed because it incorporates several concepts and fields in social science. Moreover, the study shows the difference of public policy from political science and economics based on its focus on translating theory into practice. The concepts learned in this course will be applied in public management through understanding administrative, management, and operational issues.