This article has two analytical dimensions: the first deals with the meaning and purpose of the policies designed and implemented by the capitalist state; the second investigates their nature, whether public or state. Therefore, the article intends to build a conceptual and methodological framework that will help to better understand about the reasons of the success or failure of the so-called public policies, especially in the context of the peripheral countries. This involves understanding that the outcome is associated much more to the way social demands are managed - political administration - that to the precision of previously established calculations.
political administration; state; state policies; public policies