… IS A DIRTY GAME.

Politics, of course. It is a well-known saying. There is a great difference between politics and policy. Politics involves so many things - different views on how the world should be; different systems of government; different philosophies on almost anything to do with the relationships between peoples, societies, governments and countries.

Policy is more specific. Political parties have policies about different aspects of life - health policies, economic policies, etc. Maybe you can think of policies as views and programmes on a specific subject. In an election the political parties will explain their policies and try to get people to vote for them because they have the best policies.

Both words can, of course, be used in other contexts - office politics (the relationships between people at work - sometimes in a negative sense) and recruitment policies - the standards by which a company decides to employ new personnel.

In short: Policy is what a government does to support its ideas.
(laws..tariffs..wars..)

Politics decides which ideas the government believes.
(free trade, isolationism).

Now try to do a test on the page FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS.