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This is an invaluable survey of the major theories and approaches in this area of study and research. It explores the role of parties in the pressing contemporary problems of institutional design and democratic governance today.

In the confines of the study of politics, public policy analysis involves a shift from pure to applied research, thus intensifying the problem of the fact-value split inherited from positivist behavioralism. While early public policy literature concentrated on empirical policy-making processes, bypassing moral criteria, Duncan MacRae, Jr. (The Social Function of Social Science, Yale University Press, 1976) & Jurgen Habermas (Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, Shapiro, Jeremy [Tr], Beacon Press, 1970; Legitimation Crisis, McCarthy, Thomas [Tr], Beacon Press, 1975) have elaborated on policy making & evaluation as a type of normative inquiry. According to Habermas, policy evaluation requires a critically reflective "practical discourse" open not only to experts or policy analysts but to the public at large. Such discourse is argued to be a valuable remedy for the technical-instrumental bent of applied science, but recovery of a fully noninstrumental "practical" judgment presupposes an evaluation not only of concrete policies but of the status of policy itself. Modified HA.