Suchergebnisse

The study of policy is above all the study of collective activity that affects a number of units of behavior & has a number of levels of interaction; many units of analysis must be used to interpret an activity in terms of its effects on many levels of state activity. The modern state is policy-determined, & can manipulate opinion quite apart from parties & ideologies, & even economics. In an autonomous state, structural analysis of policy would concentrate on "plausibility." Plausibility accrues when the state shows its ability to undertake certain actions despite its institutional constraints. Policy studies traditionally search for ways to maximize results; several views of how policy relates to politics are discussed. The "paradigm of plausibility" approach is presented as the most comprehensive, in which there is a reformulation of how policy relates to politics. The idea of plausibility looks at how a variety of norms are achieved. Trends in the literature suggest that policy determines politics & stems from jointness of demands placed on governmental performance. 1 Diagram. B. Hubinger.

As any recent Ph.D. recipient can attest, the writing of a doctoral dissertation is at times a process fraught with uncertainty and anxiety over the "meaning" of one's work and its implications for the growth of knowledge in the discipline. The dissertation usually marks the first opportunity for a graduate student to exercise a great deal of independence and autonomy on a research project of one's own choosing; and the successful defense of the completed dissertation represents the final phase in a socialization process designed to initiate the newcomer into the sacred "holies" of academic folkways and mores.From its inception in 1861, when Yale became the first American university to grant the Ph.D. degree, the doctoral degree was viewed as a "research degree" and the writing of a dissertation was justified in terms of making an "original contribution" to the scholar's own discipline. A casual glance through several recent graduate school catalogues indicates that the official rhetoric concerning the dissertation continues to stress the notion of an "original contribution."