Suchergebnisse

Traces the growth of interest in a policy focus in Britain during the 1970s and early 1980s, and its subsequent partial displacement by an emphasis on public management.

Defining public policy -- The study of public policy -- The public policymaking system -- Formal policy development -- Policy analysis and program evaluation -- The doctrinal approach to understanding public policy -- Economic policy -- Education policy -- Environmental policy -- Welfare policy -- Civil rights policy -- Foreign & defense policy -- Criminal justice policy -- Health care policy

Reviewed & criticized are the dominant approaches to the study of public policy found in the recent literature, & proposed is a general framework within which policy study can be more directly related to the central concerns of politically science. Despite a massive increase in interest in policy, little progress has been made in developing theory to explain policy. Policy study has been dominated by two important, though limited, approaches: those of public administration & "policy analysis." It should be linked more directly to basic political issues such as power, conflict, & ideology. Policy should be regarded not as consensual problem solving, but as competition among clashing alternatives, & for scarce resources. The most important question to ask about it is "who gets what?" rather than questions about "efficiency & effectiveness." Policy study must be comparative, & it must seek ways to relate broad political conditions such as power, ideology, & institutional constraints directly to the policy outcomes, through the mediating influence of bargaining processes among decisionmakers. Policy study has been weakened by the continuing stress on case studies, the premature response to the demand to be relevant & prescriptive, & by the failure to specify the dependent variables: to isolate what we want to know, as political scientists, about policy. Policy study should seek to explain patterns of policy across political units. The patterns can be characterized in three sets of dependent factors: (1) variations in the scope of government -- the range of matters about which governments make decisions; (2) variations in the means, ranging from voluntarism & delegation to coercion & centralization, through which governments seek to implement decisions & secure compliance; & (3) variations in distribution, ie, variations in the distribution of costs & benefits across political relevant groups such as SCs, regions, religious groups, etc. Patterns of policy are thus distinguished from individual decisions, or particular programs. AA.