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Although Schneider agrees with me that policy analysis does not occupy a central position in political science, she disagrees with my prescription for increasing its acceptance in the discipline. At the present time, political scientists are unwilling to address questions about how policy tools can be used to increase democracy in a country. But I believe this is an important priority for policy analyses as well as political science.

The implicit priorities of political science have been inhospitable to policy evaluation as a scholarly endeavor. Political science, at least as practiced in the West, draws from a philosophic tradition that views political life, and especially democratic political life, as a public objective, not principally as instrumental for other social ends. Comparative policy analysis deviated from that tradition by treating political conditions as independent variables. Policy evaluation, which assesses the social consequences of governmental actions, deviated even further, adopting an explicitly and totally instrumental approach. The argument ofthis essay is that the tactics of policy evaluation should be adopted for assessing the impact of policy patterns on democratic institutions and citizenship. This recommendation flows from a diagnosis of the division of labor in policy evaluation and an identification of the optimum entry points for political science.

POLICY EVALUATION, AS IT HAS EVOLVED OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, HAS ENGAGED THE ENERGIES OF MANY POLITICAL SCIENTISTS. BUT THE ENTERPRISE OF ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENTAL OUTPUTS ON MEMBERS OF SOCIETY STILL REMAINS NOTABLY ANGULAR, IF NOT IRRELEVANT, TO MANY OF THE TRADITIONAL CONCERNS OF POLITICAL SCIENTISTS. SINCE IT WOULD BE HARD TO ARGUE THAT POLITICAL SCIENTISTS HAVE (OR OUGHT TO HAVE) NO INTEREST IN WHAT GOVERNMENTS PRODUCE, THIS ANGULARITY IS, AT FIRST, RATHER PUZZLING. POLICY EVALUATION TAKES AN UNEQUIVOCALLY INSTRUMENTAL VIEW OF GOVERNMENT. GOVERNMENTS ARE THERE TO DO THINGS TO AND FOR THE MEMBERS OF A POLITY. HEALTH POLICY IS TO IMPROVE PEOPLE'S HEALTH. EDUCATION POLICY IS TO EDUCATE PEOPLE. TRANSPORT POLICY IS TO TRANSPORT PEOPLE AND GOODS FROM PLACE TO PLACE. POLICY EVALUATORS EVEN CALL GOVERNMENTAL OUTPUTS "INSTRUMENTS." THE DISCIPLINARY ARRAY OF ANALYSTS WHO EVALUATE SUCH INSTRUMENTS IS WIDE. PUBLIC HEALTH SPECIALISTS EVALUATE HEALTH POLICY. EDUCATION SPECIALISTS EVALUATE EDUCATION POLICIES.

A growing body of evaluation research has been reporting negative or lack of positive effects from a wide range of social policies and programs. Yet within the data presented one can frequently detect that relative ineffectiveness is far from uniform across time periods and/or population groups.Evidence may be gleaned from existing research to suggest that some policies have differential effectiveness, being most effective where and when the need is greatest, with "need" measured as the change in conditions reasonably assumed to be the policy goal.The essay cautions policy analysts against over‐aggregation of data on policy impact. It also argues that a substantial amount of money and public effort could be saved, without sacrificing net positive effect, by fitting policy efforts to demonstrable need/effectiveness curves.