The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy

by Moran, Michael; Rein, Martin; Goodin, Robert E.

• ISBN13: 9780199548453
• ISBN10: 0199548455
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-08-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Public policy is the business end of political science. It is where theory meets practice in the pursuit of the public good. Political scientists approach public policy in myriad ways. Some approach the policy process descriptively, asking how the need for public intervention comes to be perceived, a policy response formulated, enacted, implemented, and, all too often, subverted, perverted, altered, or abandoned. Others approach public policy more prescriptively, offering politically-informed suggestions for how normatively valued goals can and should be pursued, either through particular policies or through alternative processes for making policy. Some offer their advice from the Olympian heights of detached academic observers, others as 'engaged scholars' cum advocates, while still others seek to instill more reflective attitudes among policy practitioners themselves toward their own practices. The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy mines all these traditions, using an innovative structure that responds to the very latest scholarship. Its chapters touch upon institutional and historical sources and analytical methods, how policy is made, how it is evaluated and how it is constrained. In these ways, the Handbook shows how the combined wisdom of political science as a whole can be brought to bear on political attempts to improve the human condition.

Author Biography

Michael Moran is W.J.M. Mackenzie Professor of Government at the University of Manchester.
Martin Rein is Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Robert E. Goodin is Distinguished Professor of Social and Political Theory and Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University.

Table of Contents

About the Contributors	p. ix
Introduction
The Public and its Policies	p. 3
Institutional and Historical Background
The Historical Roots of the Field	p. 39
Emergence of Schools of Public Policy: Reflections by a Founding Dean	p. 58
Training for Policy Makers	p. 80
Modes of Policy Analysis
Policy Analysis as Puzzle Solving	p. 109
Policy Analysis as Critical Listening	p. 124
Policy Analysis as Policy Advice	p. 152
Policy Analysis for Democracy	p. 169
Policy Analysis as Critique	p. 190
Producing Public Policy
The Origins of Policy	p. 207
Agenda Setting	p. 228
Ordering through Discourse	p. 251
Arguing, Bargaining, and Getting Agreement	p. 269
Policy Impact	p. 296
The Politics of Policy Evaluation	p. 319
Policy Dynamics	p. 336
Learning in Public Policy	p. 367
Reframing Problematic Policies	p. 389
Instruments of Policy
Policy in Practice	p. 409
Policy Network Analysis	p. 425
Smart Policy?	p. 448
The Tools of Government in the Information Age	p. 469
Policy Analysis as Organizational Analysis	p. 482
Public-Private Collaboration	p. 496
Constraints on Public Policy
Economic Constraints on Public Policy	p. 529
Political Feasibility: Interests and Power	p. 543
Institutional Constraints on Policy	p. 557
Social and Cultural Factors: Constraining and Enabling	p. 572
Globalization and Public Policy	p. 587
Policy Intervention: Styles and Rationales
Distributive and Redistributive Policy	p. 607
Market and Non-Market Failures	p. 624
Privatization and Regulatory Regimes	p. 651
Democratizing the Policy Process	p. 669
Commending and Evaluating Public Policies
The Logic of Appropriateness	p. 689
Ethical Dimensions of Public Policy	p. 709
Economic Techniques	p. 729
Economism and its Limits	p. 746
Policy Modeling	p. 771
Social Experimentation for Public Policy	p. 806
Public Policy, Old and New
The Unique Methodology of Policy Research	p. 833
Choosing Governance Systems: A Plea for Comparative Research	p. 844
The Politics of Retrenchment: The US Case	p. 858
Reflections on How Political Scientists (and Others) Might Think about Energy and Policy	p. 874
Reflections on Policy Analysis: Putting it Together Again	p. 892
Index	p. 913
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