How do we incorporate analytical thinking into public policy decisions? Stuart Shapiro confronts this issue in Analysis and Public Policy by looking at various types of analysis, and discussing how they are used in regulatory policy-making in the US. By looking at the successes and failures of incorporating cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, and environmental impact assessment, he draws broader lessons on its use, focusing on the interactions between analysis and political factors, legal structures and bureaucratic organizations as possible areas for reform. Utilizing empirical and qualitative research, Shapiro analyzes four different forms of analysis: cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, environmental impact assessment, and impact analysis. After interviewing nearly fifty individuals who have served in high levels of government, and who have made countless regulatory policy decisions in their careers, Shapiro argues that advocates must become less ambitious and should craft requirements for simpler and clearer analysis. Such analysis, particularly if informed by public participation, can do a great deal to improve government decisions. As this book details the relationship between analysis and institutional factors such as politics, bureaucracy, and law, it is appropriate for a variety of readers, such as scholars of policy, students, scholars of regulation, and congressional and state legislative staff looking to create new analytical requirements.

What kind of policy analysis is required now that governments increasingly encounter the limits of governing? Exploring the new contexts of politics and policy making, this book presents an original analysis of the relationship between state and society, and new possibilities for collective learning and conflict resolution. The key insight of the book is that democratic governance calls for a new deliberatively-oriented policy analysis. Traditionally policy analysis has been state-centered, based on the assumption that central government is self-evidently the locus of governing. Drawing on detailed empirical examples, the book examines the influence of developments such as increasing ethnic and cultural diversity, the complexity of socio-technical systems, and the impact of transnational arrangements on national policy making. This contextual approach indicates the need to rethink the relationship between social theory, policy analysis, and politics. The book is essential reading for all those involved in the study of public policy.

"This book provides a wise and engaging how-to guide that meets the central challenge of policy analysis: combining scientific evidence and social goals to craft practical, real-world solutions." —Thomas S. Dee, Barnett Family Professor of Education, Stanford University Drawing on more than 40 years of experience with policy analysis, best-selling authors Eugene Bardach and Eric M. Patashnik use real-world examples to teach students how to be effective, accurate, and persuasive policy analysts. The Sixth Edition of A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis presents dozens of concrete tips, new case studies, and step-by-step strategies for the budding analyst as well as the seasoned professional.

Policy analysts currently have available to them a cafeteria menu of analytical approaches, from welfare economics to political philosophy. Davis B. Bobrow and John S. Dryzek believe that now more than ever a clear understanding of the approaches available - the assumptions consciously or unconsciously adopted by their practitioners - is crucial to the practice of intellectually defensible and socially responsible analysis of public policy.Policy Analysis by Design examines the approaches to public policy taken by those who try to teach it, write about it, and influence it through major analysis. Bobrow and Dryzek systematically compare the five major contending analytical frames of reference: welfare economics, public choice, social structure, information processing, and political philosophy. The workings of each frame are illustrated by means of a common, if imaginary, policy case - air pollution in the hypothetical Smoke Valley.Bobrow and Dryzek discover that many important distinctions emerge among the major frames of reference, differences which should help to determine when to choose what approach. The authors conclude by suggesting how policy analysis should be conducted, and how policy analysts should be trained, in the face of such diversity.The concerns of Policy Analysis by Design are deeper and broader than most books in the field, breaking new ground. Bobrow and Dryzek make the case that policy analysts should balance their attention to technique with an understanding of the rationales underlying their interventions in policy processes. Policy Analysis by Design, based on this fundamental principle, should stimulate debate about basic choices that policy analysts must make.

This book offers a novel, refreshing and politically engaged way to think about public policy. Instead of treating policy as simply the government’s best efforts to address problems, it offers a way to question critically how policies produce “problems” as particular sorts of problems, with important political implications. Governing, it is argued, takes place through these problematizations. According to the authors, interrogating policies and policy proposals as problematizations involves asking questions about the assumptions they rely upon, how they have been made, what their effects are, as well as how they could be unmade. To enable this form of critical analysis, this book introduces an analytic strategy, the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach. It features examples of applications of the approach with topics as diverse as obesity, economic policy, migration, drug and alcohol policy, and gender equality to illustrate the growing popularity of this way of thinking and to provide clear and useful examples of poststructural policy analysis in practice.

Updated in its 3rd edition, Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning presents quickly applied methods for analyzing and resolving planning and policy issues at state, regional, and urban levels. Divided into two parts, Methods which presents quick methods in nine chapters and is organized around the steps in the policy analysis process, and Cases which presents seven policy cases, ranging in degree of complexity, the text provides readers with the resources they need for effective policy planning and analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are systematically combined to address policy dilemmas and urban planning problems. Readers and analysts utilizing this text gain comprehensive skills and background needed to impact public policy.

Frameworks for Policy Analysis argues that, in order to bring relevance back to policy analysis, we need to approach policy situations as complex phenomena and employ multiple ways of looking at things in order to understand the essential elements of each policy case. The book is an exploration of distinct, sometimes radically different, models for analysis, but it is also a reference for these multiple methodologies that all come under the term "analysis." Along with classic and recent models, the book introduces some new concepts that serve to deepen our analysis and aspire to what Geertz calls "thick description." This text, written for advanced courses in policy analysis, is an answer to the critical gap between the complexity and dimensionality of policy situations and the abstract and formal character of policy analysis, in general. The book begins by introducing the reader to dominant models of analysis, pointing out their limitations and the potential for transcending these limits. It also introduces new analytical approaches that help to merge text and context, increasing the dimensionality and authenticity of the analysis.