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Policy Analysis as a Vocation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Marc Landy
Marc Landy
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Abstract

Three recent works provide the point of departure for assessing the performance of the new profession of policy analysis. Both the scope of the enterprise and the standards it adopts for evaluating policy are found to be excessively narrow. A revised framework for policy analysis is proposed whose scope is broadened to encompass the design of policy-making procedures as well as substantive policy outcomes. Such procedures have a vital impact upon how policy problems are defined and how preferences concerning them are formed. The standards for evaluating policy are expanded to include an explicit consideration of citizenship. All policies and policy-making procedures directly or indirectly affect the capacity for self-government. Therefore they must be judged, at least in part, in terms of how they influence the capabilities of citizens to participate in public life and the willingness of citizens to do so.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , April 1981 , pp. 468 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1981

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References

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