Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives

In Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, students come to understand how and why policy analysis is used to assess policy alternatives. They learn not only to question the assumptions of policy analysts, but also to recognize how different kinds of analysis are used in support of political arguments. To encourage critical and creative thinking on issues ranging from the federal deficit to health care reform to climate change, authors Michael Kraft and Scott Furlong introduce and fully integrate an evaluative approach to policy. The Sixth Edition of Public Policy offers a fully revised, concise review of institutions, policy actors, and major theoretical models as well as a discussion of the nature of policy analysis and its practice. Both the exposition and data have been updated to reflect major policy controversies and developments through the end of 2016, including new priorities of the Donald Trump administration. The text shows students how to employ evaluative criteria in six substantive policy areas, arming them with the analytic tools they need to understand the motivations of policy actors―both within and outside of government―and to influence a complex and evolving, yet comprehensible, policy agenda. Read more