Political Science Notes

Political Science Notes

9/6/2012
Political Science
Public Policy – Chapter 1

Public Policy –
* Driving forces behind public policies are scarcity and rational self-interest.
* Emerged in mid 1960’s as subfield within discipline of political science
* Public policy is the study of government decisions and actions designed to deal with a matter of public concern.
* Policy analysis describes the investigations that produce accurate and useful information for decision-making.
Policy Analysis and Value Neutrality –
* By the twentieth century there was a general retreat from and sort of public advocacy
* Adopted a value-neutral position under the guise of scientific objectivity
* Scientific inquiry is one of the most prestigious activities in modern life
* Determined that their studies would be more scientific if they eliminated values and merely focused on social behavior.
Positive Policy Analysis –
* Positive policy Analysis has emphasis on value-free policies.
* Tries to understand public policy as it is
* Endeavors to explain how various social and political forces would change public policy.
* Pursue truth through the process of testing hypotheses by measuring them against the standard of real world experience
* If the Us Government raises interest rates, then the consumer will borrow less.
* Effects of excluding values –
* By narrowing the focus to largely empirical studies, it reduced the relevance of policy analysis for policy makers, who must be concerned with preferred end states such as “reduced ethnic antagonisms.”
* Reduced the importance of values in policy debates by shifting the discussion to cost-benefit analysis or the appropriate way to test a hypothesis
* By glossing over the normative issues, the field of models based on market efficiency while ignoring issues of “justice and fairness” played into the and of business interest and social conservatives.
Normative Analysis –...

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