The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy

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 instil 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. Contributors to this volume - Graham Allison, Harvard University. Eugene Bardach, University of California, Berkeley. Johanna Birckmayer, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), Calverton, Maryland. Davis B. Bobrow, University of Pittsburgh. Mark Bovens, Utrecht University. Bea Cantillon, Universiteit Antwerpen. Tom Christiansen, University of Oslo. Neta C. Crawford, Brown University. Peter deLeon, University of Colorado, Boulder. John D. Donahue, Harvard University. Yehezekel Dror, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. John Dryzek, Australian National University. Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University. John Forestor, Cornell University. Richard Freeman, University of Edinburgh. Barry Friedman, Brandeis University. Archon Fung, Harvard University. William Galston, University of Maryland. Robert E. Goodin, Australian National University. Maarten Hajer, University of Amsterdam. Dirk Haubrich, University College London. Colin Hay, University of Birmingham. Matthew Holden, Jr., University of Virginia. Christopher Hood, University of Oxford. Ellen Immergut, Humboldt University, Berlin. Helen Ingram, University of California, Irvine. Mark Kleiman, University of California, Los Angeles. Rudolf Klein, University of Bath. Sanneke Kuipers, University of Leiden. David Laws, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute. James G. March, Stanford University. Theodore R. Marmor, Yale University. Michael Moran, University of Manchester. Johan P. Olsen, University of Oslo. Edward Page, London School of Economics. Frances Fox Piven, City University New York. John Quiggin, University of Queensland. Martin Rein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. R.A.W. Rhodes, Australian National University. Anne L. Schneider, Arizona State University. Colin Scott, London School of Economics. Tom Sefton, London School of Economics. Henry Shue, Cornell University and Merton College, Oxford. Kevin B. Smith, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Lawrence E. Susskind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School. Steven N. Teles, Brandeis University. Paul 't Hart, Swedish National Defence College, Stockholm. Carol Hirschon Weiss, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Karel Van den Bosch, University of Antwerp. Richard Wilson, Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Christopher Winship, Harvard University. Jonathan Wolff, University College, London. Oran R. Young, University of California, Santa Barbara. Richard J. Zeckhauser, Harvard University.