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 instill
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.
