The authors want students to understand how and why policy analysis is used to assess policy alternatives-not only to question the assumptions of policy analysts, but to recognize how analysis is used in support of political arguments. To encourage critical and creative thinking on issues ranging from the federal deficit to the Affordable Care Act to gun control, the authors introduce and fully integrate an evaluative approach to policy.
Public Policy begins with a concise review of institutions, policy actors, and major theoretical models. The authors then discuss the nature of policy analysis and its practice, and show students how to employ evaluative criteria in six substantive policy areas. Public Policy arms students with analytic tools they need to understand that the motivations of policy actors-both within and outside of government-influence a complex, yet comprehensible, policy agenda.
Author Biography
Michael E. Kraft is a professor of political science and the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He is the author of Environmental Policy and Politics, 7th ed. (2018), and coauthor of Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance (2011, winner of the Lynton K. Caldwell award for best book on environmental politics and policy that year) and of Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, 7th ed. (2021). In addition, he is coeditor of both the Oxford Handbook of Environmental Policy (2013) and Business and Environmental Policy (2007) with Sheldon Kamieniecki and of Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy, 2nd ed. (2009), with Daniel A. Mazmanian.
Scott R. Furlong is Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs at SUNY Oswego as of July 2017, after serving ten years as dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. His areas of expertise are regulatory policy and interest group participation in the executive branch, and he has taught public policy for over twenty years. He is the author or coauthor of numerous book chapters and coauthor of Rulemaking: How Government Agencies Write Laws and Make Policy, 5th ed. (2019), with Cornelius M. Kerwin. His articles have appeared in such journals as Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Administration and Society, American Review of Public Administration, and Policy Studies Journal.
