Paper 2
Week paper instruction
It needs to be 1-2 page paper (3-4 full paragraphs) on what you learned from the week and what topics do you need to work through more. The paper should include the following:
Provides a synopsis of what was learned, quoting directly from the readings, videos, and papers using APA style.
Address and analysis what topics were discussed during the week that you would like to focus on more.
Readings:
Bardach and Patashnik, 5th ed. xv-xx and Step One: Define the Problem, pp. 1-12 & 113-124, 155-163
Heineman, et al. pp. 84-174 (Chapter 4 Chapter 8)
Videos:
Gordon Brown – Wiring a web for global good
Benjamin Barber: Why Mayors Should Rule the World Public policy analysis
Week 2 Lecture
Week 2 – Learning goals
1. Examine key components to defining public problems
2. Examine the challenges currently faced by the public sector
3. Examine the institutions and agencies that implement public policy
4. Analyze the U.S. system of governance, fragmentation, and decentralization as it impacts public policy
5. Distinguish biases that exist in the information gathering and analysis process
6. Apply CIL techniques to student’s problem and policy research.
7. Discuss and analyze the main themes for the week.
8. Summarize the key points from the course content/resources in paper assignment.
Barber Why mayors should rule the world
Solutions to problems exist in local action which will move across the world. An important concept as globalization impacts local communities directly.
Need to change our political institutions to be able to respond to the problems.
Focus on the city our homes Mayors should rule the world engaging in global governance
See this disconnect today in the United States between urban areas/cities and the national political scene.
Institutions that bring the mayors together to solve problems negotiation is different at the local level than at the national level and therefore the political culture
Brown Wiring the Web for global good
The power of images that can now move across the world creating awareness and getting an issue on the agenda
Using globalization for good a new form of media and news that can enhance democracy with people directly interacting and documenting what is occurring at the local level
Impacts across the globe but also locally
Bringing people together to make a new future
Bardach & Patashnik, pp. xi-xx
Policy making
Lives and well-being of large numbers of fellow citizens
Process and results of a policy analysis involve other parties and professionals
Todays policy analysis
Program evaluation, design, management, public relations, planning, budgeting, etc.
The Eightfold Path
Define the problem
Assemble some evidence
Construct the alternatives
Select the criteria
Project the outcomes
Confront the trade-offs
Stop, focus, narrow, deepen, decide
Tell your story
Problem-Solving Process
A constantly changing process
Guidelines are practical most are conceptual
Concepts are embedded in concrete particulars you need be able to tell these part
Some steps might already be determined
Bardach & Patashnik, pp. 1-14
Step 1: Defining the problem
Think of deficit and excess
Make the definition evaluative
Using issue rhetoric what is this?
Uncertainty is the problem that evaluation addresses
Quantify is possible
Diagnose conditions that cause problems
Risky conditions
Work on hypotheticals to a point
Identify latent opportunities
Avoid common pitfalls in problem definition
Defining the solution into the problem
Accepting too easily the causal claims implicit in diagnostic problem definitions
Iterate
Bardach and Patashnik, pp. 123-132
Handling a design problem
Developing the system and planning the bureaucratic change
Trail and error is an important part of the path working constructively and trashing about
Simplify quantifying the constraints and outcomes
Construct alternatives for a design that is flexible, powerful, robust, transitory, and least costly
Logic models to test assumptions
Design based on cases (individuals) or some other output (common goods)
Research for good ideas and solutions
Work with others create team efforts
Focus on your objectives project the outcomes test if it will work
Strategize and reanalyze along the way
Bardach and Patashnik, Appendix A
Things governments do/how they get things done/Implementation
Taxes
Regulation
Subsidies and grants
Service provision
Agency budgets
Information
Structure of private rights
Framework of economic activity
Education and consultation
Financing and contracting
Bureaucratic and political reforms
Heineman, et al. Chapter 5: Individualism
Quick answers to difficult problems
Concerns of what have you done for me lately
Realignment of
Political Parties and Policies
Future of political parties
Items to consider
Open primary
Changing attitudes
Ideas that make a person conservative, liberal, libertarian, populist
Impacts on the Policy Process
Understanding the electorate allows for a better understanding of the policy process
The differing ideas can lead to a watering down of the legislation
What Pal would consider either strong/weak policy v. strong/weak implementation.
Heineman, et al. Chapter 6: Policy Analysis and the Political Arena
Incrementalism and satisficing Charles Lindblom
Can create a shortsighted, self-interested policy framework
Fits well in the American system of politics and decision making
Fragmentation
Particularly in Congress
1970s reform reduced the power of the committee chairman and increased power of subcommittees
1990s opened the committee meetings allowing lobbyists and interest groups to play a larger role
Stronger position of the parties under Gingrich
Fragmentation in the White House
Nominating the president
Work to control the bureaucracy
How did Nixon do it?
How did Reagan do it?
Loss of Fiscal Discipline
Gramm-Rudman bill (1985)
Strict timetable to eliminate the deficit by 1991
Shotgun feature
Supreme Court declared the automatic spending cut provisions illegal since they were controlled by Congress and not the presidents office
Pay as you go
Clinton reduced budget but hurt his party
Heineman, et al. Chapter 7 Policy Devolution and Policy Analysis
More concerned with the heavy hand of the federal government with tax and spend policies people are less concerned with the centralized power of the federal government and national security.
Devolution of policy to the states from the federal government through funding – a key part of the states rights discussion
What were the programs and the impacts of these programs under the following presidential administrations?
Nixon
Reagan
Has led to additional fragmentation
Heineman, et al. Chapter 7 Policy Devolution and Policy Analysis
Private Sector Analysis
With this devolution there has also been a growth of think tanks and other outside policy analysts
Examples
Some critiques
Limitations to the analysis based on the funding sources
What are the impacts of devolution on evaluation?
Heineman, et al. Chapter 8: Policy Analysis in the Judicial Process
Early 1900s to 1937
Strict constitutionalists
Sociological jurisprudence
Roscoe Pound and Dewey
Concern for the impacts of their decisions on human lives
Judicial activism starting in the 1950s
Racial desegregation, integration, and other social issues
Procedural changes to allow for cases that will be reviewed
Organized interests
Current issues with technological and scientific changes
Should the courts serve as mediators and policy-makers in cases that involve normative values?
Any final questions? A PRACTICAL
GUIDE for
POLICY
ANALYSIS
FIFTH EDITION
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the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing innovative
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Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | S ingapore | Washington DC
A PRACTICAL
GUIDE for
POLICY
ANALYSIS
FIFTH EDITION
THE EIGHTFOLD PATH
TO MORE EFFECTIVE
PROBLEM SOLVING
Eugene Bardach
Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy,
University of California, Berkeley
Eric M. Patashnik
Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy,
University of Virginia
Copyright 2016 by CQ Press, an Imprint of
SAGE Publications, Inc. CQ Press is a registered
trademark of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bardach, Eugene.
A practical guide for policy analysis: the eightfold
path to more effective problem solving / Eugene
Bardach and Eric Patashnik.Fifth edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4833-5946-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Policy sciences. 2. Decision making.
3. Problem solving. I. Patashnik, Eric M. II. Title.
H97.B37 2016
320.6dc23 2015028146
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
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v
Eugene Bardach has been teaching graduate-level policy analysis work-
shop classes since 1973 at the Goldman School of Public Policy,
University of California, Berkeley, in which time he has coached some
500 projects. He is a broadly based political scientist with wide-ranging
teaching and research interests. His focus is primarily on policy imple-
mentation and public management, and most recently on problems of
facilitating better interorganizational collaboration in service delivery
(e.g., in human services, environmental enforcement, fire prevention,
and habitat preservation). He also maintains an interest in problems of
homeland defense, regulatory program design and execution, particularly
in areas of health, safety, consumer protection, and equal opportunity.
Bardach has developed novel teaching methods and materials at Berkeley,
has directed and taught in residentially based training programs for
higher-level public managers, and has worked for the Office of Policy
Analysis at the US Department of Interior. He is the recipient of the 1998
Donald T. Campbell Award of the Policy Studies Organization for cre-
ative contribution to the methodology of policy analysis. This book is
based on his experience teaching students the principles of policy analy-
sis and then helping them to execute their project work.
Eric M. Patashnik teaches policy analysis at the Frank Batten School of
Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia. He previously held
faculty positions at Yale University and at the UCLA Luskin School of
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
v i A B O U T T H E AU T H O R S
Public Affairs. Patashnik is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings
Institution, an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public
Administration, and the editor (beginning 2016) of the Journal of Health
Politics, Policy and Law. He received his masters in public policy degree
from the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California,
Berkeley. He served as associate dean for Academic Affairs of the Batten
School from 2009 to 2012. Patashniks research focuses on the politics of
American national policymaking, especially health policy, the welfare
state, and the role of Congress. He received the Jefferson Foundation
Award for excellence in teaching at UVA. He is the author or editor
of numerous books, including Reforms at Risk: What Happens After
Major Policy Changes Are Enacted, which won the Louis Brownlow Book
Award of the National Academy of Public Administration. Earlier in his
career, Patashnik was a legislative analyst for the US House Subcommittee
on Elections.
v i i
PREFACE xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
INTRODUCTION xv
PART I
THE EIGHTFOLD PATH 1
Step One: Define the Problem 1
Step Two: Assemble Some Evidence 12
Step Three: Construct the Alternatives 18
Step Four: Select the Criteria 27
Step Five: Project the Outcomes 46
Step Six: Confront the Trade-Offs 65
Step Seven: Stop, Focus, Narrow, Deepen, Decide! 71
Step Eight: Tell Your Story 72
PART II
ASSEMBLING EVIDENCE 83
Getting Started 84
Locating Relevant Sources 86
Gaining Access and Engaging Assistance 93
CONTENTS
v i i i C O n T E n T S
Conducting a Policy Research Interview 98
Using Language to Characterize and Calibrate 107
Protecting Credibility 108
Strategic Dilemmas of Policy Research 110
PART III
HANDLING A DESIGN PROBLEM 113
Its a Production System 114
Crosswalks to the Eightfold Path 115
Define the Problem Focus on a Primary Outcome 115
Construct the Alternatives Configure the Systems
Organizational Structure and Its Operating Processes 116
Select the Criteria Define the Objectives to Be Achieved 122
Project the Outcomes Test Whether It Will Work 122
Confront the Trade-Offs Examine the System
from Multiple Perspectives 123
Design a Transition Strategy 123
PART IV
SMART (BEST) PRACTICES RESEARCH: UNDERSTANDING AND
MAKING USE OF WHAT LOOK LIKE GOOD IDEAS FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE 125
Develop Realistic Expectations 125
Analyze Smart Practices 126
Observe the Practice 131
Describe Generic Vulnerabilities 135
But Will It Work Here? 136
Back to the Eightfold Path 139
APPENDIX A
SPECIMEN OF A REAL-WORLD POLICY ANALYSIS 141
Preface 141
Summary 142
Reducing Consumption: More
Enforcement against Typical Dealers 144
C O n T E n T S i x
Reducing Consumption: More Enforcement
against Higher-Level Dealers 148
Reducing Cocaine-Related Crime 152
Conclusion 154
APPENDIX B
THINGS GOVERNMENTS DO 155
I. Taxes 155
II. Regulation 156
III. Subsidies and Grants 157
IV. Service Provision 158
V. Agency Budgets 159
VI. Information 160
VII. The Structure of Private Rights 160
VIII. The Framework of Economic Activity 161
IX. Education and Consultation 162
X. Financing and Contracting 162
XI. Bureaucratic and Political Reforms 163
APPENDIX C
UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT INSTITUTIONS:
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS 165
Mission 165
Environment 165
Performance Measurement 166
Technology 167
Production/Delivery Processes 168
Frontline Workers and Co-Producers 169
Partners and Other Outsiders 169
Centralization/Decentralization 170
Culture and Communications 170
Politics 170
Leadership 171
Change 171
x C O n T E n T S
APPENDIX D
STRATEGIC ADVICE ON THE DYNAMICS OF GATHERING POLITICAL SUPPORT 173
Sequencing 175
Timing 175
APPENDIX E
TIPS FOR WORKING WITH CLIENTS 181
REFERENCES 185
INDEX 189
x i
This handbook serves as a guide to concepts and methods applied in the analysis of policy. Eugene Bardach developed the general approach
and many of the specific suggestions over thirty-five years of teaching
policy analysis workshops to first- and second-year graduate students at
the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy, University of
California, Berkeley. In the handbooks earliest incarnation, the ideas
took form slowly and were conveyed to students in lectures. But because
he and his faculty colleagues systematically overloaded their students
with work, they would sometimes skip a lectureand thus miss out on
ideas that he regarded as essential. Bardach determined that if he were to
create a handout for the students, at least he would have discharged his
responsibility, and it would be up to the students to retrieve the ideas they
had missed. Over the years, as the handout grew, it was disseminated
informally to colleagues at other universities and was posted on the web-
site of the Electronic Hallway, based at the University of Washington.
This book is the outgrowth of these previous compilations and the prod-
uct of many years of experience.
Eric Patashnik was first exposed to the Eightfold Path when he took
the introductory policy analysis course as a student in the Goldman
School in spring 1988. As a professor, he has assigned earlier editions of
Genes book to hundreds of public policy students at UCLA and UVA.
The presumed user is a beginning practitioner preparing to undertake
a policy analysis, such as one of our masters students at the Goldman
School or the Batten School. But we have found this handbook useful at
PREFACE
x i i P R E FA C E
both ends of the spectrumin teaching undergraduate introduction to
public policy courses as well as executive education groups.
The handbook assumes a familiarity with basic economic concepts,
including those having to do with market failures (including market
imperfections). It is not meant to stand alone but should be used in
conjunction with other sources, including some of the best textbooks in
policy analysis, which are cited often to amplify points in this handbook:
Weimer and Vining (2011); Stokey and Zeckhauser (1978); Behn and
Vaupel (1982); Friedman (2002); MacRae and Whittington (1997); and
Morgan and Henrion (1990). A book similar in spirit to this one, and that
has many examples drawn from New Zealand and Australia, is Scott and
Baehler (2010).
This new edition of A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis includes a
new Part on using design thinking to develop systems of action to solve
complex problems, a new Appendix offering tips for working with
clients, and many updated case examples. It also gives more attention to
government failure and the challenge of policy sustainability, introduces
users to choice architecture and other ideas from social psychology, and
offers suggestions for developing creative, out-of-the-box solutions.
Finally, even with the addition of new material and a new co-author,
or perhaps especially with these additions, we trust there is continuity
with the spirit of previous editions. That spirit is about posing the right
questions before moving on to search for the right answers. It is also
about helping the reader/user under challenging intellectual, political,
and logistical pressures fend off confusion and anxiety. This is meant to
be a friendly sort of book.
x i i i
W e wish to acknowledge the patience and helpful response of the students, friends, and family members who have provided helpful
suggestions for improving this handbook, especially those who with-
stood its earlier versions. Special thanks are due Dan Acland, Nancy
Bardach, Naomi Bardach, Rebecca Bardach, Robert Behn, Joy Bonaguro,
Sandford Borins, Henry Brady, Jeanine Braithwaite, David Breneman,
Jose Canela-Cacho, Eileen Chou, Ben Converse, Hank Dempsey, David
Dery, John Ellwood, Lee Friedman, David Garcia-Junco Machado, Chloe
Gibbs, Nina Goldman, Debbie Gordon, David Kirp, Jake Lavin, Leo
Levenson, Martin A. Levin, Randall Lutter, Duncan MacRae, Christine
Mahoney, Sarah Marxer, Carolyn Marzke, Jane Mauldon, John Mendeloff,
Michael OHare, Steven Page, Beryl Radin, Chris Ruhm, Jesse Rothstein,
Andres Roemer, Larry Rosenthal, Mark Sabean, Jim Savage, Ray
Scheppach, Peter Schuck, Jay Shimshack, Bill Shobe, Eugene Smolensky,
Craig Volden, David Weimer, Jim Wyckoff, and Marc Zegans.
We wish to extend our thanks to our reviewers for their help with this
edition: Jeanine Braithwaite, University of Virginia; Jessica Ulm, Indiana
UniversityBloomington; Mack Shelley, Iowa State University; Deborah
Stine, Carnegie Mellon University; Beth Greenberg, Shippensburg
University of Pennsylvania. Thanks also go to Sarah Calabi, Brenda
Carter, Charisse Klino, Katie Lowry, Jane Haenel, and Amy Whitaker (of
CQ Press) for their help in bringing this new edition to press. Many
thanks to Patrice Sutton as well, for her sharp editorial recommendations.
We are grateful for the excellent research assistance of Elsa Schultze.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
x i v A C K n O W L E D G M E n T S
Sasha Dobrovolsky deserves our gratitude more than anyone else,
however. Sasha was in Bardachs undergraduate Public Policy 101 class in
1991. An unusually gifted and entrepreneurial fellow, he once accosted
his teacher with this announcement: Professor Bardach, these handouts
you give us are outstanding. You should publish a book. When I graduate,
Im creating my own publishing house, and your book is the first Im
putting out. Bardach said, Sasha, you are surely mad. Its fine by me, but
I am not going to be responsible for your financial losses. You are on your
own. Sasha did exactly as promised. Alas, his publishing venture,
Berkeley Academic Press, did not last long, but he went on to great
success in other fields. We have unaccountably neglected to thank Sasha
in the preface to some earlier editions. We hope we are now making
sufficient amends.
Finally, we wish to thank our families for their love and support:
Nancy, Rebecca, and Elizabeth Bardach, and Debbie Gordon, Michael
Patashnik, and Josh Patashnik.
x v
Policy analysis is a social and political activity. True, analysts take moral and intellectual responsibility for the quality of their policy-
analytic work. But policy analysis goes beyond personal decision making.
First, the subject matter concerns the lives and well-being of large num-
bers of their fellow citizens. Second, the process and results of policy
analysis usually involve other professionals and interested parties: it is
often done in teams or officewide settings; the immediate consumer is a
client of some sort, such as a hierarchical superior; and the ultimate
audience will include diverse subgroups of politically attuned supporters
and opponents of the analysts work. All of these facts condition the
nature of policy analysis and have a bearing on the nature of what is
meant by quality work.
A policy analyst can work in any number of positions. Once upon a
time, the term implied a rather wonkish individual who worked in a large
government bureaucracy, serving up very technical projections of the
possible impacts of one or more policy alternatives to some undersecretary
of planning. No longer. Todays policy analysts help in program evaluation,
program design, program management, public relations, planning,
budgeting, and other functions. They work alone, in teams, and in loose
networks that cut across organizations. They work in the public, nonprofit,
and for-profit spheres, both in the United States and abroad. Although their
work is ideally distinguished by transparency of method and interpretation,
the analysts themselves may explicitly bring to their jobs the values and
INTRODUCTION
x v i I n T R O D U C T I O n
passions of advocacy groups as well as the technical expertise of neutral
civil servants. The professional networks in which they work may contain
in most cases, do containcolleagues drawn from law, engineering,
accounting, and so on, and in those settings the policy-analytic point of
view has to struggle for the right to counteror, better yet, synthesizethe
viewpoints of these other professionals. Although policy-analytic work
products typically involve written reports, they may also include briefings,
slide presentations, magazine articles, television interviews, and the use of
social media. The recipients of these products may be broad and diffuse
audiences as well as narrowly construed paying clients or employers.
The advice in this handbook is directed both to policy analysts in
practice and to students and others who, for whatever reasons, are
attempting to look at the world through the eyes of a practitioner.
THE EIGHTFOLD PATH
Policy analysis is more art than science. It draws on intuition as much as
on method. Nevertheless, given the choice between advice that imposes
too much structure on the problem-solving process and advice that offers
too little, most beginning practitioners quite reasonably prefer too much.
We have therefore developed the following approach, which we call the
Eightfold Path:
Define the Problem
Assemble Some Evidence
Construct the Alternatives
Select the Criteria
Project the Outcomes
Confront the Trade-Offs
Stop, Focus, Narrow, Deepen, Decide!
Tell Your Story
These steps are not necessarily taken in precisely this order, nor are all
of them necessarily significant in every problem. However, an effort to
define the problem is usually the right starting place, and telling the
story is almost inevitably the ending point. Constructing alternatives
and selecting criteria for evaluating them must surely come toward the
beginning of the process. Assembling some evidence is actually a step
I n T R O D U C T I O n x v i i
that recurs throughout the entire process, and it applies particularly to
efforts to define the problem and to project the outcomes of the
alternatives being considered.
The primary utility of this structured approach is that it reminds you
of important tasks and choices that otherwise might slip your mind; its
primary drawback is that, taken by itself, it can be mechanistic.
The Problem-Solving Process
The problem-solving processbeing a process of trial and erroris
iterative, so you usually must repeat each of these steps, sometimes more
than once.
The spirit in which you take any one of these steps, especially in the
earliest phases of your project, should be highly tentative. As you move
through the problem-solving process, you will probably keep changing
your problem definition, as well as your menu of alternatives, your set of
evaluative criteria, and your sense of what evidence bears on the problem.
With each successive iteration, you will become a bit more confident that
you are on the right track, that you are focusing on the right question,
and so on. This can be a frustrating process, but it can also be rewarding
if you learn to enjoy the challenges of search, discovery, and invention.
Some of the guidelines are practical, but most are conceptual. Most of
the concepts used will seem obvious, but there are exceptions. First, tech-
nical terms are sometimes employed. Second, some commonsense terms
may be used in a special way that strips them of certain connotations and
perhaps imports others. For the most part, all these concepts will become
intelligible through experience and practice.
The concepts come embedded in concrete particulars. In real life, policy
problems appear as a confusing welter of details: personalities, interest
groups, rhetorical demands, budget figures, legal rules and interpretations,
bureaucratic routines, citizen attitudes, and so on. Yet the concepts described
in this handbook are formulated in the abstract. You therefore need to learn
to see the analytic concepts in the concrete manifestations of everyday life.
Caution: sometimes, some steps are already determined. Suppose your
client says, We need an extra million dollars to run this program in the
x v i i i I n T R O D U C T I O n
next budget year: find it. Does the Eightfold Path apply to this analysis?
In a limited way. The client has already defined the problem and nar-
rowed the relevant criteria very tightly. There wont be much creative
scope for you when it comes to those steps. But all the other steps are
likely to be relevant.
This challenge to find it is a simplified version of a more complex
challengeDesign it, as in Figure out [that is, design] a way to protect
this subway system from terrorist attack. Here, too, the problem
definition step has already been settled by the client, though the other
steps are likely to get the creative juices flowing. Ideas for dealing with
design problems in general are introduced in Part III, Handling a
Design Problem.
Your Final Product
So what will your final product look like? Here is a very rough sketch of
a typical written policy-analytic report:
In a coherent narrative style, you describe some problem that needs
to be mitigated or solved.
You lay out a few alternative courses of action that might be taken.
To each course of action, you attach a set of projected outcomes that
you think your client or audience would care about, suggesting the
evidentiary grounds for your projections.
If no alternative dominates all other alternatives with respect to all
the evaluative criteria of interest, you indicate the nature and mag-
nitude of the trade-offs implicit in different policy choices.
Depending on the clients expectations, you may state your own
recommendation as to which alternative should be chosen.
The Spirit of the Eightfold Path
The spirit of the Eightfold Path is, we hope, economizing and uplifting.
Analyzing public policy problems is a complex activity. It is easy to get
lost, to waste a lot of time, to become demoralized. Other manuals and
textbooks in policy analysis are primarily concerned that you get the
analysis right, in some sense. This one should help in that respect, too.
But, in addition, we hope that this handbook will help you to get it done
with reasonable efficiencyand with a minimum of anxious confusion.
I n T R O D U C T I O n x i x
Finally, just as policy analysis originates in politics, so it concludes in
politics. Political life has two sides: channeling conflict and building
community. Policy analysis serves both sides. It channels conflict by showing
that some arguments, and their proponents, are in some sense superior to
others and deserve to win out. But it helps to build community by marking
off potential common ground as well. This common ground is defined by
the rules and conventions of rational discoursewhere opponents may
employ analytical procedures to resolve disagreements, or where they may
discover that at least some seemingly irreducible values conflicts can be
recast as dry-as-dust technical disagreements over how much higher a
probability Policy A has than Policy B for mitigating Problem P.
OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK
This book is a compilation of many component parts. The primary
component is Part I, describing the Eightfold Path and recommending
heuristics to help you negotiate it.
Part II focuses on one particular step in the Eightfold Path: assembling
evidence. It first appeared thirty-five years ago as a journal article, but we
have since modified it and tried to integrate it better into the overall book
in terms of both style and content. We include it because its objective is, we
think, unique among the many prescriptive works in the social sciences
and in journalism about data gathering and interpretation: it is, above all,
concerned with using the researchers time and energy efficiently.
In previous editions of this book, Part I incorporated suggestions for
analyzing not only conventional, discrete problems of policy choice (in
which the analytic task is to craft an intervention that will improve an
otherwise well-functioning system), but also more ambitious design
problems (in which the system itself is broken or missing). Because the
two generic types of problems were both covered in a single Part, it was
easy for readers to miss the subtle distinctions between them. Accordingly,
this edition includes a new Part III that pulls out the material on design
thinking. We show how the steps of the eightfold path can be cross
walked to design systems of action that will generate desired outcomes
when multiple elements are interdependent and need to work together.
Part IV addresses a specialized topic in policy analysis not dealt
with in other works: making use of ideasan
