Ebook: A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving

This handbook serves as a guide to concepts and methods applied in the analysis of policy. I have 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 handbook’s earliest incarnation, the ideas took form slowly and were conveyed to students in lectures. But because my faculty colleagues and I systematically overloaded our students with work, they would sometimes skip a lecture—and thus miss out on ideas that I regarded as essential. I determined that if I were to create a handout for the students, at least I would have discharged my 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 product of many years of experience.

The presumed user is a beginning practitioner preparing to undertake a policy analysis, such as one of our master’s students at the Goldman School. But I have found this handbook useful at both ends of the spectrum—in 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.