The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy

Michael Moran is W. J. M. Mackenzie Professor of Government in the School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester.

Martin Rein is Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cite

Goodin, Robert, Michael Moran, and Martin Rein (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy ( 2008; online edn, Oxford Academic , 2 Sept. 2009 ), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199548453.001.0001, accessed 5 Sept. 2024.

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy mines all the traditions 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. This Handbook's articles 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. The Handbook is one of The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science — a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science.

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