ABSTRACT
We began with an account of how analysis can mythologize policy. Part of this problem lies in the gap that we generally find between analysis and its field of application. The result of this is a policy analytic that can be abstract, reductionistic, simplistic, and devoid of context. Our response to this is to insist that we chart ways to ground our analysis in the context and complexity of real policy situations. This is not simple realism; to quote one writer: “although we can never represent objective reality literally and absolutely, we can assume confidently that it has a consistently identifiable nature” (Morrow, 1994). In fact, a realization that we all come to, sooner or later, is that each of our models of analysis and, in fact, all of them put together, are but partial descriptions of policy situations that are more complex than can be expressed in the different languages of policy analysis.
