ABSTRACT
This chapter portrays the discipline of policy analysis as a sophisticated tool for effectively tackling serious, complicated, value-laden public problems, and considers whether policy analysis may appropriately be recognized as a 'profession', in the classic sense of the term. It examines the conception of the elevated level of vocational occupations referred to as 'professions' that was formulated by British sociologist G. Millerson more than half a century ago. While Millerson's conception is still most often referred to by sociologists of professionalism as the standard definition of the term, the chapter argues that the increase in new types of post-industrial and knowledge-based occupations requires us to revisit the traditional conception. It focuses on the identification of the primary mission of policy analysis in the political process of democracy, followed by a critical examination of the formal/rationalist, positivist/empiricist, and post-positivist frameworks (models) of policy analysis.
