ABSTRACT
The analytical advantages of focusing on just one "policy subsystem" such as welfare, defense, or urban transit are several. First, for the policy area chosen, the analyst is more likely to see how various parts of a political system — culture and ideology, public opinion and constituency pressures, interest groups, representative bodies, administrative and regulatory agencies, courts, political parties, executive leadership and others — interact. Second, one is likely to be more sensitive to unique actors in the policy subsystem. The new focus on policy studies has left some political scientists less than enthusiastic. Their misgivings seem rooted in the fear that political science might decline as a scientific discipline if it is expanded beyond its present boundaries onto the turf of other traditional disciplines. For analysis of a public policy, then, one might wish to try and identify the arena(s) in and among which controversies surrounding the policy are resolved.
