ABSTRACT
For years, policy scholars have focused their attention on methods , emphasizing the assessment of preordained and well-defined alternatives. The claim that attention to designing solution strategies may improve policy performance has recently been embraced by a number of policy researchers , including but not limited to Dryzek (1983), deLeon (1988-1989), Weimer (1993), Linder and Peters (1991) , Ingraham ( 1987), Schneider and Ingram (1997), and Hoppe et al. (1987) , whose primary goal was to shift the core of policy analysis toward policy design. As Linder and Peters (1988) noted, an emphasis on design in policy research forces the analyst to focus more attention on different stages in the policy process than does the more conventional emphasis on either ex-post analysis of policy decisions or the analysis of specific alternative strategies through methodologies such as cost-benefit analysis.
