ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the state of policy theory by presenting several of the more promising frameworks and by inviting the reader to compare the strengths and limitations of each. It analyses several frameworks that differ substantially concerning their assumptions of individual and collective rationality. The book presents sevearl frameworks that seek to explain policy change over fairly long periods of time within a policy subsystem/domain: the punctuated-equilibrium framework, the advocacy coalition framework, and the policy network analysis. It seeks to explain variation in policy decisions across large numbers of political systems. Work in the philosophy of science and social psychology has provided persuasive evidence that perceptions are almost always mediated by a set of presuppositions. An alternative strategy is that of science. Its fundamental ontological assumption is that a smaller set of critical relationships underlies the bewildering complexity of phenomena.
