ABSTRACT
Policy evaluation takes place within and between such languages of policy analysis. Like scientific disciplines, policy languages constitute a realm of discourse and of argument. What counts as a "problem", and a "good reason", and as a "mistake" in judgment depends on the normative standards embedded in a specific framework of analysis. The pluralism of policy languages does not pose any ultimate problems of justification in itself. In any event, in most contemporary formulations of the problem, the stipulation and ranking of values are regarded as more or less arbitrary, as a "given" in the appraisal of policy. All policy argument leads back, eventually, to a finite and bounded set of classic principles and problems of political evaluation. The cost-benefit analysis is a fundamental paradigm of much contemporary policy analysis. In the most general sense, any cost-benefit analysis rests on a utilitarian foundation.
