ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the importance of viewing public policy as a unique artifact of the public–private structure created by the American Founding (chapter 3) and the product of the political development of that structure through time (chapter 6). This history explains why so much of public policy in the United States is focused around debates over public versus private goods and the kinds and degrees of regulation appropriate for addressing the excesses of the commercial republic through regulation. The chapter reviews the major stages of the policy process (agenda-setting, formation, legitimation, implementation, evolution, and post-policy feedback information). It also reviews the common policy models used to describe how policy gets made (process/cycle-centered models, interest-based models, actor-based models, intergovernmental relations models. The chapter also summaries the historical rise and growing importance of policy analysis to policy processes and the major techniques and methods used to analyze a given public policy initiative.
