ABSTRACT
Advancement of policy sciences assumes many names-applied systems analysis, public policy, policy studies, policy analysis, and even “social engineering” in Japan-all of which constitute both a symptom of efforts toward policymaking improvement and a main condition for meaningful policymaking improvement. About fifteen years ago, it seemed that policy sciences moved into a taking-off stage. Since then, much has happened in policy sciences: Five major professional journals directly devoted to policy sciences have been established; Policy Studies Review Annual has been published since 1977 (vol.8 is now published by Transaction); various book series are devoted to policy sciences (e.g. Nagel 1984b); a large number of textbooks fully focusing on policy sciences have been published; essential disciplinary pillars of policy sciences have progressed, such as decision psychology, organization theory, large-systems modeling and applied so ciology; professional associations have been set up; and, most important of all, a distinct species of policy sciences teaching programs has thrived at a number of universities, including some excellent ones. Most of these ac tivities are located in the United States, but diffusion is taking place to other countries such as the Philippines and Japan, with growing interests in policy sciences, in one version or another, spreading (often under other names, e.g. Bayraktar et al. 1979). In many respects, policy sciences per spectives have infiltrated much further, as evidenced by the policymaking frame of many textbooks in political science (C. Anderson 1977; Aranson 1981; Lovell 1970; W. Mitchell 1971; Sharkansky 1975; Sharkansky and Meter 1975; Wendzel 1981a; Wendzel 1981b). Traces of a policy sciences orientation, whether intended or not, can also be discerned in a new crop of “how-to-make-decisions” handbooks (Ackoff 1978; Behn and Vaupel 1982; Cornell 1980; Kepner and Tregoe 1981; Wheeler and Janis 1980).
