ABSTRACT
Public policy is best understood as policies that have a significant impact on broad masses of the public, especially those policies for which the public has little oversight or influence. Recommendations for making dramatic changes in public policy are based on interpretations of information about the past, and the implications of what those observations suggest for actions that have to be taken in relation to conditions and circumstances that are expected in the future. The influence of experts and members of particular epistemic communities is still substantial, and is likely to remain so as problems on the policy agenda become increasingly complex and marked by the kinds of uncertainty that these experts are trained to address. The rise of economic analysis to prominence in public policy deliberations has been associated with the rise in the importance of a neoliberal ideological stance within capitalist governments.
