Rush to Policy: Using Analytic Techniques in Public Sector Decision Making - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1412806658 ISBN 13: 9781412806657

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Rush to Policy explores the appropriate role of technical analysis in policy formation. The authors ask when and how the use of sophisticated analytic techniques in decision making benefits the nation. They argue that these techniques are too often used in situations where they may not be needed or understood by the decision maker; where they may not be able to answer the questions raised but are nonetheless required by the law.

House and Shull provide an excellent empirical base for describing the impact of politics on policies, policy analysis, and policy analysts. They examine cost benefit analysis, risk analysis, and decision analysis, and assess their ability to substitute for the current decision making process in the public sector. They examine the political basis of public sector decision making, how individuals and organizations make decisions, and the ways decisions are made in the federal sector. Also they discuss the mandate to use these methods in the policy formulation process.

The book is written by two practicing federal policy analysts who, in a decade of service as policy researchers, developed sophisticated quantitative analytic and decision-making techniques. They then spent several years trying to use them in the real world. Successes and failures are described in illuminating detail, providing insight not commonly found in such critiques. The authors delineate the interaction of politics and technical issues. Their book describes policy analysis as it is, not how it ought to be.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter W. House is director of policy research and analysis, National Science Foundation. He is the author of ten books on multidisciplinary science and technology policy research and analyses in government, private, and university sectors including The Art of Public Policy, and with Roger D. Shull, Regulatory Reform: Politics and the Environment, and Regulations and Science: Management of Research on Demand.

Review:

“Based on their experience in the Carter administration's Department of Energy, the authors condemn the misuse through overuse of policy analysis in government. Too often, House and Shull argue in this lively book, policy analysis is treated as a religious experience instead of as a supplementary tool. Such overemphasis on analysis, the authors contend, is dangerous, since it cannot resolve the real political issues (such as equity among those affected by a public program)... The book is a valuable complement to other studies of the limits of policy analysis... and is strongly recommended for university libraries.” 

—D. F. Kettl, Choice

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1412806658
• ISBN 13: 9781412806657
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Shull Roger