Understanding Public Policy

Citation

Dye, T. R. (2016). Understanding Public Policy (15th ed.). Pearson.

Chapter Summary

A textbook in sixteen chapters by Thomas R. Dye of Florida State University. Pearson's description says it introduces public policy and helps students think critically about politics: it surveys models for explaining political life and gives tools for analysing public policy, so that readers can consider why governments make certain policy choices and what the consequences of those choices are. The brief contents show the design. Four opening chapters present the study of policy, the models, the policymaking process and policy evaluation. A chapter on federalism and state policies follows, and eleven chapters then examine policy areas in turn. Each of these eleven chapter titles pairs a subject with a short phrase naming the lens applied to it, such as rationality, group struggles or incrementalism. The descriptions below stay with the titles and the publisher's summary.

Chapter 1: Policy Analysis: What Governments Do, Why They Do It, and What Difference It Makes

Introduces the field through three questions, which the title states: what governments do, why they do it, and what difference it makes.

Chapter 2: Models of Politics: Some Help in Thinking About Public Policy

The conceptual chapter. It presents the competing models of politics that the publisher describes as ways of explaining political life; later chapter subtitles refer back to them (rationality, group struggles, elite and mass, incrementalism).

Chapters 3–4: The Policymaking Process: Decision-Making Activities; Policy Evaluation: Finding Out What Happens After a Law Is Passed

Two chapters on the stages of policy: how decisions are made, and how to find out what happens after a law is passed.

Chapter 5: Federalism and State Policies: Institutional Arrangements and Policy Variations

Looks at how institutional arrangements within the federal system produce variation in policy between states.

Chapters 6–9: Criminal Justice: Rationality and Irrationality in Public Policy; Welfare: The Search for Rational Strategies; Health Care: Attempting a Rational-Comprehensive Transformation; Education: Group Struggles

The first four policy areas. The subtitles pair criminal justice, welfare and health care with rationality and education with group struggles.

Chapters 10–12: Economic Policy: Challenging Incrementalism; Tax Policy: Battling the Special Interests; International Trade and Immigration: Elite–Mass Conflict

Three chapters on economic issues, whose subtitles point to incremental change, special interests and the divide between elites and the public.

Chapters 13–16: Energy and the Environment: Externalities and Interests; Civil Rights: Elite and Mass Interaction; Defense Policy: Strategies for Serious Games; Homeland Security: Terrorism and Nondeterrable Threats

The last four areas. The subtitles name externalities and interests, elite and mass interaction, strategic games and nondeterrable threats.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–5: Tools and framework

• Policy analysis: the study of what governments do, why they do it and what difference it makes.
• Models of politics: simplified frameworks for explaining political life, each used as a lens.
• Policy evaluation: assessing what happens after a law is passed.
• Federalism: the setting for variation in state policies.

Chapters 6–16: Lenses applied to policy areas

• Rationality and the rational-comprehensive approach: used to examine criminal justice, welfare and health care.
• Group struggles and special interests: used in education and tax policy.
• Incrementalism: the subject of the economic policy subtitle, "Challenging Incrementalism".
• Elite–mass relations: used in trade and immigration and in civil rights.
• Externalities and strategic games: used in energy and the environment and in defense policy.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Models first, cases afterward. The book's own structure puts the models of politics in Chapter 2 and returns to them in the subtitles of Chapters 6–16, so students practise using more than one lens on the same kind of problem.
• Wide range of policy areas. The eleven policy chapters run from criminal justice and welfare to trade, energy, civil rights, defense and homeland security.
• Clear sequence from process to evaluation. Chapters 3 and 4 give the process and evaluation stages before the cases, so the application chapters have a vocabulary to build on.
• Long-running and updated. It has reached a fifteenth edition, which Pearson lists as published in 2016.

Limitations

• Mainly American. The title of Chapter 5 and the policy chapters, such as Civil Rights and Homeland Security, point to the United States; the publisher's description does not mention comparative coverage, so readers outside the US will need other sources.
• Overview of each area. A single chapter on each policy field leaves limited room for the technical detail that specialists in health or tax policy would expect.
• No cases beyond policy fields. The contents are organised by American policy field only, so readers wanting thematic chapters on, for example, implementation or policy design will need another text.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the public policy and administration list this is a gentle model-based introduction. Michael Kraft and Scott Furlong's Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives is a comparable textbook that connects the politics of policymaking with the tools of policy analysis, including criteria and methods for assessing alternatives, and applies them to economic, health, welfare, education and environmental policy. Thomas Birkland's An Introduction to the Policy Process is a conversational textbook that follows issues from agenda setting through policy design and implementation and explains the theories behind policy stability and change.

Stella Theodoulou and Ravi Roy's Public Administration: A Very Short Introduction adds the administrative side that Dye does not make central. For a more advanced step, John Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies develops the multiple streams account of agenda setting, and Christopher Weible's edited Theories of the Policy Process presents the main analytic frameworks in a graduate text.

How to Use This Book

An introductory course in American government helps but is not required. The book suits undergraduates in a first public policy course and readers who want an organised way to compare explanations of government action.

• Core: Chapters 1–4. Read Chapter 2 twice, once now and once after two or three policy chapters, to see how the models are used.
• Then by subject: choose policy chapters that match the course; each uses its own lens, so even a partial reading shows the method.
• Alongside the text: for one policy area, write a paragraph from each of two models, for example the rational and the group or incremental, and decide which better fits the evidence in the chapter.
• After the book: move to Kraft and Furlong or Birkland for a fuller treatment of the process, and to Kingdon and Weible for theory.