Customer Reviews

Public Policy: The Essential Readings

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I agree with the previous reviewer. The anthology is good in principle. Too few students read the original texts. Too many are fed with more or less adequate second-hand versions of what different scholars are saying.

BUT:
- While this anthology contains many classics, there is also a lot of less influential, or totally outdated texts that you should not waste your time on
- A good anthology requires good synthesizing chapters to make it more than the sum of its parts. The introductory chapters in this one are too brief and not very thrilling.
- The texts are too short. You only get little snippets.
- Many texts feel outdated, while much of the current litterature is missing.

There is a MUCH better public policy anthology which meets all these requirements: Daniel C. McCool (1995) "Public Policy Theories, Models, and Concepts" Prentice Hall. I would recommend that book instead, no doubt. Better, longer, more relevant and up-to-date texts, and very good comments by the editor. Have a look at that book instead of this one!

While selecting textbooks for a public policy theory course, I ran across this reader. It should serve well for a public policy course given a couple limitations. First, the chapters are heterogeneous and uneven. You will need to spend some time deciding what readings are worthwhile and how to organize the readings you wish to keep. Second, the readings will require explicit integration in to lectures and core textbooks. The articles are not very well integrated. In the end, I think this collection of essays will make an excellent resource for instructors who take the time to incorporate some of the excellent chapters. If you want to include original articles from political scientists in a policy course, this is a good place to turn.

As this is the first anthology of public policy writings I've read, I can't comment on the quality here as compared to other writings. What I can say (after reading about 80% of the essays) is that this is like most anthologies: thorough, varied, and very poorly organized.

The essays here range from everything from philosophy of public policy (Dahl's article) to the tidbits of implementation (Sabatier & Mazmanian's article); from the really well-written (Majone and Wildavsky) to real snoozers (Rubin). With all this variance, the one thing I didn't get is any conflict in views presented. I'm no expert, but I'm sure that public policy experts don't actually agree on as much as these contributors seem to. I can't help getting the feeling that the editors views are amply reflected in these pages.

The other complaint is lack of structure. In particular, the section on "The Players" is put after "Making Public Policy." In retrospect, this made much of the latter-mentioned section harder to understand. Of course, this is easily remedied. If you do buy this collection (and I would hesitatingly reccomend it) read section 3 before section 2.

It was a good price to pay for the book, it was in really good shape, almost new

Deeply theoretical take on public policy. Students of public policy should find this book to be very helpful.