Overview

As the field's principal organizer and leading promoter, one is indebted to Nagel for his energy, enthusiasm, and resourcefulness. This volume is imbued with such qualities. It covers vast territory, insistently counters the skeptics, and develops original schema for evaluating the work of the field. Furthermore, as vintage Nagel, the book is highly structured, with many definitions, lists, and prenamed series of ideas. . . . Nagel is unswervingly convinced of the correctness of the rationalist perspective, and anchors himself firmly in behavioralist political science while accepting the contributions from other social sciences. Choice The purpose of this work is twofold. First, it attempts to integrate the basic ideas that relate to policy studies. These include the definition of concepts, the establishment of criteria for judging policy studies researh, and the clarification of policy goals. Second, the volume proposes to evaluate the methods of policy evaluation themselves, and to assess the field as a whole. Designed to serve as a definitive analysis of policy studies, this volume covers basic concepts, research criteria, societal goals, and policy altenatives. It also examines analytic methods, optimizing, statistics, quasi-experimentation, behaviorism, multicriteria decison making, evaluation, research, legal analysis, and conflicting critiques of the field.