Policy analysis: a systematic approach to supporting policymaking in the public sector

This paper describes a systematic process for examining complex public policy choices that has been developed and refined over the past 50 years and is often called policy analysis. Its purpose is to assist policymakers in choosing preferred courses of action by clarifying the problem, outlining the alternative solutions and displaying tradeoffs among their consequences. In most real-world policy situations there are many possible alternatives, many uncertainties, many stakeholders and many consequences of interest. Also, there is usually no single decisionmaker and little chance of obtaining agreement on a single set of preferences among the consequences. As a result, there is no way to identify an optimal solution. Instead, policy analysis uses a variety of tools to develop relevant information and present it to the parties involved in the policymaking process in a manner that helps them come to a decision. It is a problem-oriented approach that does not presume a model structure for assessing the consequences of a policy or ranking the alternatives. The paper provides a brief history of policy analysis, describes the most important elements of the policy analysis process, provides an illustrative example of the use of the approach and suggests directions for future developments that can enrich the approach and increase the chances for successful use of the results. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.