A Critique on Cases in Public Policy Analysis

Public policy is the invisible string that connects every aspect of society. In a person’s daily life, he seldom contemplates the interconnectivity of societal constructions and public policy, as well as how public policy maintains an overarching control on the way society functions. Policies and more specifically, public policies are the “systems of rules and standards that affect the public interest and are established by rulemaking bodies such as parliaments, legislatures, and administrative regulatory agencies.” (Guess and Farnham, 7) These rules and standards govern every aspect of a person’s life. From the temperature of coffee being served to the systems of dispensing fuel, from the rules of the road to insurance policies, one cannot function in society without being explicitly or implicitly controlled and regulated by public policy. Although people have the belief that this correlation can be ignored, and it is often ignored, due to the idea that it is difficult to understand and influence, the better option is to rather understand how these public policies are created and implemented and the impact that they will have on someone’s life. Cases in Public Policy Analysis, by George Guess and Paul Farnham, aims to explain and understand the public policy process through textual explanations and real-life examples of public policy cases. In order to understand this process as a whole, or at least try to, one must dissect the “whole process” and examine the smaller components that make up the entirety of public policy.

Cases in Public Policy Analysis examines this process by doing just that, separating the process into seven distinct parts that all interact with each other, but are also separate entities within itself. Deter...

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...ormation presented. As stated earlier, the information presented can be dense and at the same time dry. The use of real-life cases instead of fabricated text problems does help make the reading more enjoyable. One consideration when writing material such as this is to find the best possible balance of information and writing that will interest the reader.

What this book aims to achieve is to give the reader an introductory education in public policy analysis. It also aims to give the reader a different viewpoint of public policy making. The economic standpoint of the book is an addition to the argument that differentiates this book from others on the same topic. Readers wanting to understand this process need to take into consideration multiple perceptions of the process. Adding more viewpoints will only increase the knowledge and understanding of public policy.