Public Policymaking Reexamined is now recognized as a fundamental treatise for public policy studies. Although it caused much controversy when it was first published for its systematic approach to policy studies, the book is acknowledged as a modern classic of continuing importance for the teaching and research of public policy, planning and policy analysis, and public administration. The paperback includes a new introduction updating and supplementing many of the author's original ideas.Professor Dror combines the approaches of policy analysis, behavioral science, and systems analysis in his examination of the reality of public policymaking and his suggestions for its reform. Actual policymaking is carefully evaluated with the help of explicit criteria and standards based on an optimal model approach, resulting in detailed proposals for improvement. He applies a scientific orientation to the study of social facts and theory.
The inadequacies of contemporary forms of governance are increasingly recognized: the brain drain from politics, distrust of governments, the danger of mass media and money-dominated elections, and the failure of governments to find good policy options on major issues. Industry, civil society and non-governmental organizations, however important, cannot compensate for government's incapacity to shape the future, which only it is democratically entitled to do. Radical improvements in governance are urgently needed, but salient proposals are scarce. This book diagnoses contemporary governments as obsolete and proposes changes in values, structures, staffing, public understanding and political culture to equip governance for the radically novel challenges of the 21st century. This is the first Report dealing with governance commissioned and approved by the Club of Rome, testifying to the significance of this book.
This groundbreaking study systematically treats recent policymaking trends, starting with a reconsideration of salient theoretical issues of policymaking and its study and culminating with a survey of current policy-related predicaments in various countries. Dror proposes that the task for social science research is to uncover underlying causes of policymaking inadequacies. Standard research methods, Dror states, have been unable to uncover the realities of important decisions made inside governments. In order to gain an understanding of pressing predicaments, he believes that policymakers need to examine the foundations of contemporary practices of present assumptions, and that they need a multiplicity of approaches to policymaking.After prescribing a set of requirements that policymaking must satisfy in order to adequately respond to challenges, Dror posits several improvements needed in education and in policy decision making. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography, including numerous important German works not found in other English-language studies. This book supplements the earlier basic theory and models propounded in Dror's Public Policymaking Reexamined by dealing with current trends. As a guide to public policy literature and related works, it will be invaluable to students and practitioners.
This book offers a systematic examination, analysis and evaluation of Israeli national security statecraft in terms of challenges and responses. Providing an in-depth analysis of Israeli statecraft challenges and responses, this interdisciplinary book integrates social science and security studies with public policy approaches within a long-term historical perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict. These scholarly approaches are synthesized with extensive personal knowledge of the author based on involvement in Israeli political-security policy making. This book makes use of conceptualizations of statecraft such as 'fuzzy gambling' and interventions with critical mass in ultra-dynamic historical processes to help clarify Israel's main statecraft successes and failures, alongside the wider theoretical apparatuses these concepts represent. While focused on Israel, these theoretical frameworks have important implications for the academic study of statecraft and statecraft praxis worldwide. This book will be of much interest to both statecraft practitioners and to students of Israeli politics and security, the Middle Eastern conflict, strategic studies and IR/security studies in general.
Invited contributions from distinguished practitioners and methodologists of operational research and applied systems analysis which represent a true state-of-the-art and which provide, perhaps for the first time, a coherent, interlocking, set of ideas which may be considered the foundations of the subject as a science in its own right.
With its highly centralized politièal institutions, Israel is typical of the unitary, nonfederal politièal systems in the world. On the other hand, with its growing emè¨hasis on federalism, the United States reveals the functions and dysfunctions of the pluralist sysè² em. In this provocative book, Frederick Lazin compares the two types of political systems to show how municipalities in Isè¨ael, as in the United States, exèrt considerable influence on implementation of national doè¡«estic policies. He argues conèµ³incingly that unitary systems have many of the same diffièulties that their federal counè² erparts have in implementing social welfare policies. This study provides a theè§retical basis for understanding how administrative institutional system and socioeconomic staè² us variables affect the potential influence of municipalities and make implementation of policies so problematic. It develops a model for policy implementation in unitary systems which then serves as a framework of analyè²is for a series of case studies of social welfare, education, and health policy in Israel. Comè¨arisons are then made with the federal political system of the United States in which the naè² ional government needs the cooperation of local authorities to implement its policies. Referènce is made to federal housing policies and programs for low-inèome Americans. Similarities as well as differences are noted beè² ween the two systems in order to reach conclusions about polè¹cy implementation regardless of type of political system. The book contributes both to the general literature on policy implementation as well as to the politics of unitary versus federal systems. It provides a unique and important analysis of probè¡ems confronting both types of system in the area of policy imè¨lementation of social welfare programs, which remain imporè² ant concerns in political sysè² ems throughout the world.
New challenges and opportunities have come to the fore as the middle African States have consolidated their independence. In grappling with economic scarcity and restricted choice, decision-makers must transform domestic institutions and practices and reformulate their relationship to the global economy. The authors of this book believe that their efforts can be advanced by resorting to a problem-solving focus. Such an approach will, in their opinion. allow social scientists to remain true to their professional disciplines while permitting them to embrace African-designated objectives. By inquiring into decision processes and results, policy analysis seeks to identify optimal courses of action in the context of prevailing societal demands and constraints. In general, African decision-makers have adopted three choice strategies with an eye to reducing scarcity and expanding alternatives: accommodation, reorganization, and transformation. When these choice strategies are related to system goals, striking variations in preferences and priorities emerge, the most significant of which concern decision on mobilizing and distributing resources and achieving freedom from external control. In various trade--off situations (involving negotiations by producer cartels, bargaining between multinational companies and African host countries, and external economic assistance) diverse policy patters among the groups in relating to the benefits and costs of particular lines of action appear. Each choice strategy has its own benefit-cost combination. Since no approach may be equally valid cross-nationally, the decision elites of each country are left with the responsibility for determining their own goals and priorities. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
