Course: Public Policy Analysis

Textbook: Understanding Public Policy(Twelfth Edition)

          Thomas R. Dye

          China People’s University Press

Chapter 1 Policy Analysis: What Governments Do, Why They Do it, and What Difference It Makes

      1.1What Is Public Policy?

      1.2Why Study Public Policy?

      1.3What Can Be Learned from Policy Anlysis?

      1.4Policy Analysis and Policy Advocacy

      1.5Policy Analysis and the Quest for Solutions to America’s Problems

      1.6Policy Analysis as Art and Craft

Chapter 2 Models of Politics: Some Help in Thinking about Public Policy

      2.1 Models for Policy Analysis

      2.2 Institutionalism: Policy as Institutional Output

      2.3 Process: Policy as Political Activity

      2.4 Rationalism: Policy as Maximum Social Gain

      2.5 Incrementalism: Policy as Variations on the Past

      2.6 Group Theory: Policy as Group Equilibrium

      2.7 Elite Theory: Policy as Elite Preference

      2.8 Public Choice Theory: Policy as Collective Decision Making by Self-Interested

      Individuals

      2.9 Game Theory: Policy as Rational Choice in Competitive Situations

      2.10 Models: How to Tell if They Are Helping or Not

Chapter 3 The Policymaking Process: Decision-making Activities

      3.1 The Policy Process: How Policies Are Made

      3.2 Problem Identification and Agender Setting

      3.3 Agender Setting from the Bottom Up

      3.4 Agender Setting from the Top Down

      3.5 “Nondicisions”: Deciding What Will Not Be Decided

      3.6 Agender Setting and Mobilizing Opinion: The Mass Media

      3.7 Formulating Policy

      3.8 Interest Groups and Policymaking

      3.9 Policy Legitimation: The Proximate Policymakers

      3.10 Policy Implementation: The Bureaucracy

      3.11 Policy Evaluation: Impressionistic versus Systematic

Chapter 4 Criminal Justice: Rationality and Irrationality in Public Policy

      4.1 Crime in America

      4.2 Crime and Deterrence

      4.3 Does Crime Pay?

      4.4 Police and Law Enforcement

      4.5 Federalizing Crime

      4.6 Crime and Guns

      4.7 The Drug War

      4.8 Crime and the Courts

      4.9 RICO versus Liberty

      4.10 Prisons and Correctional Policies

      4.11 Capital Punishment

Chapter 5 Health and Welfare: The Search for Rational Strategies

      5.1 Rationality and Irrationality in the Welfare State

      5.2 Defining the Problem: Poverty in America

      5.3 Who Are the Poor?

      5.4 Why Are the Poor Poor?

      5.5 The Preventive Strategy: Social Security

      5.6 Evaluation: Intended and Unintended Consequences of Social Security

      5.7 Health Care in America

      5.8 Evaluation: Health Care Access and Costs

Chapter 6 Education: The Group Struggle

      6.1 Multiple Goals in Educational Policy

      6.2 Educational Attainment

      6.3 The Educational Groups

      6.4 Battling over the Basics

      6.5 The Federal Government’s Role in Education

      6.6 Public Policy and Higher Education

      6.7 “Diversity” in Higher Education

Chapter 7 Economic Policy: Incrementalism at Work

      7.1 Incrementalism in Fiscal and Monetary Policy

      7.2 Economic Theories as Policy Guides

      7.3 Incrementalism and Government Spending

      7.4 “Entitlement” Spending

      7.5 Changing Budget Priorities: Challenging Incrementalism

      7.6 The Formal Budgetary Process

Chapter 8 Tax Policy: Battling the Special Interests

      8.1 Interest Groups and Tax Policy

      8.2 The Federal Tax System

      8.3 Taxation, Fairness, and Growth

      8.4 Tax Reform and the Special Interests

      8.5 Return of the Special Interests

      8.6 Replacing the Income Tax?