This project is an exercise in the scholarly study of public policy analysis. Students are expected to perform the following tasks:
(a) Choose a substantive issue pertaining to public policy formulation, adoption, implementation, program evaluation, ethics of policy analysis, etc. The choice may pertain to an empirical issue, or it may deal with a normative topic.
(b) Examine a substantial portion of the social scientific or scholarly literature analyzing that issue.
(c) Select one or more explanations or perspectives from that literature (or derive a new approach) for the chosen phenomenon.
(d) Confer with the prof (face to face or by phone or e-mail) to discuss the project. This may be done at the start of the student’s research, if desired.
At some point students who are examining an empirical issue should be able to state, in hypothesis form, what observable implications can be drawn from their explanation(s).
