The history of public policy analysis started developing seriously after the Second World War in the form of systems analysis and Operations Research. Afterwards, the Secretary of defense at the time, Robert McNamara, created a department which was in charge of analytics. It was made compulsory for all federal departments to have a unit made up of policy analysts to help policy makers in providing rational and evidence based counsel to decision makers.
The policy analysts of that time worked on various stages such as problem identification, identifying alternatives, delineation of objectives, evaluation of impacts of the available options, estimation of possible future effects as well as offering recommendations for further action.
Between 1967 and 1970, universities started offering training in public policy analysis mostly at Master’s degree level. The University of Michigan, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania and University of California at Berkeley were some of the pioneers among others.
According to Meltsner (1976), policy analysts used two specific skills – political and technical skills. Those who focused on political skills “they wanted to be where action is.” While those who focused on technical skills were known to be associated with “bookshelves full of papers.”
In 1970s, members of United States of America decided to develop their own capacity in public policy analysis. At some point in time they even declared that they had achieved achieved analytical independence from the executive arm of government. Scholars have reported that there was a time when some members of Congress had superior skills in public policy analysis when compared to the executive arm of government.
Equally, numerous interest groups started establishing their own in-house policy analysis capacity to advance their public policy agendas.
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That is the history of public policy analysis. Thank you for reading.
References
Mock, D. B. (1991). History and public policy. Malabar, Fla: Krieger Pub. Co.
In Moran, M., In Rein, M., & In Goodin, R. E. (2008). The Oxford handbook of public policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
