With the right information, we can develop public policies that work better.
All too often, public policy textbooks offer a basic grounding in the policy process without the benefit of integrating the use of policy analysis. Michael E. Kraft and Scott R. Furlong take a different tack.
Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, Seventh Edition helps students understand how and why policy analysis is used to assess policy alternatives. The text encourages them to not only question the assumptions of policy analyst, but also recognize how these strategies are used in the support of political arguments. The authors introduce and fully integrate an evaluative approach to policy to encourage critical and creative thinking on issues ranging from health care to climate change. From a concise review of institutions, policy actors, and major theoretical models to a discussion of the nature of policy analysis and its practice, Kraft and Furlong show students how to employ evaluative criteria in six substantive policy areas. Students come away with the analytic tools they need to understand that the motivations of policy actors—both within and outside of government—influence a complex yet comprehensible policy agenda.
Michael E. Kraft is professor emeritus of political science
and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green
Bay. He is the author of, among other works, Environmental
Policy and Politics, 8th ed. (2022), and coauthor of
Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental
Performance (2011), with Mark Stephan and Troy D. Abel.
In addition, he is the coeditor of Environmental Policy:
New Directions in the 21st Century, 12th ed. (2025), with
Barry G. Rabe and Norman J. Vig; Toward Sustainable
Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy, 2nd ed. (2009), with
Daniel A. Mazmanian; and Business and Environmental Policy: Corporate Interests in the
American Political System (2007) and The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy (2013),
with Sheldon Kamieniecki. For over forty years, he taught courses in environmental policy and
politics, American government, Congress, and public policy analysis.
Scott R. Furlong is provost/vice president for academic
affairs at the State University of New York at Oswego as
of July 2017, after serving ten years as dean of the College
of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and professor
of political science and public affairs at the University of
Wisconsin-Green Bay. His areas of expertise are regulatory
policy and interest group participation in the executive
branch, and he has taught public policy for over twenty
years. He is the author or coauthor of many book chapters
and coauthor of Rulemaking: How Government Agencies
Write Laws and Make Policy, 5th ed. (2019), with Cornelius
M. Kerwin. His articles have appeared in such journals as Public Administration Review, Journal
of Public Administration Research and Theory, Administration and Society, American Review of
Public Administration, and Policy Studies Journal.
