Value Frameworks in the Policy Analysis Course: An Application Exercise

Abstract

Professors of graduate-level policy analysis courses are challenged with the task of incorporating a broader or more normatively comprehensive analytical perspective into their teaching. This article describes and discusses a writing assignment that guides students toward a working knowledge of traditional and alternative approaches to the normative dimensions of policy analysis. In the course of conducting policy analysis, students study a number of value frameworks. At the same time, they discover the necessity, and complexity, of transforming these abstract perspectives into reasonably objective and testable criteria. Finally, in the process of making recommendations, they are asked to juxtapose the demands of these evaluative frameworks with the realities of political and fiscal feasibility. This assignment, rooted in but also distinguished from modern analysis scholarship, is designed to build the crucial skills that contemporary analysts must have in today’s intricate professional setting.