Public administration and policy analysis education have long emphasized tidiness, stages, and rationality, but practitioners frequently must deal with a world where objectivity is buffeted by, repressed by, and sometimes defeated by value conflict. Politics and policy are "messy" and power explains much more about the policy process than does rationality. Public Policy Praxis, now in a thoroughly revised fourth edition, uniquely equips students to better grapple with ambiguity and complexity. By emphasizing mixed methodologies, the reader is encouraged, through the use of a wide variety of policy cases, to develop a workable and practical model of applied policy analysis. Students are given the opportunity to try out these globally applicable analytical models and tools in varied case settings (e.g., county, city, federal, international, plus urban and rural) while facing wide-ranging topics (starving farmers and the red panda in Nepal, e-cigarettes, GMOs, the gig economy, and opioid abuse) that capture the diversity and reality of public policy analysis and the intergovernmental and complex nature of politics. The fourth edition expands upon its thorough exploration of specific tools of policy analysis, such as stakeholder mapping, content analysis, group facilitation, narrative analysis, cost-benefit analysis, futuring, and survey analysis. Along with teaching "how to," the authors discuss the limitations, the practical political problems, and the ethical problems associated with different techniques and methodologies. Many new cases have been added, along with clear instructions on how to do congressional research and a Google Trends analysis. An expanded online Teaching Appendix is included for adopters, offering original cases, answers to problems, alternative approaches to case use, teaching exercises, student assignments, pedagogical ideas, and supplemental material directly tied to concepts covered in the text. With an easily accessible and conversational writing style, Public Policy Praxis is an ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses in public policy analysis, community planning, leadership, social welfare policy, educational policy, family policy, and special seminars.

This readable and conceptual approach to public policy carefully balances theory and practice to provide students at all levels with a solid grounding in policy analysis. Authors Randy S. Clemons and Mark K. McBeth explore the impact of mixed methodologies on policy analysis, supported by interesting and useful teaching cases. Offering a balanced view of public policy, the text addresses the political basis of policy making and analysis and covers the limitations, practical problems, and ethical implications of different techniques and methodologies.Models and tools are provided to help students develop the analytical skills necessary for policy analysis, while engaging boxes and anecdotes relate concepts to specific examples. In addition to new coverage, this edition has been revised to make the book even more accessible to undergraduates without weakening its usefulness to graduate students.

This readable and conceptual approach to public policy carefully balances theory and practice to provide students at all levels with a solid grounding in policy analysis. Authors Randy S. Clemons and Mark K. McBeth explore the impact of mixed methodologies on policy analysis, supported by interesting and useful teaching cases. Offering a balanced view of public policy, the text addresses the political basis of policy making and analysis and covers the limitations, practical problems, and ethical implications of different techniques and methodologies.Models and tools are provided to help students develop the analytical skills necessary for policy analysis, while engaging boxes and anecdotes relate concepts to specific examples. In addition to new coverage, this edition has been revised to make the book even more accessible to undergraduates without weakening its usefulness to graduate students.

For courses in Public Policy and Policy Analysis. This readable and conceptual approach to public policy carefully balances theory and practice-unlike most other texts, which either lack theory or lack practicality. The authors combine positivist and postpositivist perspectives on policy analysis, supported by interesting and useful teaching cases. Fully classroom tested, the text material explores the political basis of policy making and analysis, with a careful eye toward students' practical needs. Models and tools are provided, along with the analytical knowledge necessary for policy analysis. Carefully structured chapters offer instructors maximum ease and flexibility in the classroom.

Writing Public Policy is a hands-on, concise guide to writing and communicating in public policy processes. Designed to help students, practitioners, and other "doers" understand and perform common types of communication used in solving public problems, the book introduces the institutional democratic process in the U.S. and explains the standards and functions of communicating in the public sector. Coverage includes: * A general method for planning, composing, and assessing communications in a variety of real-life contexts and situations * Specific instructions for writing and speaking in public policy processes * Scenarios that illustrate the complexity in policy processes, highlighting their diversity of contexts--including state agencies and local boards, non-profit organizations, federal government committees, special interest groups, and professional associations--the variety of actors involved, and the range of communication types produced * Commentary relating the scenarios and examples to the general method * Checklists of expected standards to enable communicators to assess their products Highly practical and accessible, Writing Public Policy demonstrates the skills and techniques needed to effectively communicate in the democratic process of making public policy. Ideal for courses in public policy studies, civic writing, and technical/business/legal writing, it is also an invaluable resource for practitioners--and students preparing for careers--in public policy, politics, government, public relations, law, journalism, social work, public health, or in any area concerned with public affairs.

Annotation. This provocative collection of essays seeks to clarify and redefine mainstream political and social concepts whose meaning is problematic. Their touchstone is the relation between polis and praxis - the public-political space and the political action that maintains and is conditioned by that space. The result is a stimulating and original contribution to current political discourse that explores and advocates the manifold possible levels of active political life below and above the level of the state. In an open philosophical inquiry, the author conducts a dialogue with many of this century's seminal thinkers as he takes up such topics as the plausibility of friendship as a model for political relations, the relation between political praxis and "experience," Heidegger's ontology of freedom, Foucault's treatment of power, and the merits and disadvantages of Habermasian critical theory. Fred Dallmayr is Packey Dee Professor of Government at the University of Notre Dame.

In a range of professions, professional practice today is under threat. It is endangered, for example, by pressures of bureaucratic control, commodification, marketization, and the standardisation of practice in some professions. In these times, there is a need for deeper understandings of professional practice and how it develops through professional careers. Enabling Praxis: Challenges for education explores these questions in the context of initial and continuing professional education of teachers. It presents a theory of the development of praxis--morally committed action oriented by tradition--to show the ways praxis is enabled and constrained by the cultural-discursive, material and social-political conditions under which professional practice occurs. It introduces the notion of 'practice architectures' to show how particular conditions for practice shape the possibilities of praxis. The way these processes work is illustrated by detailed exploration of a number of cases of praxis development in a variety of educational settings, at a variety of levels--in teacher education for schools and for vocational education and training, in the continuing professional education of teachers, in educational administration, and in informal, community-based education for sustainability initiatives. The book provides conceptual resources that permit deeper analysis of the character, conduct and consequences of professional practice. It concludes with challenges for education, and for initial and continuing teacher education, suggesting that the contemporary threats to education as a professional practice call for revitalisation of the profession, professional bodies and the intellectual traditions that orient and guide educational practice.