Bridging theory and practice in policy/program evaluation

Abstract This article is designed to deal with the basic theoretical issues in public policy analysis. Those basic issues can be divided into cross-cutting generalizations about relevant concepts, knowledge acquisition, causes, and norms. On concepts, one key issue relates to how to define public policy evaluation. The key elements relate to processing a set of societal goals to be achieved, alternative policies for achieving them, and relations between goals and policies in order to choose or explain the best policy, combination, allocation, or predictive decision-rule. Conceptualizing the field might also include defining what constitutes good public policy evaluation. One key element relates to validity in the sense of including the major goals and alternative policies, external consistency with empirical reality in describing their relations, and internal consistency in logically drawing a conclusion that follows from the goals, policies, and relations. Good public policy evaluation also has importance in terms of the problems with which it deals, usefulness in terms of impact on decision-makers, originality, and feasibility, although ideological direction is a matter separate from technically good policy analysis. On knowledge acquisition, policy evaluation obtains ideas for goals, policies, and relations from such places as authority, statistical-observational analysis, deduction, and sensitivity analysis. A good system of arriving at policy recommendations should be capable of dealing with such obstacles to processing knowledge as multiple dimensions on multiple goals, multiple missing information, multiple alternatives that are too many to determine the effects of each one, multiple and possibly conflicting constraints, and the need for simplicity in drawing and presenting conclusions. The causal theory of public policy evaluation is concerned with why some policies get adopted and others get rejected. Some of the answers relate to low opposition combined with high support, reaching appropriate decision-makers, orientation toward intended goals, and achievement of favorable effects. Causal theory is also concerned with why some adopted policies succeed and others fail. Relevant factors include how high the original goals were, what incentives were provided to secure compliance, how well the coordination between the public and private sectors was handled, and how well the formulation and implementation were analyzed before problems were encountered. The normative theory of policy evaluation is partly concerned with such questions of professional ethics as whose goals to maximize, how much obligation is therefor validity and other criteria of good analysis, how to deal with putting people at risk in policy experimentation, and the extent to which analysts should prescribe rather than merely describe. Normative theory is also concerned with clarifying societal values such as the greatest happiness for the greatest number, bringing up the bottom, doing things that keep anyone from being worse off, and the newer societal values of developing public policies that enable all sides to come out ahead of their best expectations.