Policy Analysts in the Bureaucracy; Structure of Decision: The Cognitive Maps of Political Elites

Policy analysis has become something of a profession in the past 15 years as schools of public policy have tried to compete with business and law schools in training administrators for local, state and federal bureaucracies. Meltsner's readable study is representative of what these new schools teach, and shows that it is easier to describe a policy analyst's multiple roles than to provide how-to-do-it training. Axelrod's edited collection includes perhaps the best examples of the current state of the "scientific" study of policy decision-making.