Comparitive resource allocation : politics, performance, and policy priorites

This is the thirteenth volume in the Sage Yearbooks in Politics and Public Policy, published in cooperation with the Policy Studies Orga nization. This is in effect the tenth-anniversary volume, since the series began in early 1975 with a volume entitled What Government Does, by Matthew Holden, Jr., and Dennis Dresang. The present volume reflects the increased sophistication of the policy studies field over the past ten years, as indicated by concern for cross-national broadness, a theoretical framework with causal explanatory power, and concern for systematic evaluation of alternative allocation policies. The volume edited by Doug las Ashford, Comparing Public Policies: New Concepts and Methods, was also cross-national, but it was more concerned with developing basic concepts and methods indicative of a new disciplinary perspective, as contrasted to the greater concern for substance in the present volume. Previous volumes have also been theoretical in a causal explanatory sense, such as Douglas Rae and Theodore Eismeier's volume, Public Policy and Public Choice, but with less of an empirical base. Prescriptive analysis has also been present in previous volumes, such as Alan Stone and Edward Harpham's The Political Economy of Public Policy, but with a less explicit focus on allocation decision making.