Perpustakaan Pusat LAN RI

Politik

This book is addressed to political scientists and to those outside the discipline who may look to political science for help in dealing with the great public problems and issues of our time. It proceeds from the conviction, documented below, that at last since 1945 most American political scientists have focused their professional attention manly on the processes by which public policies are made and have shown relatively little concern with their contents. Its authors attack, from many angles and dwith a wide variety of weapons, the central question : Should political scientists in their research and teaching pay substantially more attention to policy contents than they have in recent years ?
Our discussions manly revolve about four component issues :
First, what is likely to be the net gain or loss from more study of policy contents for the theoretical sophistication and empirical validity of political science's special body of knowledge ?Second, what problems of conceptualization, data collection, and analysis must be solved if studies of policy contents are to meet high scholarly standards ?. Third, what is likely to be the net gain or loss form more study of policy contents to the relevance and utility of political science for policy-makers and policy critics ?. Fourth, what professional expertise and obligation, if any, have political scientists to contribute directly to the formulation, implementation and evaluation of public policies in the United States ?.
My purpose in this introductory chapter is to prepare the stage ( and perhaps also suggest some canons for evaluating the scripts and actors to come) by setting forth my conception of the intllectual and moral framework within which these questions should be pondered, discussed and decided. Let us begin with the last.(Tp)