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Powell's Q&A: Norberto Fuentes

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   The Autobiography of Fidel Castro

   Norberto Fuentes

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adiyabplan, April 14, 2008 (view all comments by adiyabplan)
Paradoxes are nothing but trouble and Policy making is difficult and often times messy. Author Stone in her book Policy Paradox details with the role of struggle in defining ideas like equity, efficiency, liberty, and fairness. Similarly, the tools of policy making—incentives, rules, persuasion, legal protections, and the reorganization of authority—are recast as complex social processes. Policy Paradox demonstrates that "you can’t take politics out of analysis." Author, demonstrates how these ideals often conflict in policy implementation
Stone writes that policies include goals, problems and solutions. She creates a model of reasoning that shows how decisions should be made in a series of well-defined steps:
1. Identify objectives
2. Identify alternative courses of action for achieving objectives
3. Predict the possible consequences of each alternative
4. Evaluate the possible consequences of each alternative
5. Select the alternative that maximizes the attainment of objectives
Author has included case study as an appendix, taking up the issue of confirmatory action. Clear, provocative, and engaging, Policy Paradox conveys the richness of public policy making and analysis. Author (government, Dartmouth College) argues that, at every stage and on every level, values shape policy design and implementation. She has included articles from New York Times as an example for her argument.
Author writes in introduction as “paradox is just such an impossible situation, and political life is full of them”. She also keeps the book extremely well organized into four sections:
1. Politics, where she defines the “market model” -- the rational scientific set up that she attempts to decry -- and distinguishes it from the “polis” -- term author keeps on using throughout the book to represent a real-life, real-time community that does not necessarily follow the political science mold of consistent rationality.
2. Goals, where she explains concepts that are the “central tenet of modern policy analysis” equity, efficiency, security, and liberty, and then questions how they either balance or trade-off with each other.
3. Problems, how they are defined and demonstrated in politics. This is the section where she most clearly presents politics as an art, by comparing situations to rhetoric and literature.
4. Solutions, where she establishes how strategies are implemented and accepted in communities. Stone further makes use of her rhetoric analogy by focusing on the language that politicians use.
In the final part of the book, author in Solutions, summarize the way the government, groups, individuals, or organizations influence each other to try to get their way. She organizes them into specific strategies, like the careful way the government, groups, individuals, or organizations define certain things, like “Rights,” “Facts,” and others.
In the chapters Stone discusses the manipulative use of language, she points out the different groups that define words or terms differently.
In conclusion, book is well organized in terms of sections, chapters, and subheadings. Author introduces various concepts and there connectivity to issues.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780393976250

Subtitle:

The Art of Political Decision Making

Author:

Stone, Deborah

Author:

Stone, Deborah A.

Publisher:

W. W. Norton & Company

Location:

New York

Subject:

General

Subject:

Political planning

Subject:

Policy sciences

Subject:

Public Policy - General

Subject:

Policy sciences -- Economic aspects.

Subject:

Political planning -- Economic aspects.

Copyright:

2001

Edition Number:

Rev. ed.

Edition Description:

Revised

Series Volume:

no. 81-50169

Publication Date:

July 2001

Binding:

Hardcover

Language:

English

Illustrations:

Yes

Pages:

448

Dimensions:

9.18x6.12x.82 in. 1.39 lbs.