The Evaluation of Policy Alternatives

Front Cover
Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii, 1971 - International relations - 118 pages
The purpose of systematic evaluation procedures is to help policy analysts confronted with difficult decisions to form wise choices. Few useful guidelines have been offered for the evaluation of action alternatives, especially in the realm of foreign policy formation. Schemes based on statements of goals or objectives or on the use of broadly applicable criteria for choosing among alternatives can be misleading, and they are frequently found to be unworkable. Rather than searching for particular rules by which wise choices should be made, it is more useful to find ways in which difficult decision problems can be decomposed into smaller questions, each of which is easier to answer than the larger problem. A tabular, account-book format, described as the revised general ledger, provides a sound basis for systematically comparing and evaluating those features which significantly differentiate the action alternatives under examination. The scheme may be used as the core of an efficient approach to policy analysis described as the pair-wise evaluation strategy. (Author).

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Contents

PREEVALUATION
12
THE PURPOSE AND CHARACTER OF EVALUATION PROCEDURES
23
SOME SUGGESTED EVALUATION PROCEDURES
30

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