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This chapter explains how policy issue substance could play a revitalizing role for multiple subfields in American politics, particularly congressional studies and American political development. It argues that there are three factors combined to lessen interest in the study of policy substance: the rise of deductive theory within congressional studies, which led scholars to believe that this earlier behavior-based work was limited to descriptive objectives; the findings of Poole and Rosenthal (1985, 1991, 1997), who demonstrated empirically that roll call voting in the U.S. Congress appears to be largely unidimensional and not policy-specific; and policy classification schemas that were not theoretically grounded and suffered from being period-bound. The chapter also introduces a new coding schema to parse policy.

This chapter examines how policy issue substance matters for studying political preferences at the micro level, while reconsidering Poole and Rosenthal's analysis of the 95th Congress (1977–78). In their analysis of the 95th Congress, they find evidence that they interpret to mean that issue scales do not vary. The chapter suggests that it is possible to agree wholeheartedly with the low-dimensionality findings of Poole and Rosenthal, but at the same time, members of Congress have distinct preferences across policy issue areas. Measuring the preferences of members of Congress correctly is absolutely vital for empirical testing of theories and hypotheses as well as for inductive-based work on lawmaking. The remainder of the chapter presents five case studies of lawmaking, which show in a more fine-grained manner the impact of policy preferences across time and issues.

This chapter discusses how policy issue substance matters for studying political preferences. Fully exploring how policy issue substance matters for studying political polarization in Congress, the chapter begins by introducing a new large data set that comprises the estimated induced preferences of members of the House of Representatives and U.S. senators by policy issue area over a very long time horizon: 1877 to 2010. It also explores the literature on elite polarization in Congress by policy issue area and studies polarization across a 124-year period (1877 to 2010) by the policy issue areas defined as “tier 1.” The chapter shows that issue content is extremely important for understanding political polarization and that many of the empirical facts about polarization depend on not disaggregating policy by issue areas.

This chapter turns to lawmaking and shows that legislative productivity varies considerably by policy issue area. Specifically, it illustrates that the key determinants of legislative productivity differ by policy substance. It also provides empirical evidence that questions the benefits of pooling legislation when such aggregation often obscures empirical findings related to understanding the mechanisms of lawmaking. The chapter aims to determine whether pooling policies (using an overall aggregate measure of all legislation) is potentially inappropriate. This multivariate analysis draws on data using two different thresholds of significance. The highest threshold uses the top 500 enactments; while the second threshold uses the top 3,500 enactments. This threshold captures landmarks for very important legislation.

This chapter makes a final case that policy issue substance is critical for understanding contemporary and historical lawmaking. Neglecting the direct study of policy issue substance has unnecessarily weakened and stunted progress in the research programs of Congress and American political development. Additionally, Congress scholars generally prefer to engage in what is referred to as “normal science”—making steady but incremental progress towards the goal, instead of chasing big and potentially intractable ideas. Policy issue substance is unquestionably a big idea, and the chapter seeks to demonstrate that it is possible to pursue big ideas while still making solid, incremental progress in understanding lawmaking and political behavior.

This chapter examines the method of “argumentation for the sake of heaven.” This method entails an honest exploration by economists focused on advancing understanding, not on winning debates. Argumentation for the sake of heaven can only occur if one recognizes that it is needed. Thus, implementing an argumentation for the sake of heaven methodology would require economists ascribing to opposing views on policy to willingly personally discuss the nuances of their policy differences. The mutually held goal of these debaters arguing for the sake of heaven would be to reduce differences. To the degree possible, the overriding objective would be to reach a consensus, or at least a specification of what type of evidence might persuade economists on both sides of the policy issue, to change their mind.

This concluding chapter first provides a summary of the important parts of the book. As it looks into the possible options for the growth of pension funds, it also attempts to evaluate some of the policy issues associated with its investigation. Addressing such issues proves to be important not only for countries with already developed pension-fund sectors, but also in former Communist countries, countries that are dependent on pay-as-you-go schemes, least developed countries, and other such countries that attempt to set up pension funds. Lastly, the chapter draws attention to some of the author's suggestions regarding the policy choices and notes that the reader should still be able to consider that judgements often entail choosing the suitable trade-off between costs or benefits.

Governing Hong Kong is not easy. Aside from the problems surrounding the relationship between the government and the people, Hong Kong also faces constitutional, organisational, and policy issues which affect the way the public sector works. This concluding chapter traces back the issues surrounding the Hong Kong government in order to acquire a better understanding of how these issues arose and to predict solutions that might resolve these issues. In this chapter, the issues on the transition of Hong Kong, the values of post-1997 government, the disarticulated system, and legitimacy are discussed. In addition, the chapter provides suggestions for improving the administrative and policy making processes of Hong Kong.

This chapter discusses the Classical Liberal methodology. In the Classical Liberal method, formal theory was something to be conscious of, to be kept in the back of one's mind as difficult policy issues were confronted. However, it was secondary to educated common sense, and the method required one to be clear about the judgments one was making in applying a particular model and in deciding which assumptions were reasonable and which were not. Applied policy economics had to explicitly deal with all such issues, which meant that no firm policy conclusion followed from scientific theory. In policy, science played only a supporting role. However, in what would increasingly become associated with the neoclassical method, that would change, and scientific theory would occupy center stage within the realm of policy thinking.

The conventional modalities for providing financial assistance to low-income countries have been foreign aid and debt relief. Although some attention has been paid to establishing new methods of development financing, recent global initiatives have concentrated instead on the traditional ones. This chapter focuses on debt relief. It describes how debt relief to indebted poor countries has evolved from early attempts to relax the ‘terms’ applied to poor country debt, to the heavily indebted poor country (HIPC) initiative and its enhancement and, more recently, to the multilateral debt relief initiative first proposed in June 2005 at the G8 summit. It gives some calculations of the size of the relief provided. It also discusses and estimates the extent to which debt relief has been ‘additional’. In this context, it examines the relationship between debt relief and foreign aid; has it been positive or negative? The empirical part of the chapter focuses on the low-income countries of Sub Saharan Africa and shows that the effects of debt relief on aid flows and resource transfers have changed over time. The chapter conjectures as to why these changes may have occurred, and discusses some of the more important contemporary policy issues surrounding debt relief.

This chapter reviews the various kinds of health surveys that are used to support the development, implementation, and evaluation of health policies and practices, and characterizes each by its strengths and weaknesses. It discusses the current status of health surveys in the United States and addresses some major policy issues that affect how well these surveys meet the needs of the user community. Although the examples used are primarily from the United States, surveys conducted in other countries are similar in design.

This chapter evaluates issue entrepreneurship, an innovation strategy through which political parties mobilize a new or previously ignored issue. Political parties will engage in issue entrepreneurship when the electoral gains of doing so outweigh the costs. Challenger parties are more likely to act as issue entrepreneurs than dominant parties because the potential costs relating to possible bad reactions of the voter base or coalition partners are likely to be lower for the former. At the same time, the potential electoral gains are more uncertain for dominant parties than for challenger parties. Parties that wish to politically innovate by mobilizing new or previously ignored policy issues are likely to choose issues with a high degree of appropriability—that is to say, issues that are not easily subsumed in the dominant left-right dimension. These issues may drive a wedge in the constituencies of dominant parties and lead to internal rifts.

This chapter assesses the Conditional Pandering Theory with a larger data set of presidential decisions. More specifically, these data concern annually recurring presidential proposals on eleven policy issues across three decades. This analysis not only assesses the verisimilitude of the theory but also reveals general patterns in the relationship between public opinion and presidential policymaking. The chapter proceeds in four sections: a brief review of the predictions on policy congruence from the Conditional Pandering Theory and previous literature; a description of the data; a presentation of the technical details of the testing; and a discussion of the results.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the growing scholarly/policy gap, which is the result of the professionalization of the discipline of political science. While the professionalization of a discipline and its increasing irrelevance to concrete policy issues is not inevitable, there nonetheless seems to be an elective affinity between these two trends. Rigor and relevance are not necessarily incompatible, but they are often in tension, which is why social science's relevance question endures. As the number of scholarly articles using sophisticated quantitative or formal methods increased since 1980, the percentage of them offering concrete policy recommendations—the core of policy relevance—has declined. Many proponents of the scientific study of politics now eschew advocacy of particular policies on the grounds that doing so is incompatible with scientific objectivity. Moreover, many pressing policy questions are not readily amenable to the preferred methodological tools of social scientists.

Introducing international elements into the description and prescription of policy analysis enhances the understanding and evaluation of the policy’s causes and effects. This chapter focuses on Taiwan policy analysis with an international perspective. To present a clearer picture in academic development about this issue, by database of “ProQuest Information and Learning,” this chapter searches the policy analysis research concerning Taiwan issues from 1992-2012, such as general environmental policy, health policy, economic policy, and educational policy. Then we introduce some of the important think tanks in Taiwan that play a positive role in promoting the internationalization of policy analysis. This chapter also reviews graduate schools in public administration and policy for the Taiwan Association for Schools of Public Administration and Affairs. This chapter additionally selects some emerging policy issues to narrate their development in Taiwan.

The potential of using computers has been evident in how the prices of information processing has experienced a sharp decline, and in how computing power has undergone rapid development and expansion. As such, several governments and companies have opted to invest on IT, emphasizing how these organizations tend to be optimistic about future gains and possible payoffs. However, certain doubts have been expressed, such as the ‘Solow paradox’ which question the role of IT in improving productivity. As can be observed in the data of Finland' nonresidential business sector, productivity has not exhibited rapid growth through investing on computer use. This chapter looks into the economic impacts of computer technology in Finland and investigates the underlying policy issues for such large-scale efforts.