While the study of politics has a long history, the systematic study of public policy
as we understand it is a fairly recent discipline. Daniel McCool argues that modern
policy studies began in 1922, when political scientist Charles Merriam sought to
connect the theory and practice of politics to understanding the actual activities
of government. But McCool also notes that “the study of public policy did not
suddenly spring into existence in the 1950s and 1960s.” The classic literature that
founded policy studies—including much that is discussed in this book—is only
about fifty years old, beginning with Harold Lasswell’s call for the development of
a distinctive policy science. Because the field of policy studies is so new, many of
the fundamentals of the policy sciences have only begun to be well understood in
the last twenty years or so. Considerable debate remains over whether there is one
coherent set of principles that can govern the study and understanding of what we
call the public policy process.