As such, the rationalist approach to policy analysis clearly takes its cue
from Lasswell’s notion of the policy sciences. It takes an instrumental
view of public policy: policies are viewed as means to address problems
or achieve goals, and the central objective of policy analysis is to identify
the most desirable means to achieve these ends. Identifying those means
is a largely technocratic undertaking that draws on multiple disciplines, is
heavily quantitative, and is keenly interested in assessing causal relationships.
The rationalist approach follows this generic process for generating
knowledge useful for answering questions about what should be done: