Design Problems
This handbook assumes throughout that you are working on a problem of policy
choice. However, a special case of policy choice occurs when you wish to, or
have to, design at least one policy alternative to put into the menu of possibilities.
Perhaps you are just not satisfied with the menu of alternatives that people in
the policy environment are already talking abour. Or perhaps the problem you
are dealing with is so new or unique that you will be the first, or even the only,
person to oversee the needed design work.
Consider what is involved in designing a house, an office building, a living
room, a dance production, a theater set, a fund-raising event, a political campaign,
a graduate public policy curriculum, a nonprofit environmental education organization
to operate on a national scale, or a profit-seeking organization to manufacture
and market cyberwidgets in ten to twenty national markets. Clearly, design
is a complex process, requiring many iterations, in which you both explore
different ways to accomplish a certain set of objectives and alter the set ofobjectives
in light of what you learn about what is actually practicable.
In some cases, the policy analyst works on the design problem more or less
alone, like some brooding master architect. More likely she does her work in
loose or tight conjunction with other policy professionals who bring different
sorts of expertise (e.g., legal, engineering, fiscal) to the table, and who bring
different viewpoints and priorities as well. In any case, sooner or later, the design