Public Policy and a go-back to basics
A Contemporary Appraisal of Early Ideas
Abstract
Public policy is a living (and changing) field of study: Ideas about this field adapts to needs, evolve from accumulated experience, and are enriched from its interaction with other fields of human knowledge. This article presents some notes on the work of three key public policy scholars: Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, and Giandomenico Majone. They best known texts are not replicated here, but some others that provide context and nuances to his ideas. Here, the novelty of the approach is the return to basics, approaching to those other texts and to asking us what other pieces from these key scholars remains there unexplored, for a better understanding on public policy. With the aspiration to complement the aspect of disciplinary refocusing, this text assumes that there are some little-explored ideas that can and should be traced to fully un-derstand the discipline.
Downloads
References
Brunner, R. D., & Willard, A. R. (2003). Editors´ Introduction. Policy Science, 71-98.
Lasswell, H. D. (2003). Memorandum. Policy Science, 71-98.
Lindblom, C. E. (1958). Policy Analysis. The American Economic Review, 298-312.
Lindblom, C. E. (1958b). Tinbergen on Policy-Making. The University of Chicago Press, 531-538.
Majone, G. (1974). The role of constrains in policy analysis. Quantity and Quality, 65-76.
Majone, G. (1975). The feasibility of social science. Policy Science, 49-69.
Majone, G. (1977). Technology Assessment and Policy Analysis. Policy Sciences, 173-175.
Majone, G. (1978). Technology Assessment in a Dialectic Key. Public Administration Review, 52-58.
Majone, G. (1980). Policies as theories. Omega, 151-162.
Majone, G (1997). Evidencia, argumentación y persuasión en la formación de políticas. México. Colegio Nacional de Ciencias Políticas y Administración Pública y Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Copyright (c) 2021 Víctor S. Peña, Dr. (Autor/a)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Those authors who have publications with this journal, accept the following terms:
a. Authors will retain their copyrights and guarantee the journal the right of first publication of their work, which will be simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA Recognition License). 4.0) that allows third parties to share the work as long as its author and its first publication are indicated in this journal.
Under this open access license, readers (users) can:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
Under the following terms:
-
Attribution — Users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
-
NonCommercial — Users may not use the material for commercial purposes.
-
ShareAlike — If remix, transform, or build upon the material, users must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
- No additional restrictions — Users may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
b. Authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the version of the published work (eg: deposit it in an institutional telematic archive or publish it in a monographic volume) provided that the initial publication in this journal is indicated.
c. Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work through the Internet (e.g. in institutional telematic files or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can lead to interesting exchanges and increase citations of the published work. (See The effects of open access).