ABSTRACT
The days when policy researchers could count upon domestic politics and society to contribute sufficient data for a satisfactory analysis are now a memory. Whether policy researchers are prepared to enter another analytical universe or not, the accelerating flow of ideas, information, goods and money across national borders has affected the nature of policy problems, reshaped the attempts to engage these problems and thus reoriented the way in which explanations of policy-making can be productively pursued. The big questions that animate policy studies may not have changed, but the available data and the concepts needed to analyze them have been shifting. This chapter will seek to connect these emerging global dynamics to long recognized drivers of policy-making and present a conceptual framework that can help in understanding the resulting interactions. Enhancing the linkage between theoretical frameworks that have informed international relations and public policy concepts promises a better understanding of policy-making in a volatile universe.
