ABSTRACT
Scholars of comparative public policy are interested in systematically studying public policies and their origins in order to gain a better understanding of the causes, factors and institutional or actor constellations that bring about different kinds of policy decisions. They try to advance our understanding of the processes and determinants of public policy-making by comparing the situations and contexts that lead policy-makers to agree on similar or diverging policies. In this vein, these analyses include comparisons over time and/or over units (comparing, for example, national, state or local governments). In a nutshell, comparative policy researchers seek to explain why and under what conditions policy-makers agree on what policies (see, for example, Lerner and Lasswell 1951; Windhoff-Héritier 1987; Howlett and Ramesh 2003). In an oft-cited definition, Dye describes public policy as “whatever governments choose to do or not to do” (1976: 1). A review of a number of subdisciplines of comparative public policy analysis shows that scholars of different research traditions employ different strategies in order to probe this inclusive and vast definition of “public policy” in both theoretical and empirical respects. While policy science covers a broad field that includes analyses of actors, institutions, instruments, programs, decisionmaking processes, policy implementation or evaluation from various theoretical perspectives (cf. Mayntz 1983; Howlett and Ramesh 2003), the analytical focus of the literature on comparative policy analysis is on the policy decisions themselves and the explanatory factors.
