Policy Analysts, Clients, and Social Scientists

Abstract

Two Types of Policy Analysis If you do not have a client, you are not doing policy analysis. This simple test focuses attention on the real purpose of all policy analysis, serves to differentiate policy analysts from social scientists, and provides a basis for evaluating any piece of policy analysis. Policy analysts are in the business of helping their clients resolve particular public policy dilemmas.1 The key standard for evaluating their work is the one of policy relevance: Has the analysis indeed helped a policymaker-the client-do his or her job? In contrast, social scientists seek to advance their discipline by producing general theory. Social scientists care little whether their generalizations can help any policymaker. For the practicing policy analyst, however, the master is not an abstract ideal such as furthering the frontier of the discipline or applying an intellectual paradigm to a new class of problems; rather, the master is the client.

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