Final answer:
Policy analysis comprises evaluating potential policy impacts impartially, assessing policy choices, predicting outcomes, and understanding the implications of decisions. It's closely connected to politics and cycles through problem identification, agenda setting, implementation, and evaluation. Analysts play a vital role across all policy areas by both action and inaction.
Step-by-step explanation:
Policy analysis is a critical component of the public policy process which involves evaluating the impacts of potential policies objectively, without advocating for any particular option. The key behaviors of policy analysis include identifying possible policy choices, intelligently predicting outcomes and impacts, ensuring decision-makers understand the implications of their decisions, and maintaining impartiality despite potential politicization.
The comprehensive study of policy analysis requires understanding the four major phases of the public policy cycle: problem identification, agenda setting, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. Furthermore, policy analysis is intrinsically linked to politics and often reflects political leanings, even though the aim is to provide unbiased information. Understanding the implications of policies from different perspectives, such as neoclassical and Keynesian models, is fundamental in evaluating results effectively to aid decision making.
Public policy can cover various domains from social welfare, science, and technology to business regulation. The role of policy analysts transcends merely the actions of government to include the assessment of outcomes that government actions – or inactions – create, thus playing a pivotal role across all major domestic policy areas.