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     On Friday, April 15th, the Education Policy Analysis Archives
will publish Issue 7 of Volume 2, "Policy Questions: A Conceptual
Study" by Thomas F. Green. An abstract of the article appears below.

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                    EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES
Volume 2 Number 7                                      ISSN 1068-2341
April 15, 1994                                            (975 lines)
_____________________________________________________________________

                POLICY QUESTIONS: A CONCEPTUAL STUDY

                         Thomas F. Green
                       Syracuse University
                      (tfgreen@suvm.bitnet)

ABSTRACT
    A policy question is a request for a fairly stable, but modifiable
authoritative line of action aimed at securing an optimal balance
between different goods, all of which must be pursued, but
cannot be jointly maximized.  To such questions there are no
purely technical solutions, a point that is revealed by the etiology
of policy questions.  They appear to arise from conflicts among
humans over the distribution of goods, i.e., conflicts of interest.
However, the deeper roots of such questions lie not in a conflict
of human interests, but in the incompatibility of the actual goods
that human beings seek.  Policy questions ask how to allocate
such goods.  But this allocation is the business of politics.  No
policy without politics nor politics without polity.
    Policy questions must be distinguished from constitutional
questions, moral questions, and questions aimed at forming the
set of alternatives from which policies might be selected.  Finally,
different facets of the policy process are distinguished -- policy
analysis, formation, decision and the political analysis of policy.
These never occur discretely or in fixed sequence.  But they are
different activities, having different theories and requiring different
skills, and capacities.  Together, they model what is required for
that most comprehensive of all offices within our political system -
- the office of citizen.