Review article
COMPARATIVE PUBLIC POLICY: CAN GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY BE COMPARED?
Zdravko Petak
orcid.org/0000-0001-5303-4990
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The article brings up the basic issues of comparative public policy, a separate research orientation in the contemporary political science. First, the principal works that have defined this research discipline are looked into. The contributions of two subdisciplines of the contemporary political science – public policy and political economy – are highlighted. The second part of the article investigates the fundamental methodological issues, synthesized into two basic dilemmas: what should be understood under the term government activity and how it is possible to measure this performance. The author is of the opinion that most works from the field of comparative public policy are largely devoted to the comparison of governments’ financial activities which are the easiest to measure due to a broad accessibility of the data on public expenditure, public sector growth, unemployment and alike. Referring to the Canadian author Louis Imbeau, the author stresses the need for a broader understanding of comparative public policy that would include those comparisons that do not exclusively rely on governments’ financial activities.
Keywords
public policy; comparative public policy; policy analysis; government activity; public sector growth; deregulation
Hrčak ID:
24299
URI
Publication date:
13.8.2002.
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