The foundations of public policy analysis2
This chapter revisits the foundations of public policy analysis as presented in our previous textbook of 2011 (Knoepfel et al., 2011): the definition of public policies (distinction between substantive and institutional policies), the rejected notion of public action, causality models, actor triangles and resources. It adds some new perspectives on the relation between actors (political-administrative actors, target groups and beneficiaries) and their resources. Finally, it brings some clarification to the topic of the institutions, which are considered as the ‘rules of the game’, and introduces a list of possession, behavioural and decisional rules that feature in the constitutional and private law of Switzerland. The majority of these rules can also be found in other democratic political systems.