--- title: Public Policy description: This field examines how governments formulate, implement, and evaluate laws and regulations to address societal problems. Learners will understand policy-making models, cost-benefit analysis, and how stakeholders influence decisions on public issues. category: social-sciences subcategory: political-science difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/public-policy --- # Public Policy This field examines how governments formulate, implement, and evaluate laws and regulations to address societal problems. Learners will understand policy-making models, cost-benefit analysis, and how stakeholders influence decisions on public issues. ## Available Resources 5 Books • 3 Courses • 4 Websites ## Websites ### 1. Policy Commons A search platform aggregating millions of full-text reports, briefs, and working papers from think tanks, NGOs, IGOs, and governments, including archived items whose original sites went offline. Useful for locating primary grey literature behind policy debates. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://policycommons.net/ **Tags:** policy-research, grey-literature, think-tanks, research-database, public-policy ### 2. Pew Research Center A nonpartisan American think tank publishing survey research, demographic studies, and content analysis on politics, religion, media, and social trends. Readers get access to full methodology reports and downloadable datasets useful for grounding policy arguments in evidence. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.pewresearch.org/ **Tags:** think-tank, survey-research, public-opinion, policy-data, demographics ### 3. RAND Corporation Nonprofit research organization producing public-domain reports on defense, health, education, and infrastructure policy. Its archive shows how analysts frame policy questions, model alternatives, and translate findings into recommendations, and most studies are downloadable free with full methodological appendices. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.rand.org/ **Tags:** think-tank, policy-analysis, defense-policy, research-reports, evidence-based-policy ### 4. Brookings Institution Washington-based think tank publishing commentary, working papers, and book-length studies across economics, governance, foreign policy, and metropolitan development. Useful for tracking how established scholars argue current policy debates and for locating primary data behind widely cited claims. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.brookings.edu/ **Tags:** think-tank, policy-analysis, economic-policy, governance, foreign-policy ## Courses ### 1. Energy Decisions, Markets, and Policies (MIT 15.031J) **Author:** Richard Schmalensee How households, firms and governments choose among energy sources and uses, covering energy markets, electricity regulation, energy policy and technology choices across many countries and settings. Includes 21 lecture videos and lecture slides. Builds frameworks for analysing energy decisions and evaluating policy. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/15-031j-energy-decisions-markets-and-policies-spring-2012/ **Tags:** energy-policy, energy-markets, electricity-regulation, energy-economics ### 2. Innovation Systems for Science, Technology, Energy, Manufacturing, and Health (MIT STS.081) **Author:** William Bonvillian How the US science and technology innovation system works and the federal government's role in it, through case studies on energy, computing, advanced manufacturing and health. 24 lecture videos and slide notes help learners analyze and critique innovation policy. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sts-081-innovation-systems-for-science-technology-energy-manufacturing-and-health-spring-2017/ **Tags:** innovation-policy, science-policy, technology-policy, energy-policy, advanced-manufacturing ### 3. Behavioral Economics and Public Policy Six-module IIM Bangalore course on how people actually make decisions, covering bounded rationality, heuristics, loss aversion, fairness and nudges. Learners apply these ideas to designing public programmes and workplace strategies that account for predictable behavioural biases. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.edx.org/learn/behavioral-economics/indian-institute-of-management-bangalore-behavioral-economics-and-public-policy **Tags:** behavioral-economics, nudges, loss-aversion, choice-architecture, public-policy ## Podcasts ### 1. The Ezra Klein Show **Author:** Ezra Klein New York Times interview podcast in which Ezra Klein holds long conversations with scholars, policymakers and writers on politics, economics, climate, technology and social policy. Listeners get in-depth arguments about how public problems arise and what policy responses might work. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast **Tags:** public-policy, politics, political-economy, interviews, ideas ### 2. Death Panel **Author:** Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant Left-wing podcast on health policy, disability politics and the political economy of medicine, hosted by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, authors of Health Communism, with co-hosts. Listeners gain a critical perspective on how health systems distribute care, risk and death. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod **Tags:** health-policy, disability-politics, health-inequality, political-economy, healthcare-systems ## Books ### 1. Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives **Author:** Michael E. Kraft, Scott R. Furlong A widely assigned undergraduate textbook covering how U.S. policy is made, the tools of policy analysis, and major issue areas from health to environment. Readers finish able to evaluate competing policy proposals against economic, ethical, and political criteria. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1452202745?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, public-policy-administration ### 2. Agendas and Instability in American Politics **Author:** Frank R. Baumgartner, Bryan D. Jones The book that introduced punctuated equilibrium theory to political science, using decades of U.S. data on tobacco, nuclear power, and pesticides to explain why policy stays stable for long stretches then shifts abruptly. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226039390?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, political-science ### 3. Understanding Public Policy **Author:** Thomas R. Dye A compact survey organizing American policymaking through competing models — institutional, group, elite, rational, incremental, and game-theoretic — then applying each to real programs. Useful for seeing how the analytical lens chosen shapes which policy explanation looks convincing. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0139369481?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, public-policy-administration ### 4. Policy Paradox **Author:** Deborah Stone Argues that policymaking is not rational problem-solving but a contest over ambiguous ideas — equity, efficiency, security, liberty — waged through numbers, symbols, and causal stories. Equips readers to dissect how political arguments are constructed and contested. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393976254?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, political-science ### 5. An Introduction to the Policy Process **Author:** Thomas A. Birkland A textbook walking through each stage of policymaking — problem definition, agenda setting, formulation, implementation, evaluation — alongside the institutions and actors involved. Readers gain a working vocabulary for the main theories used to explain why policies change. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765625326?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, public-policy-administration --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/public-policy