Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, Eighth Edition helps students understand how and why policy analysis is used to assess policy alternatives. The text encourages them to not only question the assumptions of policy analysts, but also recognize how these strategies are used in the support of political arguments.

Michael E. Kraft is a professor of political science and the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies emeritus at the University of Wisconsin¿Green Bay. He is the author of Environmental Policy and Politics, 7th ed. (2018), and coauthor of Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance (2011, winner of the Lynton K. Caldwell award for best book on environmental politics and policy that year) and of Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, 7th ed. (2021). In addition, he is coeditor of both the Oxford Handbook of Environmental Policy (2013) and Business and Environmental Policy (2007) with Sheldon Kamieniecki and of Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy, 2nd ed. (2009), with Daniel A. Mazmanian. 

Part I: The Study of Public Policy
Chapter 1: Public Policy and Politics
Chapter 2: Government Institutions and Policy Actors
Chapter 3: Understanding Public Policymaking
Part II: Analyzing Public Policy
Chapter 4: Policy Analysis: An Introduction
Chapter 5: Public Problems and Policy Alternatives
Chapter 6: Assessing Policy Alternatives
Part III: Issues and Controversies in Public Policy
Chapter 7: Economic and Budgetary Policy
Chapter 8: Health Care Policy
Chapter 9: Welfare and Social Security Policy
Chapter 10: Education Policy
Chapter 11: Environmental and Energy Policy
Chapter 12: Foreign Policy and Homeland Security
Part IV: Conclusions
Chapter 13: Politics, Analysis, and Policy Choice