Volume Four

Volume Four of the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis, "Policy Sectors in Comparative Policy Analysis Studies" contains chapters concerned with comparison within disciplinary policy sectors. The volume contains detailed analyses of policies within six major policy sectors, and illustrates the important differences that exist across policies healthcare, environment, education, social welfare, immigration, and science and technology.The reader will find some common aspects and dimensions – theoretical or methodological – across all policy domains, as well as differences dictated by the characteristics of the discipline or the locus in which the policy point at issue takes place. Indeed, some scholars have argued that the differences and similarities that exist across and within policy sectors can transcend the differences or similarities across political systems.

"Policy Sectors in Comparative Policy Analysis Studies" will be of great interest to scholars and learners of public policy and social sciences, as well as to practitioners considering what can be reliably contextualized, learned, facilitated or avoided through lesson-drawing.

The chapters were originally published as articles in the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis which in the last two decades has pioneered the development of comparative public policy. The volume is part of a four-volume series, the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis including Theories and Methods, Institutions and Governance, Regional Comparisons, and Policy Sectors. Each volume showcases a different new chapter comparing domains of study interrelated with comparative public policy: political science, public administration, governance and policy design, authored by the JCPA authored by the JCPA co-editors Giliberto Capano, Michael Howlett, Leslie A. Pal and B. Guy Peters.