Alternative strategies for legislative analysis of public policy

Abstract

Current methods for providing analytic support for public policy choices provide a severely limited basis for decisions by the legislative branch. The executive branch currently dominates the system in that it employs most of the analytical talent, maintains data bases, and determines the alternatives to be analysed. In this paper, two alternative models designed to correct this deficiency are defined and illustrated—i.e. (1) an independent legislative analysis model, and (2) a joint executive-legislative analysis model, and the three alternatives are compared. The conclusion reached is that the joint analysis model is preferable. Two alternative institutional arrangements—an in-house bureaucracy and contracts with outside consultants are also compared with the conclusion that a mixture of the two institutional arrangements is desirable.