The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (205 page)

 
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See
police
.

 
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Analyses of the process of policy formation. It is, ultimately, difficult to distinguish the study of policy from that of politics, since there can be no politics without policy. Indeed, the French
politique
covers both,
la vie politique
meaning roughly what anglophones call politics, and
la politique publique
meaning policy. Only in the 1960s was any distinction made between the studies of politics and policy, in the belief that the understanding of policy outcomes required a more detailed analysis of the process of policy formation than was usually attempted by academic students of politics.
It is useful to distinguish two assumptions of policy studies, the normative and the analytical. Normative policy studies constitute a very broad church, stretching well beyond the confines of the study of politics: economists, operational researchers, organizational theorists, and public administrators are all involved in critical accounts of how policy is made and how the processes could be improved. The normative study of the making of policy overlaps into studies of policy evaluation and policy implementation which tend to be well funded by governments.
Analytic policy studies are largely confined to the discipline of politics
per se
. They seek to develop models and explanations of the policy process and the variety of methods employed can approach that of the study of politics as a whole.
Public choice
theory and several kinds of comparative approach offer rival insights into policy-making, while some neo- behavioural approaches which seek to explain policy outcomes in terms of general features of the political system, make policy studies difficult to distinguish from the study of political systems.
LA 

 
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Transliteration of the Greek word for ‘city-state’. In
Plato
and especially
Aristotle
,
polis
has the normative connotation of the best form of social organization. Aristotle's much quoted statement ‘Man is by nature a political animal’ would be more accurately rendered ‘Mankind is an animal whose highest form of social organization is the city-state’.

 
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The highest executive body of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, the Politburo was headed by the General Secretary and included powerful members of the party and the government. It did not function as an effective collective body under Stalin , and while Khrushchev was both head of the Council of Ministers and the Party, its position was uncertain. However, with the victory of Brezhnev , its pre-eminence was established.
SWh 

 
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See
PAC
(USA).

 
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