Teaching policy analysis in China and the United States: Implications for curriculum design of public policy programs

Abstract

Rapid worldwide growth in public policy education now offers excellent opportunities to assess the development of the field from a comparative perspective. Our analysis, which examines recent trends in public policy education by comparing public policy analysis courses taught in professional degree programs in China and in the United States, reveals considerable disparities in these curricula as taught in the two countries. Surprisingly, these differences have emerged primarily through disciplinary foci, expertise in policy analysis, and practical experience among instructors, rather than through the distinctive social, political, institutional, and historical characteristics of the two countries. Our findings also suggest that a positivist approach to policy analysis continues to dominate classroom discussions in US programs, despite intense debates in the literature regarding the utility of that approach in guiding actual practice.

Keywords:

• Policy analysis
• Curriculum design
• China
• Comparative analysis
• Positivism
• Policy Education

1 Introduction

Policy analysis as a field of study and a profession has been growing globally. Global policy challenges such as climate change, economic crises, and terrorism call for innovative solutions beyond institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Policy analysis, interdisciplinary in nature, thus appeals to a wide variety of practitioners. As a result, professional careers in policy analysis have emerged in a growing number of countries (Dobuzinskis, Howlett, & Laycock, 2007; Vaitsman, Ribeiro, & Lobato, 2013; Yu & Kuo, 2015), and organizations and entities specializing in policy advisory services have been established both within and outside government (Craft & Howlett, 2012; Vaitsman, Lobato, & Andrade, 2013; Wu, 2015).

New schools and programs of public policy have been set up to embrace the demand for expertise in policy analysis (Besharov & Oser, 2013; Durning, 2005). In recent years, professional training degrees such as the Masters of Public Policy (MPP) have been launched in Asia and Europe (Geva-May & Maslove, 2006; Yan & Brans, 2005; Yang, 2005). Policy analysis has also recently become an integral part of other professional training programs such as the Masters of Public Administration (MPA). In China, for example, where only a handful of universities offered any courses in public policy in 1990s, public policy analysis had become one of the nine compulsory courses for MPA programs taught in more than 200 academic institutions by 2014.

The upsurge in public policy education globally not only provides tremendous impetus to the development of the field but also presents serious challenges in countries where public policy education is a recent phenomenon (Wu, Lai, & Choi, 2012). Some scholars observe a clear pattern of convergence in the curriculum design of public policy programs among different countries, despite the considerable differences in political systems, administrative cultures, and historical contexts (Durning, 2005; Fritzen, 2008; Mead, 2013), and others find that there is a strong tendency moving toward the “norm” of such programs found in the United States when new public policy programs are being launched in different parts of the world (Geva-May & Maslove, 2006; Ngok, 2005).

There are, however, considerable gaps in understanding the emerging patterns of curriculum development for public policy education across different countries. For example, what are key areas of convergence and divergence across different contexts and what might account for the levels of convergence and divergence observed? What differences and similarities are transitional in nature and what might be expected to be long lasting? Does there exist a “norm” of public policy education within the United States? And if so, what are defining characteristics of such a norm? The answers to these questions will have significant impact on the curriculum development of public policy programs, and in turn, on the development of the field globally.

This study aims at shedding light on these issues by comparing policy analysis courses as presently taught in China and in the United States. The study focuses primarily on coded course syllabi in policy analysis courses chosen from top programs in both countries to assess the profiles of course instructors, coverage of main topics, value paradigms, pedagogical tools, and overall approaches, in a comparative perspective. In particular, we focus our attention on three different aspects of curriculum design in which patterns of divergence or convergence might emerge. First, how would policy environment shape public policy programs across the two countries? While it is widely believed that the strengths of policy analysis stem from systematic applications of scientifically rigorous methods for data collection and analysis for problem solving in public sector (Weimer & Vining, 2005), policy analysis is conducted by and for players who interact with each other in policy environment shaped by political systems, cultural norms and historical contexts that may differ considerably from one system to another. Therefore, public policy programs emerging from different parts of the world may share some common characteristics, but are also expected to have their distinctive features in response to differences in policy environment.

Second, what roles does the positivist approach play in guiding curriculum design for public policy programs in a global context? While the positivist approach, heavily relying on welfare economics, rational modeling, the quantification of economic costs and benefits, and viewing policy analysis as part of the quest to reveal objective knowledge (Howlett, Ramesh, & Perl, 2009), has been adopted widely as the leading approach for policy programs or courses in the United States (Geva-May, Nasi, Turrini, & Scott, 2008), its use as the primary guiding principle for present-day practices of policy analysis has increasingly been questioned (Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003; Morçöl, 2001). Some more accusatory critics have even condemned positivist policy analysis for serving only power elites, via a “policy science of tyranny” that potentially could undermine the democratic process (Danziger, 1995).

The growing discontent with technocratic positivist policy analysis in recent decades has given rise to growing interest in post-positivist approaches, which hold that policy is inherently a normative process, and hence policy analysis carries explicit ethical, moral and value dimensions (de Leon & Steelman, 2001; Foster, McBeth, & Clemons, 2010; Meltzer, 2013). Associated with postmodern interpretivist epistemology, post-positivism tends to question the existence of objective facts independent of the observer, but believes in the social construction of facts, subjective reflection and contextual factors (Fischer, 2003; Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003). Despite their growing importance in academic research, however, post-positivist ideas are yet to be integrated effectively in professional training curricula, at least in the United States. It is thus critical to examine the sources of the persistent biases toward positivist approaches from a comparative perspective.

Third, how should policy analysis be taught in professional training programs such as the MPA or MPP? Durning (2005) argues that there are three ways to teach policy analysis: “policy studies”, “traditional policy analysis”, and “policy sciences”. Policy studies treat policy analysis as an input into the policy process and a subfield within political science. Traditional policy analysis draws heavily on applied microeconomics, political science, and statistics. The policy sciences approach, much less extensively adopted by policy schools and programs today, can be traced back to Lasswell's conceptualization of policy analysis as emphasizing “intelligence-based” policy advice that should be multidisciplinary, problem-oriented, and contextual (Lasswell, 1951).

The choice among different approaches to teaching policy analysis may also be shaped by how policy analysis is defined. While there is a broad agreement that policy analysis is the process in “determining which of various policies will achieve a given set of goals”, alternative definitions of policy analysis do exist, and may prevail in certain circumstances. For example, policy analysis is sometimes viewed as analysis “of” policy instead of analysis “for” policy, and focuses on policy process where existing policies are developed and policy changes are expected. For example, Romero (2001) found that, even in the United States, syllabi titled Policy Analysis often consisted solely of materials related to the policy process.

We compare China and the United States for three reasons. First, there are significant differences between the two countries with regard to contextual factors for policy analysis, such as political systems, administrative cultures and historical contexts, and such contrast may offer variations critical for assessing the impacts of contextual factors on curriculum design for policy analysis training. In addition, the initial development of public policy education in China has been influenced heavily by curriculum design in the United States (Ngok, 2005), as is the case in many other countries where public policy education is also a relatively new development. It is therefore of particular interest to identify areas of convergence or divergence between the two countries in the development of public policy education. Lastly, both countries have significant numbers of university-level educational programs offering policy analysis courses, providing necessary diversities and variations in courses both within and across the two countries to fully capture pertinent issues and salient patterns from a sample of comparable courses.

Our study reveals considerable disparities in policy analysis curricula between the two countries today. Policy analysis courses in China primarily emphasize public policy theories, policy environments, and policy processes while providing limited coverage of the tools, methods, and procedures involved in conducting policy analysis, whereas courses in the United States have manifested a strong orientation toward a positivist approach. Looking beyond this present state of affairs, we argue that while equipping students with technical competence in policy analysis is essential, transcending the prevalent positivist paradigm and exposing future policy professionals to post-positivist ways of thinking will certainly enhance students’ abilities to analyze public policies in the complex environments of coming decades.

2 Methodology

Course syllabi have already been used to analyze trends in the development in public policy training (Rethemeyer & Helbig, 2005; Romero, 2001). Straussman (2008) has stated that reviewing syllabi in public affairs programs is an important means for exploring the level of agreement in the profession about what comprises core content in professional training curricula. Our analysis is based on 40 syllabi of courses on policy analysis offered in eminent MPA/MPP programs in China and the United States.

For China, course syllabi were collected from MPA programs in universities featured in the 985 Project. ¹ While no university in the country currently offers an MPP program, MPA programs are offered in more than 200 academic institutions across the country, and Public Policy Analysis is included among the nine core modules for all MPA programs, in accordance with requirements of the National MPA Education Steering Committee. On the US side, we targeted syllabi from the top 50 graduate programs in the 2012 rankings for Public Affairs prepared by U.S. News and World Report.

We used various methods for gathering these syllabi, including internet search and contacts through e-mail requests. Because policy analysis may be covered in different types of courses related to public policy, for consistency and comparability of selection, we only included courses whose titles contained explicitly the term policy analysis. Introductory courses in public policy, courses offered as electives, and courses devoted to a specific step in policy process such as evaluation, formulation, and decision-making were excluded. Ultimately our sample for the analysis featured 20 course syllabi from each of the two countries (Table 1).

Table 1 Policy analysis courses included in the sample.

China		United States
Beijing Institute of Technology	Public Policy Analysis	American University	Foundations of Policy Analysis
Beijing Normal University	Public Policy Analysis	Arizona State University	Public Policy Analysis
China University of Agriculture	Public Policy Analysis	Duke University	Practical Policy Analysis for Decision Maker
Chongqing University	Public Policy Analysis	Georgia State University	Policy Analysis
Fudan University	Public Policy Analysis	George Washington University	Policy Analysis
Huazhong University of Science and Technology	Public Policy Analysis	Harvard University	Policy Analysis
Jilin University	Public Policy Analysis	Texas A&M University	Policy Analysis
Nanjing University	Public Policy Analysis	University of California-Berkeley	Introduction to Policy Analysis
Nankai University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Connecticut	Policy Analysis
Northeast University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Georgia	Foundations for Policy Analysis
Peking University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Kansas	Policy Analysis and Evaluation
Renmin University of China	Public Policy Analysis	University of Kentucky	Public Policy Analysis Overview
Shandong University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Minnesota	Introduction to Policy Analysis
Shanghai Jiaotong University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Missouri	Public Policy Analysis
South China University of Technology	Public Policy Analysis	University of Nebraska-Omaha	Policy Analysis
Sun Yat-sen University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Pittsburgh	Public Policy Analysis
Tongji University	Public Policy Analysis	University of South California	Foundations of Public Policy Analysis
Tsinghua University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Virginia	Introduction to Policy Analysis
Wuhan University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Washington	Policy Analysis
Zhejiang University	Public Policy Analysis	University of Wisconsin-Madison	Introduction to Policy Analysis

Source: Authors.

Previous research based on course syllabi reveals some potential methodological pitfalls. First, course syllabi normally do not reveal information about the instructors, although their disciplinary background, practical experience, and research expertise may have significant impacts on how the courses are taught. Second, while the selection of textbooks and reading materials for a course may contain key information about instructors’ own preferences and biases with regard to value paradigm and overall approaches, such information has rarely been explored. Third, there has been limited analysis on how broad approaches to policy analysis affect the coverage of core content as well as the determination of pedagogical approaches, making it difficult to link the analysis to the emerging trends in the field.

Attempts have been made to deal with these pitfalls. First, efforts were made to collect profiles of the instructors for all courses in our sample, so that analysis could be conducted on their teaching capacities for public policy training. Through internet search and direct inquiries, we were able to construct a complete set of these profiles that included information on each instructor's highest educational credentials, field of study, and places (countries and educational institutions) where they had obtained their highest educational credentials. Second, from information obtained from the syllabi in our sample, we identified and inspected the most frequently used policy analysis textbooks. Such information allows us to go beyond the topics covered in syllabi in gauging overall approaches and orientation employed by the trainers. Third, we’ve adopted a modified Romero model based on the study of Francine Romero (2001) to analyze syllabi included in the sample. The use of this model allows us to link our results with key trends in the development of the field.

3 Research findings

3.1 Course instructors

While policy analysis emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches, most faculty members who teach such courses may have been trained and have worked in specialized fields, such as economics and political science (Mead, 2013). Instructors trained in these various traditional disciplinary areas must adapt to the requirements and expectations of policy analysis courses that they teach, but in reality it is inevitable that what and how they teach will be heavily influenced by their training and academic background, especially when there is lack of consensus on policy analysis curriculum development. Such challenges may be more pronounced in Chinese institutions, where the history of the development of field is relatively short in comparison to experience in the United States.

Table 2 presents the profiles of course instructors in our sample. These were constructed from information available in the syllabi and via internet searches. The results show that Chinese universities usually appoint senior faculty members to teach their policy analysis courses (60% are full professors), whereas US universities appear to have engaged more junior-level faculty (only 35% are at the rank of full professor). On the other hand, it is surprising that 15% of the Chinese instructors still lack doctorates despite the fact that only top universities are included in our sample. ² And while the Chinese courses were predominantly taught by male instructors (85%), the US classrooms demonstrated a much greater presence of female faculty (45%).

Table 2 Profiles of course instructors.

Category	China	United States
Gender
Male	17 (85%)	11 (55%)
Female	3 (15%)	9 (45%)
Academic rank
Professor	12 (60%)	7 (35%)
Associate Professor	5 (25%)	7 (35%)
Assistant Professor/Lecturer	3 (15%)	6 (30%)
Highest degree earned by instructor
PhD	17 (85%)	20 (100%)
Master and below	3 (15%)	–
Field of study for the highest degree
Public Administration	5 (25%)	1 (5%)
Philosophy	3 (15%)	–
Management Sciences	2 (10%)	–
Political Science	3 (15%)	2 (10%)
Economics	2 (10%)	6 (30%)
Public Policy	1 (5%)	8 (40%)
Others	2 (10%)	3 (15%)

Source: Authors.

Contrary to our expectation that economists and political scientists would share the heaviest load in teaching policy analysis courses, these scholars played a relatively minor role in Chinese programs. Table 2 shows that only a few (15%) of the instructors were trained in political science and even fewer (10%) were trained in economics. Together, they only represent one-quarter of instructors for the courses in our Chinese sample whereas only one instructor holds a doctoral degree in public policy. In comparison, while economists in the US had a strong presence—not surprising given the dominance of welfare economics as the main value paradigm for policy analysis in that country (Durning, 2005)—political scientists were involved in these courses much less frequently. Instead, scholars trained in public policy, a relatively new doctoral program in most places offering it, contributed significantly to classroom teaching of policy analysis in the United States (40%).

Chinese institutions in our sample showed overall a greater diversity in instructors’ academic background relative to instructors in the United States component of the sample, where the gap in teaching capacity was being filled by instructors with doctorates in public administration and other related disciplines, such as Management Sciences and Philosophy. Ngok (2005) notes that the rapid expansion of policy analysis education in universities signals a bright future for the discipline, attracting input from scholars trained in a wide range of disciplines with varying degrees of relevance to public policy, and as a result, most instructors for policy analysis courses have limited exposure to public policy from their formal training.

Assessing teaching capacity based on the instructor's disciplinary background can be misleading, as it might be more important how much expertise and practical experience the instructor has in policy analysis. Because we could not find consistent information on the research of Chinese faculty members for courses in our study sample, we were unable to systematically compare instructors’ specializations and research expertise between the two countries. However, our preliminary assessment suggests that very few Chinese faculty members focus on applied policy research, whereas the vast majority of their American counterparts have expertise in substantive policy areas such as health care, education, energy, and environment.

Effective policy analysis training often requires hands-on experience in dealing with real-world problems that comes from involvement in various policy fields, and in this way instructors’ practical expertise can become a valuable catalyst for students’ learning. Ellwood (2008) notes a paradox: while the hiring decisions on faculty members focuses almost exclusively on academic research, improvement of the analytical component in policy training demands practical experience in policy analysis. This potential shortcoming may have been offset to a certain extent in the US as some instructors in the sample were frequently involved in consultancy work outside the academic program, such that they might be rich in expertise on applied of policy analysis while well-versed in theoretical aspects of the discipline.

3.2 Textbooks

We also analyzed the textbooks used in the courses included in our sample (Table 3). Although at the time of the study there were at least a dozen textbooks in policy analysis available in the US market, the courses in our US sample concentrated very strongly on two: Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice, by Weimer and Vining (50%), and A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis, by Bardach (55%), while few courses adopted other textbooks. The choice of textbooks on the Chinese side of the sample shows greater diversity, involving books written in Chinese as well as books translated from English. While the majority of courses in China (60%) chose Dunn's Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction, other textbooks written by foreign scholars, such as Howlett and Ramesh (25%), Dye (20%), Patton and Sawicki (25%), and Weimer and Vining (15%), were also used. In addition, a number of textbooks written by Chinese scholars, such as Chen's Introduction Public Policy Analysis (30%), his Policy Science (25%), and Zhang's Introduction to Modern Public Policy (20%), were adopted for a number of courses.

Table 3 Textbooks used in the sample.

Book	China	United States
Bardach: A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis ^c	–	11 (55%)
Chen Zhenming: An Introduction to Public Policy Analysis ^b	6 (30%)	–
Chen Zhenming: Policy Science ^b	5 (25%)	–
Dunn: Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction ^a	12 (60%)	4 (20%)
Dye: Understanding Public Policy ^a	4 (20%)	–
Guess and Farnham: Cases in Policy Analysis ^c	–	2 (10%)
Howlett and Ramesh: The Study of Public Policy ^a	5 (25%)	–
Patton and Sawicki: Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning ^a	5 (25%)	–
Weimer and Vining: Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice ^a	3 (15%)	10 (50%)
Zhang Guoqing: An Introduction to Modern Public Policy Analysis ^b	3 (15%)	–

a Chinese translation available.

b In Chinese.

c No Chinese translation.

Source: Authors.

3.3 Course content and value paradigms

Course content was coded and analyzed based on a model proposed by Romero (2001) who argues that policy analysis courses should consist of three integral components, including value paradigms, issues in the practice of analysis, and the environment of analysis. We have modified Romero's model by adding to it the fourth component, stages of policy making, because a significant number of courses in the Chinese sample focus heavily on substantive coverage on the stages of policy making.

3.3.1 Category I: value paradigms

Providing the fundamental epistemological underpinning, value paradigms should occupy the central stage of both public debate and policy analysis (Carrow, Churchill, & Cordes, 1998). While the major value frameworks were grouped into three principal classifications: economic, subtle and alternative in Romero's study, we further identified four competing paradigms often found in public policy education, including welfare economics, institutionalism, political economy and post-positivism. The dominant paradigm of each course was discerned by comprehending the epistemological orientation and associated pedagogical features.

3.3.2 Category II: issues in the practice of analysis

This category consists of important methods and skills necessary for conducting “scientific” policy analysis—at least as positivism perceives it, and the typical process involved. We first analyzed whether each course in our sample mentioned the main procedural steps outlined by Patton, Sawicki, and Clark (2012) and other classics of the literature: (1) verifying, defining and detailing the problem, (2) establishing evaluation criteria, (3) identifying policy options, (4) forecasting the outcome of policy options, and (5) comparing policy options and making policy recommendations. In addition, we included topics related to tools and techniques in conducting policy analysis, such as data collection, data analysis, and cost–benefit analysis. We also included the ethics of conducting policy analysis as a crucial topic in this category.

3.3.3 Category III: environment of policy analysis

While the second category consists of key components of policy analysis training, knowledge of the environment of policy analysis is just as important because characteristics of the environment not only determine the impacts of policy analysis but also shape how the policy analysis is conducted. In fact, political context and policy system featured prominently in the original conceptualization of policy analysis. Here we analyzed the extent to which courses in our sample included topics such as political institutions (the broad political environment for policy making and policy analysis), policy system (policy actors, policy network, policy instruments, and the like), and policy process (the typical cycle that policies run along).

3.3.4 Category IV: stages of policy making

Although policy process represents a crucial and popular topic related to knowledge regarding the environment of policy analysis as identified in the third category, different stages of the policy process—as the policy cycle model classically conceives—may not receive even coverage in classrooms. We used the stage model introduced by Howlett and Ramesh (1995) to code the syllabi according to whether they covered the five stages of policy making: agenda setting, policy formulation, decision making, policy implementation, and policy evaluation.

Table 4 reports the results. Under the first category, the welfare economics approach has been the dominant value paradigm in policy analysis teaching in the United States. Half of the courses in the US sample used Weimer and Vining's textbook, which adopts that approach, and which relies on the theory of market failures and government failures that has been regarded as the foundation of modern policy analysis. In comparison, other value paradigms such as institutionalism and political economy received little attention. In contrast to the vigorous debate in numerous publications with regard to the merits of the positivist approach (and in particular welfare economics) in policy analysis, critiques have rarely appeared in the teaching materials. In Chinese curricula, where the practices of policy analysis are not emphasized, there seems to be no clear indication of value paradigms to guide policy analysis, with merely 6 courses manifesting the orientation of welfare economics or institutionalism.

Table 4 Course coverage based on modified Romero model.

Category	China	United States
Value paradigms
Welfare economics	5/20 (25%)	20/20 (100%)
Institutionalism	1/20 (5%)	2/20 (10%)
Political economy	–	5/20 (25%)
Post-positivism (critiques of positivism)	–	4/20 (20%)
Issues in the practices of analysis
Verifying, defining and detailing the problem	11 (55%)	17 (85%)
Establishing evaluation criteria	10 (50%)	17 (85%)
Identifying policy options	11 (55%)	17 (85%)
Forecasting the outcome of policy options	9 (45%)	17 (85%)
Comparing policy options and making recommendations	9 (45%)	17 (85%)
Cost–benefit analysis	4 (20%)	14 (70%)
Data collection techniques	2 (10%)	9 (45%)
Data analysis	3 (15%)	8 (40%)
Ethics in policy analysis	2 (10%)	13 (65%)
Environment of policy analysis
Political institutions	8 (40%)	6 (30%)
Policy system	16 (80%)	5 (25%)
Policy process	15 (75%)	6 (30%)
Stages of policy making
Agenda setting	11 (55%)	3 (15%)
Policy formulation	11 (55%)	4 (20%)
Decision making	12 (60%)	7 (35%)
Policy implementation	13 (65%)	7 (35%)
Policy evaluation	10 (50%)	2 (10%)

Source: Authors.

Table 4 shows that coverage of topics in this second category in our analysis was generally quite high in the United States, running very high (85%) for the first five of the nine topics listed, notably high for two more (70%, 65%), and not infrequent for the remaining two (45%, 40%). In comparison, courses in China did not consistently cover specific steps in conducting policy analysis, even when the title of the course was “public policy analysis.” An even smaller percentage of Chinese courses covered tools and techniques in policy analysis. The top five items listed—the most frequently addressed topics--were the same for both countries, but in China their frequency remained about 50% (45–55%), much lower than in US courses. The remaining topics featured in courses in China much less frequently than they did in US courses. For example, only 20% of courses in the Chinese sample included cost–benefit analysis, whereas a solid majority of US courses (70%) did so. Methods of data collection and analysis received even smaller coverage in the Chinese courses (10%). The topic of ethics in policy analysis also received only limited attention in Chinese courses (10%), while it received much more notice in US courses (65%). One plausible explanation for the general under-coverage of key topics in Chinese course content as analyzed in our sample may be that the technical aspects of some steps in policy analysis could have presented significant challenges to many instructors who were trained in disciplines with little linkage to public policy (Wu et al., 2012). Another possible reason is related to the generational characteristic of course instructors as noted above. As a large percentage of Chinese instructors are full professors of older age who may be less likely to be familiar and competent with state-of-the-art analytics. Such constraints may leave instructors no choice but to reduce coverage on specific practices in policy analysis.

Under the third category, results show that topics related to environment of policy analysis have been covered quite extensively by courses in China: the majority of them cover policy system (80%) and policy process (75%), and a sizable number (40%) also include discussion on policy institutions and actors. In comparison, the environment of policy analysis is largely overlooked in the courses from the United States, as only small percentages (30%, 25%, 30%) of courses touched upon the topics under this category. Similarly, topics related to the fourth category are covered extensively among Chinese courses in comparison to courses given in the United States. While US courses devoted relatively more attention to decision-making (35%) and implementation (35%), fewer than one-fourth of the US courses contained any discussion of agenda setting (15%), policy formulation (20%), or evaluation (10%).

Several observations are in order. First, it is clear that public policy education in China has been influenced heavily by teaching materials from abroad, as seen from the widespread adoption in Chinese policy analysis courses of textbooks written by foreign scholars, especially from the United States. Ngok (2005) concludes that even policy textbooks produced locally in China also borrow heavily from textbooks from abroad. Second, given the wide adoption of Dunn's book among the Chinese courses, as compared to others cited in Table 3, it is surprising that a majority of course syllabi (see Table 4) do not cover the different steps in conducting policy analysis, as outlined in Dunn's work. This observation reinforces our conclusion stated above that the under-coverage of “analysis” in the Chinese courses is not primarily due to the differences in disciplinary focus or academic paradigm, but is mainly constrained by instructional capacity. Third, the selection of textbooks in China depends largely on the availability of Chinese translation. Bardach's book, for example, was used by 60% of courses in the United States, but none of the Chinese courses selected the book because a Chinese version is not available.

3.4 Pedagogies and overall approaches

Pedagogy in teaching policy analysis has received considerable attention in the literature (Foster et al., 2010; Meltzer, 2013). There is little disagreement among public policy scholars that offering practical experience is essential in teaching policy analysis, as policy analysis is a craft. A teaching strategy that imparts the concepts of policy analysis through lectures and readings alone clearly falls short (Vining & Weimer, 2002). Our data (Table 5) suggest that three-quarters of policy analysis courses in the United States require policy analysis exercises in the form of policy memos or projects. In addition, most courses require group work (55%) and use teaching cases (70%). In China, however, while about 40% the courses do require project analysis exercises, few courses require group work, and only half employ case-related teaching.

Table 5 Pedagogies of sampled courses.

Pedagogies in teaching	China	United States
Policy analysis project (report/memo)	5/12 (42%)	15/20 (75%)
Group work	3/13 (23%)	11/20 (55%)
Teaching cases	7/14 (50%)	14/20 (70%)

Source: Authors.

To better understand the orientation of pedagogical foci in China and the US, we clustered the syllabi into three clearly distinguishable categories as suggested by Romero's (2001) study, which analyzes prevalent instructional models in policy analysis according to three categories: (1) an outsider approach, consisting mainly if not solely of materials related to public policy theories; (2) a limited insider approach, centered on the positivist framework and analysis based on welfare economics; and (3) an in-depth insider approach, presenting a strong analytical orientation but also surpassing it to include a roader epistemology (Table 6).

Table 6 Overall approach of sampled courses.

Overall approach	China	United States
Outsider (focusing only on the politics of policy making)	11 (55%)	–
Limited insider (focusing on the process of policy analysis)	3 (15%)	15 (75%)
In-depth insider (integrating politics and techniques of policy analysis)	6 (30%)	5 (25%)

Source: Authors.

The distribution of dominant approaches among Chinese courses is quite different from that shown for US courses. More than half of the Chinese courses (55%) can be considered as “outsider,” with little coverage on practices in policy analysis, compared to none (0%) in the United States, and only a moderate number (15%) of Chinese courses adopted a “limited insider” approach, as compared to a solid majority (75%) in the United States.

4 Discussion

Our comparative analysis above provides a revealing, and somewhat surprising, pattern of divergence and convergence of curriculum design between the China and the United States. On the one hand, the programs we analyzed offer courses remarkably similar in substantive areas, and the same textbooks have been used for public policy analysis courses in both countries, and curriculum design seems largely unaffected by differences in cultural, social, political, and institutional realities.

Yet on close examination, there are substantial disparities between the two countries. As reported above, public policy analysis training in China was at the time our study still showing a clear orientation toward theory, leaving the analytical components of the discipline largely underrepresented. This is a far cry from the ambitious goal that was set out when policy science was introduced to China in the mid-1980s, when the aim was to improve decision-making in the public sector through a systematic approach to policy analysis. Such a development may have been constrained thus far by the disciplinary evolution of policy analysis in China and by limited instructional capacity. In addition, as Wu et al. (2012) have pointed out, the difference between goal and accomplishment also reflects institutional realities not only in China but also in many other East Asian countries, where conducting rigorous policy analysis is not a common practice in most government agencies, nor has the profession of policy analyst been fully developed. Our results suggest that the main source of the variation is the difference in disciplinary orientation, expertise, and experience in policy analysis of instructors in the two countries.

The unique pattern of divergence and convergence in policy analysis training between the two countries should be assessed against the backdrop of several major trends in public policy education globally. The first is the emergence of nongovernmental entities specializing in policy analysis in many countries, along with increasing demand for analytical capacity in the nongovernmental sector. Second, the rapid expansion of public policy education may have created significant gaps in teaching capacity in the short term. Third, the rapid globalization of classroom materials (e.g., textbooks in translation, internet media) offers both challenges and opportunities for the teaching of policy analysis. The increasing number of public policy analysis students with career orientations outside of government may alter the framing of policy issues in the classroom and change classroom dynamics. Gaps in teaching capacity may be filled by instructors with limited direct experience with policy analysis, and the geographical diversity of students today, while it may provide tremendous new learning opportunities among the students themselves, may also present challenges for instructors striving to present relevant political and institutional contexts for all students.

Our comparative analysis also suggests that, although debate and critiques concerning positivism have featured prominently in the literature, positivist approach to policy analysis continues to dominate classroom discussions in US programs. In addition, despite the claims that post-positivism has gained some currency in recent years, the overall prevalence of positivism in courses sampled for our study indicates little progress in incorporation of competing value paradigms into the teaching of policy analysis (Durning, 2005; Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2002). As Lynn (1999) have contended, early post-positivist critiques of traditional policy analysis were “ideological rather than analytical” and “detached from the inconvenient realities of policy making and management.” There is no doubt that the effort toward incorporation of and proper balance among competing value paradigms in policy analysis courses may pose a major challenge to curriculum development not only in China but also in the US.

5 Concluding remarks

In 2001, de Leon and Steelman (2001) observed that public policy education in the US as a whole was less successful in providing effective long-term solutions to many policy problems, despite the growth in degree programs and ready employment of graduates. Slow progress has been made more than a decade later. On the one hand, the proliferation of social interests and resultant conflicts, as well as the imperative to balance various social demands, requires policy practitioners to hone their ability to appreciate and explore competing values vital to democratic policy-making. On the other hand, our analysis based on course contents suggests that positivist approaches, especially welfare economics, remain the hallmark of public policy programs in the US, while insufficient attention has been given to the development of competency in responding to changing sociopolitical contexts and emerging policy challenges.

China has been confronted with a somewhat different problem. One of the main motivations to introduce public policy education to China since the mid-1980s was the expectation that “scientific and objective” policy analysis would help to improve the quality of decision-making in the public sector. Our analysis of contents covered by policy analysis courses in China, however, suggests that limited progress has been made toward such an objective due to significant gaps in instructional capacity. Therefore, the challenge as suggested from our results reported here is how to strengthen China's analytical capacity by training policy professionals and civil servants with state-of-the-art analytics. Policy analysis emphasizes the analytical and prescriptive, rather than the theoretical and descriptive, aspects of public policy, and thus has a strong practical orientation. While an understanding of topics related to political institutions, policy systems, and policy processes is undoubtedly crucial to public policy analysis, too much instructional coverage of these, with virtually no attention to essential analytic techniques and procedures, is not justifiable given the nature and intent of public policy analysis curricula. A balanced approach is needed to expose students to critical knowledge on public policy without compromising adequate coverage of policy analytics.

Our comparative analysis points to the needs to move beyond the dominance of positivist approach to public policy education. As Hajer and Wagenaar (2003) argue, the increasing complexity of the governance environment—policy-making through networks—demands a shift in policy skills and in approaches to public policy, that suits decentralized decision making and is informed by interpretive modes of policy analysis. From this standpoint, policy analysis education should target a skillful combination of political insight, value consciousness, and analytical competence (Romero, 2001).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following persons for their kind assistance in collecting the course syllabi: Samuel Myers, Taylor Seybolt, George Dougherty, Adam Eckerd, Craig Volden, Raymond Scheppach, Shixiang Chen, Liang Ma, Chao Chen, Huping Shang, Feng Yu, Bo Yan, Jianwei Deng, Beth Neary, Elizabeth Wilson, Wai Hang Yee, and Thomas Taylor.

Notes

1 The 985 Project is a major government initiative aimed at nurturing world-class research-oriented universities. Thirty-nine institutions, widely regarded as the most prestigious universities in China, have been included in the Project so far.

2 This is a generational phenomenon because many senior faculty members in China close to retirement were trained in 1980s when having a doctorate was not yet a norm in academic institutions, let alone the small number of doctoral programs available then.