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Criticized for its generally positivist and technocratic orientation, the literature of public policy analysis has begun to generate proposalsthat would create a convergence between the field and the wider movement for a post-positivist restructuring of social inquiry. Ironically, critics have often focused on "policy science" as the epitomy of positivism and technocracy, giving little attention to the actual position of the figure responsible for the term -Harold D. Lasswell. Centering on Lasswell's key concept of contextual orientation, this article argues that, despite positivist influences, he developed an approach to inquiry and a proposal for a policy science profession which together clearly transcend positivism and technocracy -which, indeed, anticipate recent post-positivist proposals. Implications for policy analysis of a project of contextual orientation are also considered, along with problems in Lasswell's focus on professionalization. I. Policy Analysis and Post-Positivism: The Significance of LasswellIn the context of advanced industrial society, there is a distinct and widely noted tendency for public policy analysis to become virtually absorbed in narrow, technical issues. This tendency has been especially noted in the case of efforts to rationalize the operations of the administrative state, rendering them more fully calculable, controllable, and efficient through the application of modern management techniques [1], Under the sway of a positivist logic of inquiry, analysis tends to be guided by an interest in calculating solutions for specific policy problems -ones which pertain, moreover, to strictly delimited frameworks within a particular socio-political configuration. Analysis becomes Central to a mode of policy formulation and implemen-0032-2687/85/$03.30 9 1985 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.

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ISBN 978 1 78347 234 5 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78347 235 2 (eBook)

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