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Policy and Process: A Study of Interaction

POLITICAL SCIENTISTS in recent years have called for the study of policy as an independent variable.' Perhaps part of the motives behind such demands rests upon a desire to establish the policy sciences more firmly within a process-oriented discipline. Nevertheless, they remind us of relationships which are frequently posited in theory but seldom analyzed through research. Thomas Dye's influential work on comparative state policies nicely illustrates the predicament.2 The model used by Dye to guide his research initially allows for the possibility of feedbacks. He points out that ". . . policy outcomes have some reciprocal impact on socio-economic conditions and system characteristics."3 But feedbacks are ignored in the operational model. That policy outcomes may affect the process of policy formulation is a possibility also familiar to students of urban government. As shown in Figure 1, Bryan Downes's model for studying policy