Learning From Comparative Public Policy

Step 5

Turning anecdotes into a model

Getting to the moon isn't the problem; it's getting back.

Astronauts’ maxim

The simplest question that a policymaker faces after returning from travel abroad is, ‘How was your trip?’ The simplest answer is to tell a series of anecdotes about what happened, giving impressions of people, places, and colourful and unexpected incidents. Anecdotes reflect experience, and acquiring experience about the working of a programme in its national context is an essential step in lesson-drawing. But such anecdotes are about the experience of foreigners and, by definition, foreigners are different. For that reason, many policymakers will reject alien ideas without further thought.

The hardest question to answer is, ‘What ...