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37 Pol'y Stud. J. 1 (2009)

handle is hein.journals/plyssjnl37 and id is 1 raw text is: The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2009 Policy Process, Scholarship, and the Road Ahead: An Introduction to the 2008 Policy Shootout! Warren Eller and Glen Krutz Since August of 2003, the Policy Studies Journal has operated under a very simple mission statement. PSJ seeks to provide scholars with the finest theoretically grounded, empirically sound, and cutting-edge research covering all aspects of public policy. During the last six years, the Journal has made several operational decisions reflexive of this mission, ensuring that each issue has offerings to interest the majority of the readership. For example, the Journal has not, as a matter of policy, dedicated an entire issue of the journal to a single symposium. The following issue of the PSJ represents the first and only departure from this policy under the current editorship. This departure is both important and timely for two reasons. First, as the PSJ changes editorship, it is important to benchmark where the field stands as a whole. Second, this pressing question of the core theory of public policy process should span all facets of policy research. The Shootout! Early last year, a host of scholars converged on Norman, Oklahoma, to discuss the state of Public Policy Theory. This group, comprised mainly of the authors of the following articles, was charged to think about where the field is in terms of policy process theories and where it may be headed. The challenge to the contributing authors was quite simple; identify the most promising paths for policy process theory as the field moves forward. Implicit in this requirement is that these paths must adhere to the basic tenets of science in that they must provide: (i) open and replicable data acquisition and evaluation; (ii) clearly defined and consistent propo- sitions that give rise to falsifiable hypotheses; (iii) generalizability; and they must (iv) be subject to repeated evaluation (Sabatier, 2007). The 10 papers that follow are the responses to this call. Obviously, this special edition is motivated in part by Sabatier's (1991) call for better theories of the policy process, and it bears comparable strengths and weak- nesses to his Theories of the Policy Process Series (Sabatier, 1991, 2007). This effort 1 0190-292X © 2009 Policy Studies Organization Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.