Anke Hassel, Professor of Public Policy, Hertie School, and Kai Wegrich, Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy, Hertie School

Anke Hassel is Professor of Public Policy at the Hertie School. Anke Hassel has extensive international experience and scientific expertise in the fields of the labour market, social partnership, codetermination and the comparative political economy of developed industrial nations. She was an expert in the fact-finding committee on growth, prosperity and quality of life in the German Bundestag (2012-13) and a member of the German Federal Government's High-Tech Forum (2019-21).

Kai Wegrich is Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at the Hertie School. His main research interests lie in the areas of bureaucratic politics, regulation, policy implementation and public sector reform. His publications include The Problem-Solving Capacity of the Modern State (co-edited with Martin Lodge, Oxford University Press, 2014) and The Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracy and the Politics of Non-Coordination (co-edited with Tobias Bach, Palgrave, 2019).

"This is an excellent textbook to prepare students in public policy programmes for professional roles in the "engine room" of the policy process. It is well-structured and presents the approaches and analytical methods of public-policy studies lucidly. The authors uniquely and most impressively achieve to integrate technical policy analysis with the perspective of empirical political science. They discuss the tools and limits of evidence-based policy analysis brilliantly and combine them with a sophisticated, but non-cynical, awareness of how policy choices are shaped by multi-actor politics, responding to the contingent salience of political scandals, crises, and windows of opportunity. The book effectively conveys the teachable skills for policy analysts with a realistic awareness of the importance and the limits of their role in the irreducible contingencies of political processes." - Fritz W. Scharpf, Emeritus Director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies