Peaks of Policy Analysis: Six National Cases in Asia and the Pacific

This essay reviews six volumes from the Policy Press International Library of Policy Analysis series, focusing on policy analysis in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Canada, and Australia. Using a mountaineering metaphor, it maps the contents and the relative lacuna within and across the titles. The second part highlights some areas of relative paucity and flags these as future research avenues, organized across six rubrics: inter-disciplinary, inter-method, inter-typology, inter-domain, inter-temporal, and inter-linguistic. These suggestions encourage broader and deeper conversations with related academic disciplines; systematic re-assessments of analytical tools; focused applications of conceptual typologies; planned and strategic diversifications of coverage of key policy areas; further incorporations of precise historical analysis; and additional engagements with diverse linguistic sources. This review essay thus underscores the series' important contributions to comparative public policy and identifies possibilities for future exploration into the complexities of governance and policy studies.