The Field of Policy Analysis Has Lost a Giant

Eugene Bardach well understood—and helped us navigate—the complexities of policymaking and implementation.

Growing up in Baltimore, Gene was best friends with my best friend’s older brother. When I decided to go to the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy in 1972, Gene welcomed me to stay with him and Nancy—despite the fact that Nancy was nine months pregnant and gave birth to their daughter Rebecca while I was staying there. That tells you a lot about Gene and even more about Nancy.

At the Goldman School in the early 1970s, Gene initially struggled as he co-taught the introductory policy analysis course with Bill Niskanen, a Chicago-trained economist. What role did a political scientist play in this setting? Over time, Gene helped to figure that out for the students and for the profession.

The role for political science arose because policy decision-making requires a normative stance. What are the obstacles to policies that are more effective, efficient, and just? To what extent can those obstacles be overcome by better policy design? Or is a breakthrough sometimes needed in political mobilization?

Gene was never afraid to present himself as puzzled about his views. And when he explained why he was unsure, you realized the issue was more complicated than you had believed. Gene was never mean-spirited; he enjoyed debate, but he always engaged in a way that treated others as fellow-seekers of the truth. And, if his reasoning sometimes seemed to start in left field, it often ended up scoring with a close play at the plate.

In his 1982 book with Robert A. Kagan, Going by the Book: The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness, the problem addressed was the difficulty in getting standard-setters and inspectors to enforce rules that got firms to give greater weight to safety while still allowing flexible and efficient responses.

One of Gene’s other prominent books is A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis, with later editions co-authored with Eric Patashnik. This started off as a little book, which grew to over seven editions. In its opinionated style, it reminds me of William Strunk’s “little book” on writing, The Elements of Style. To help the analyst, the book is filled with lots of “do’s” and “don’ts.” Yet, despite these prescriptions about how to think about a problem, Gene was not very doctrinaire about the choice of a policy, probably because he was aware of the practical difficulties involved and that “the best of the feasible was the best.”

With Gene’s passing, the field of public policy has lost one of its giants. But through his work, Gene’s intellectual and policy impacts will remain long-lived.