This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, synoptic, and easy-to-grasp account of the state of public policy as a field. Both a scholar and a Czech policy maker, Martin Potůček draws on his vast and diverse experience to offer descriptions of public policy's normative and conceptual foundations, stages, actors, and institutions, as well as fifteen of the most frequently used public policy theories. Featuring illustrative empirical case studies, this innovative guide shows how these theories can be applied to making public policy. With particular insight into the importance of cultural context and historical legacies for policy making in post-Communist Europe, Public Policy provides nuanced, expert insight into the difficulties of public policy discourse and reform.