Methodological Issues in Researching Criminal Justice Policy: Belief Systems and the ‘Causes of Crime’

Despite the influence of Heclo and a few other scholars, traditional conceptions of policy-making have failed to link the intellectual and political, economic and institutional aspects of the process by close ties of mutual relevance... The failure to link together ideas and events has seriously reduced the ability of these models to explain how policies change (Majone 1989: 148).