Description: "Fascinating. For a relatively small book, it is also amazingly comprehensive. The question of the strategic petroleum reserve is potentially a major national issue. Should we get caught short, there will be hell to pay not only for the United States but for its allies. Therefore it is important to have both a history of our efforts, an understanding of the extent to which they have succeeded, and what might be done to improve the situation. Weimer does all of this. In addition to providing a lucid and informative history, he goes into detail on the various forms of policy analysis used to justify doing more or less or acting differently. He shows not only how analysis can be used but how it can be abused as it was by the Office of Management and Budget in attempting to hold down the deficit for a particular year by continually forcing the agency in charge to redo its figures. The book is a contribution to politics, policy analysis, and organization theory. It shows how all of these have to be considered in order both to understand what has happened and to do better in the future." Aaron Wildavsky, University of California, Berkeley

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