Thinking Inside the Mixed Economy Box: Pragmatic Policy Analysis as a Progressive Alternative to Neoliberal Policy Assumption.

This paper seeks to augment existing policy analysis models used in the teaching of social policy analysis, formulation and advocacy within social work education.  In doing so, it also contributes to a growing literature devoted to progressive pragmatic alternatives to neo-liberal policy assumptions.  The paper begins by defining neo-liberalism and then placing it, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, within the framework of the pragmatic tradition in political thought.  It does this by revising the typologies of political ideologies presented by Mimi Abramovitz (Abramovitz, 2004) and substituting an original typology that provides an alternative way of thinking about what is right, center and left in political thought.  This sets the stage for a discussion of some of the existing proposed alternatives to neo-liberalism, which are discussed from the standpoint of the extent to which they recognize the nature of the mixed economies present within most of the major world economic powers.  Based in part upon previous work (Dover, 2007a), a progressive pragmatic political alternative to neoliberalism is presented, one which stresses the role of class, organizational and institutional analysis of the best mix of the public, nonprofit and market sectors for funding and delivering social services and social welfare benefits in order to meet human needs consistent with human rights.  Next, the paper presents a typology of existing policy analysis methods in wide use within social work education.  Finally, the paper presents an additional analytic element which is consistent which existing models and can be used to supplement them.