Book Reviews: Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. By AARON WIL-DAVSKY. (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1979. Pp. 419. $12.00.)

• Author: John G. Sanzone
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297903200419
• Published date: 01 December 1979
• Date: 01 December 1979
• Subject Matter: Articles

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any definitive policy in regard to use of racial classifications will have to take cog-
nizance of the variety of circumstances where such classification becomes an issue.
The chapters on the court hearings are straightforward expositions which do
not add anything new to what has already been reported in a variety of places.
However, the final chapter discussing the outcome of the Supreme Court decision
is uniquely Sindler’s. Many critics have attempted to interpret the Court’s deci-
sion. The three-way split in the decision makes any definitive interpretation difficult
and different analysts will find what they want to in the decision. Sindler does not
appear to have found much comfort in the decision holding the Davis Program
illegal and admitting Bakke given Brennan’s dissenting opinion that both Title VI
of the Civil Rights Act of 1974 and Equal Protection of the 14th Amendment allow
remedial racial preferences. Nor does he think the Powell opinion prohibiting
quotas but allowing the use of race is helpful in resolving the issue.
Though disagreeing with many of Sindler’s points, I believe he is correct in
pointing out that Bakke left more unresolved than it settled. Subsequently the
Court decided Weber which deals with racial preference in employment and again
there was no landmark decision. This gives added merit to Sindler’s call for the
political system to grapple with the issue of what constitutes racial equity and what
constitutes preference.
MARY M. LEPPER
Syracuse University
Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of
Policy Analysis. By AARON WIL-
DAVSKY. (Boston &
Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1979. Pp. 419.
$12.00.)
Sober reflection has undermined the grandiose goals and promises that stu-
dents of public policy analysis have been making since the 1960s. Looking back on
the past two decades, one finds a lost &dquo;war on poverty,&dquo; a politicized zero base
budgeting, and shelved evaluation studies. In the areas of crime,...