The ability to analyze political situations is of paramount importance to any of the diverse actors who have a stake in governance. Whether it be the head of a government agency who must make an important decision, or a lobbyist seeking to influence government agents and politicians, or a politician seeking reelection, or any other situation that is based on, affects, or is affected by politics, political stakeholders must be able to effectively analyze political situations in order to arrive at the most beneficial course of action and to protect their interests. In an ideal world, governance would be based solely on the technical details of the problem at handùor, in other words, governance would involve finding the best and most efficient solutions to public policy problems. In the real world, however, political power structures control the way that public policy decisions are made. It is for this reason that being able to analyze political situations is the key to any actor seeking to understand how government works.
Political analysis, in its most basic form, involves untangling the underlying political power structures in place around an event, a government, an agency, or an individual. There are a wide variety of intellectual tools and analytical methodologies that have arisen in an attempt to explain and predict the behaviors of political actors. This paper will explore the febrile field of political analysis. We will first examine the broad question of what, exactly, is political analysis and how one can examine political events. As we explore these main aspects of policy analysis, we will lay out some of the important concepts that must be kept in mind and the questions that must be asked and answered in order to understand the political motivations involved in any given situation. We will briefly explore two of the main models that have arisen through the years in order to analyze political situations: the Stru...