Reimagining Policy Analysis in the Pacific Northwest: Findings from Idaho and Washington

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Abstract

Policy textbooks abound but nearly all cover the same technical topics without a systematic analysis of how values drive the policy analysis process. In short, our field faces important questions that ought to center the perspective and experience of analysts who presently practice the art and craft of policy analysis in an era of political turbulence:

• To what extent did the way you were trained translate to the work you do today?


• How were you prepared — or unprepared — for your job as an analyst?


• What does, or could it look like for you — and the policymakers for whom you work — to bring values centrally into your policy analysis work?

These questions are enormously consequential when it comes to the role that policy analysis plays in addressing the urgent policy problems of our day.

This workshop is based on programming and findings from policy analyst convenings held in Boise, Idaho and Olympia, Washington (May, 2025). The convenings, hosted as a partnership between Boise State University’s Idaho Policy Institute (IPI) and the Evans Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, leverage the participatory Art of Hosting methodology to explore the future of policy analysis in the Pacific Northwest. The convening locations were purposefully selected to maximize a diversity of political perspectives across the region.

This proposed APPAM workshop offers attendees the opportunity to engage in a set of simulated activities designed for, and delivered at, the Boise and Olympia convenings. Specifically, workshop attendees will:

• Engage in an in-depth reflexive exercise to identify their own core values. 


• Explore how their core values could shape their work as a hypothetical policy analyst.


• Co-create a process through which they can “call” pressing policy analysis topics and discuss these topics with other workshop attendees. 

The facilitators of the policy analyst convenings – a team of faculty, policy analysis practitioners, MPA students, and facilitators – will also walk workshop attendees through the key findings from each convening. These findings explore such questions as:

• To what extent did values vary among analysts in Boise and Olympia?


• How and in what ways are technological forces, such as the ascent of artificial intelligence, reshaping how policy analysis is carried out?


• How has political turbulence over the past decade, from contested national elections to a pandemic and now an evolving structure to the federal government, shaped the way policy analysis is practiced at the state level? 


• What lessons can be learned from using a participatory methodology such as Art of Hosting to convene policy analysts?

Workshop attendees will have the opportunity to engage firsthand in this unique Pacific Northwest research initiative designed to capture patterns of practice and emerging policy analysis trends throughout the region and across the political spectrum.

Policy Area

• Workshops

Organizer

• Grant Blume, University of Washington

Speakers

• Amanda Bankston

• Vanessa Fry, Boise State University