ANATOMY OF A POLICY AREA - THE CASE OF SHIPPING

Policy fields are usually defined by conventional usage rather than by systematic analysis. This paper experiments with a methodology of bou ndary analysis that builds inductively through the aggregation of ''to pics'' and policy instruments. Using the case of shipping policy, we d evelop a list of 473 topics drawn from several bibliographical and pol icy sources. These are then aggregated into 135 categories with accomp anying policy instruments. While the methodology has obvious limitatio ns, the experiment and case study demonstrate that it is possible to s ystematically estimate the complete possible contents of a policy fiel d. The approach shows sufficient promise to warrant refinements and br oader applications to a wide variety of estimation problems. It also m akes a modest contribution to the study of policy instruments, which h as tended to get stuck at the ''classification'' stage without much de tailed empirical analysis of how and when instrument categories actual ly apply.