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| Ex-Ante Policy Appraisal× | Multi-Criteria Policy Analysis× | |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Public Policy | Public Policy |
| Family≠ | Process / pipeline | MCDM |
| Year of origin≠ | 2022 | 2002 |
| Originator≠ | Public-finance appraisal tradition; codified by HM Treasury (Green Book) | Valerie Belton & Theodor Stewart (synthesis); MCDA tradition |
| Type≠ | Structured ex-ante appraisal of policy options | Multi-criteria decision analysis applied to policy appraisal |
| Seminal source≠ | HM Treasury (2022). The Green Book: Central Government Guidance on Appraisal and Evaluation. London: HM Treasury. link ↗ | Belton, V., & Stewart, T. J. (2002). Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: An Integrated Approach. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN: 9780792375050 |
| Aliases≠ | Policy Appraisal, Options Appraisal, Green Book Appraisal | Multi-Criteria Analysis for Policy, MCDA Policy Appraisal, MCA in Policy, Multi-Criteria Policy Appraisal |
| Related≠ | 4 | 3 |
| Summary≠ | Ex-ante policy appraisal is the structured assessment of the costs, benefits, risks and trade-offs of alternative options for achieving a policy objective, carried out before a decision is taken. Codified in guidance such as the UK Treasury's Green Book, it provides a disciplined framework for deciding whether to intervene and, if so, how — by establishing the rationale and objectives, generating and narrowing a range of options, appraising each against a counterfactual, and recommending the option that offers best value for public money. Appraisal is the forward-looking complement to ex-post evaluation, which judges interventions after they have run. | Multi-criteria policy analysis applies multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to appraise and rank policy options against several, often conflicting, objectives that cannot be reduced to a single money metric. Each option is scored on a set of explicit criteria — economic, social, environmental, distributional — the criteria are weighted to reflect their relative importance, and the scores are aggregated into an overall value that ranks the options. Set out comprehensively in Belton and Stewart's 2002 textbook and operationalised for government in the UK's widely used Multi-Criteria Analysis Manual, the approach makes the trade-offs in a policy decision transparent and structured rather than implicit. |
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