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This introductory chapter makes the point that public policy studies has been one of the fastest growing specializations in the social sciences, and has largely been an American phenomenon. It looks at what the field includes, and at the previously dominant practice of technocratic policy analysis. The problems that have emerged with the technocratic practice of policy-analytic research are then examined by looking at the policy orientation in its broader political context. The emphasis here is on the American story, which best illustrates the limitations of the practice as it has emerged. The last section of the chapter looks at the postempiricist alternative. Policy argumentation and discourse (participatory policy analysis).

This is the last of four chapters offering a postempiricist methodology for policy inquiry based on the logic of practical discourse, and explores the dialectics (logical structure) of policy argumentation. Approaches are examined to discursive policy analysis and policy argumentation with an emphasis on the integration of empirical and normative inquiry. The discussion is oriented around a particular line of development in the argumentative turn, namely, a dialectical communications approach based on the informal or good-reasons logic of argumentation. In particular, the productive capacities of the communications model are emphasized, namely, its ability to generate ways of thinking and seeing that open new possibilities for problem-solving and action, or, in the language of Habermas’s critical theory, its ‘communicative power’. The different sections of the chapter look at argumentative discursive policy practices, the communications model of argumentative policy analysis, the search for rational procedures in argumentation, the logic of policy arguments (practical discourse), policy argumentation as practical reason, policy argumentation as communicative interaction (the role of analytical discourses), and critical rationality as undistorted communication.

This is the third of four chapters offering a postempiricist methodology for policy inquiry based on the logic of practical discourse, and explores the narrative form of discourse and narrative analysis, an emerging and promising orientation in policy analysis. The social meanings uncovered by the interpretive analysis described in Chapter 7 are typically embedded in a policy narrative, designed to portray the fuller picture of a policy problem and the potential solutions. Built around interpretations, the narrative represents the policy situation, and offers a view of what has to be done and what the expected consequences will be. While there is a fair amount of conceptual overlap between the concepts of discourse and narration, narrative analysis is used in this discussion to refer to the analysis of stories. The first two sections of the chapter examines the general features of a narrative story, emphasizing its uses in both the social sciences and everyday social contexts, and discusses the basic epistemological issues involved in the production of a narrative text. The second three sections survey two prominent approaches to narrative discourse analyses that have emerged in the field of policy analysis per se: those of Stone and Roe. The last section examines how the logic of good reasons underlies the rationality of the narrative.

How can we explain policy similarities and differences across time, jurisdiction, and country? Examples are offered in a comparison of social and economic context, the role of institutions, ideology, democratic type, industrialization, and social change as they account for two political outcomes: welfare policy and party election programs. Key methodological and theoretical issues are raised, relating to the empirical demands of causality and contingency. ‘How politics matters’ is ultimately left unanswered because of methodological indeterminacies, though three findings remain: policies are not made in a socio‐economic vacuum, institutional effects are still an open question, and policy conditions are attributable to partisan conditions.

This is the second of four chapters offering a postempiricist methodology for policy inquiry based on the logic of practical discourse, and explores the role of interpretation in policy analysis. While empiricists have sought to restrict the focus on meaning to the observable dimensions of social reality, the interpretive orientation requires the social scientist also to pursue the unobservable. Because language is able to carry and transmit meanings among people, access to the realm of meaning often can be gained through the study of communication (both spoken and written), but such meanings are generally only indirectly made available through such communications, so it is necessary for the analyst to move beyond empirical methods (such as content analysis) to an interpretive reconstruction of the situational logic of social action. This involves inferring other people’s meanings by identifying patterns that emerge through an examination of the verbal and non-verbal messages they give about their beliefs and experiences. Narratives, for example, are a way of making the subjective dimensions of verbal actions more accessible, and the social world is in significant part organized and interpreted through narrative exchanges in their various forms. The different sections of this chapter look at interpretative policy analysis, interpretative frames, methodological strategies, policy analysis as ‘thick description’ (an approach for exploring and discovering the meanings embedded in the language and actions of policy actors), the objectivity of interpretation, validity as credibility, and social meaning and the question of causality.

This final chapter summarises the findings of the book and relates them to broader debates about internationalisation of markets and domestic institutional reform. It presents a policy analysis approach of market internationalisation and economic institutions that builds on, but develops, second image reversed and comparative institutionalist approaches. The framework put forward differs from these last two by adopting a broader definition of internationalisation, one that includes international policy decisions. It suggests that carriers of internationalisation are not just socio-economic interests but also political and state actors, especially governments. It argues that internationalisation affects national decisions through a broader range of mechanisms than economic efficiency or distributional conflicts, and highlights those mechanisms that feed in directly to the domestic policy process and involve governments. It suggests that nations that represent very different varieties of capitalism can adopt similar sectoral institutions, but that they do so through diverse routes that reflect their domestic politics.

This introductory chapter offers an overview of the book. It sets out the book's subject, namely the effects of different forms of market internationalisation on decisions about national institutions. It also seeks to integrate internationalisation of markets and policy making through its ‘policy analysis’ framework. That framework seeks to avoid an over-narrow focus on international capital/trade flows and concentration on socio-economic interests driven by economic efficiency that weaken existing analyses of internationalisation. Instead, it gives due weight to policy making at both the international and domestic levels, underlines the role of governments and public officials in forming and leading reform coalitions, and shows how policy forms of internationalisation were influential because of their role in the policy process. The introduction ends by setting out the book's research design (five sectors chosen due to variations in forms of internationalisation compared across four countries that represent different ‘varieties of capitalism’) and summarises the following chapters.

The preceding chapters have covered the theoretical and epistemological support for citizen participation in policy-making. In this final chapter, the implications of this for the conduct of policy analysis are addressed, in particular the role of policy analysts as facilitators of deliberative practices. The different sections of the chapter are: Communicative Policy Analysis in Critical Planning Theory – the conduct of policy analysis, in particular the role of the policy analyst as facilitator of deliberative practices; Communicative Theory: Replying to the Critics – of the communications model; Policy Epistemics – for discursive policy analysis; and The Curriculum: Participatory Training and Qualitative Inquiry – the implications of a discursive, participatory approach for the policy analysis curriculum.

Taking up the tension between democracy and science, the discussion in this chapter seeks to reformulate the relationship through the social constructionist perspective, emphasizing science as a socio-political activity; rather than taking scientific practices to be the ideal for politics, the question asked is to what degree scientific practices might be democratized. Towards this end (and after first examining the challenge posed by democracy), the discussion outlines the contributions of citizen participation to both policy-making and collaborative inquiry; by transforming citizens’ ways of knowing and acting, participatory deliberation can build new political cultures capable of preserving and extending decision-making capabilities. Against this background the more challenging question of the citizen’s ability to engage collaboratively in the scientific inquiry process is considered. The discussion then turns to numerous participatory experiments that more specifically illustrate the possibilities and practices of citizen inquiry, in particular outlining the consensus conference developed by the Danish Board of Technology (which has emerged as the most elaborate form of citizens’ panel) and the methodology of participatory policy analysis. Citizen participation is not advanced as a cure-all for economic and social problems, nor is deliberation or argumentation meant to direct attention away from questions of interest and power, but it does hold out the possibility of bringing forth new knowledge and ideas capable of creating and legitimizing new interests, reshaping understanding of existing interests, and, in the process, influencing the political pathways along which power and interest travel.

This chapter shows that the German knowledge regime was coordinated through a number of mechanisms that reflected Germany's long-standing formal corporatist institutions as well as the country's strong multiparty proportional representation system of government. However, contrary to what one might expect given these institutional legacies, there were also a considerable number of more informal coordinating mechanisms. Following the end of the Golden Age, Germany faced a crisis of corporatism, which led eventually to an expansion of private policy research organizations, not to mention lobbyists, which increased competition in the knowledge regime. This was a decentralized effort to reform the knowledge regime through a kind of trial-and-error process based upon various privately organized initiatives, but it was blended with somewhat more centralized coordination too, such as deliberate efforts by the state to improve the scientific quality of policy analysis and advice emanating from the semi-public policy research organizations.

This chapter surveys how skills for policy analysis have been integrated with educational curricula in Australian universities. It considers education for policy professionals in general, but more specifically the teaching of public policy for public servants. The emergence of policy analysis as a field of study and its development in the context of public service professional education are outlined. The nexus between theory and practice in pedagogy is a key theme. The structure and curricula of current policy analysis programs in Australian universities are summarised. There is indeed a distinctly Australian approach to teaching policy analysis, one that is firmly grounded in an antipodean pragmatism.

This chapter provides an overview of the various contexts for ‘policy advising’ and policy capacity within and beyond government in Australia. The chapter identifies key forms of policy analysis, in both academic and practitioner contexts. Five broad approaches to the academic study of policy are distinguished, and the impacts of academic research and teaching are noted. The chapter also outlines the main themes covered by the expert contributors in later chapters of this volume. These themes include the evolving challenges for policy advising and policy inquiry processes within the public sector; the diversification of sources of advice, including the growing role of ministerial advisors, consultants, think tanks and media-enabled channels of opinion; the strengths and weaknesses of parties, trade unions, business associations and community organisations in developing and disseminating policy advice; and the role of scholarly research and teaching within these broad policy processes.