Search Results

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 chapter examines the renewed interest in the role of ideas, language and discourse in policy studies. Distinguishing postempiricist from mainstream perspectives, the discussion sets the stage for a more detailed presentation of the discourse–analytic approach and the deliberative practices to which it gives rise. There are seven main sections: Reconsidering Ideas; Beyond Self-Interest: Ideas Matter; Neo-Institutionalism and Policy Ideas (neo-institutionalism is defined as a theoretical orientation that has focused on the evolutionary relationship of ideas and norms to institutional practices); Policy Communities, Issue Networks, and Learning –– the studies discussed include Heclo’s (1978) seminal conceptualization of issue networks, and the work of Haas (1992) on policy communities and networks; Critical Theory: Distorted Communication and Discursive Ideals –– this looks at the critical theory of Habermas, which supplies a normative ideal for communication and argumentation; Discourse of Power V this looks at Foucault’s focus on the role of discourses as they have functioned in specific historical contexts; and Postempiricism as Discursive Policy Inquiry.

This is the second of two chapters that present a more detailed examination of the ways in which social constructions are produced and negotiated in public politics through the medium of discourse. It looks at discourse versus advocacy coalitions. The first section of the chapter introduces the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) that was developed by Sabatier and his associates, and is perhaps the most widely discussed contribution to the field of policy studies in the past decade. Its aim is to explain policy change empirically through the interaction of competing advocacy coalitions. The next section of the chapter presents Hajer’s critique of the ACF, focusing on his model of discourse coalitions, which, like advocacy coalitions, are designed to explain policy changes generally. The last section looks at the concept of policy learning.

This chapter explores how a transatlantic network of sympathetic businessmen and fundraisers, journalists and politicians, policy experts and academics grew and spread neoliberal ideas between the 1940s and the 1970s. These individuals were successful at promoting ideas through a new type of political organization, the think tank. The first wave of neoliberal think tanks were set up in the 1940s and 1950s and included the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education in the United States, and the Institute of Economic Affairs in Great Britain. A second wave of neoliberal think tanks were established in the 1970s, including the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in Great Britain, and the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute in the United States.

This chapter provides an overview of policy learning and policy failure, both of which are classic topics of policy studies. The links between the two literatures appear obvious, yet there are very few studies that address how one can learn from failure, learn to limit failure, and fail to learn. This book offers a rare attempt to bring these two literatures together. The chapter then begins by defining policy learning and failure before organising the main studies in these fields along the key dimensions of processes, products, and analytical levels. Learning and failure studies are beginning to offer analysis in and for the policy process that concentrates on the prescriptive techniques that can help on the ground. Intellectual endeavours on the design implications of learning and failure are still in their infancy, but two streams of activity are making headway. For learning, analysis of international organisations makes particularly strong offerings on how governments should learn. Different instruments and methods for cross-national learning include: benchmarking, peer review, checklists, facilitated coordination, and extrapolation. Meanwhile, the prescriptive turn in failure studies is less concerned with how not to fail and more focused on its inverse — how to succeed in policy making.

Policy studies are in a rut. Just as politics in both the global and domestic spheres have been taking more partisan forms, policy studies itself has become more inward looking, and less interested in politics and practice than in the past. The authors suggest that making public policy relevant again, requires an understanding, not just of policy development and selected policy-related themes, but a broader engagement with structure, process and system: as a way of depicting not just the formation of policy, but also its modes of action in the world. Doing this involves building on earlier iterations of policy thought and relating them, not only to the complexity of current policy problems, but also to the immense technological and political changes that have occurred in the twenty-first century.

This chapter provides a general overview of the study and practice of policy analysis in France. Drawing on the book’s content, it explains why and how the fundamental distinction between knowledge for and of policy process still holds in the French context, even though it was regularly challenged by successive generations of scholars and practitioners. The chapter begins with a brief overview of what policy studies means and how it is studied in the French context. Then the bulk of the introduction highlights and provides some explanation for the enduring gap between academic knowledge and policy practices, which characterizes policy analysis in the French context. Last but not least, it discusses the added value of policy studies for understanding State restructuring and policy developments in France. In the remaining and fourth section, it introduces the book outline into more details.

This chapter synthesises the standpoints and conclusions which foreground recurrent themes and overarching ideas in order to assess the implications of this critical exploration of policy for future policy studies which problematises territories and boundaries, revisits the ‘how’ of policy making, and emerges from a changing world. It also discusses the implications for the teaching of ‘policy’ and the training of social researchers, including welfare professionals, as they are important keys to ensuring the future of critical policy thinkers. Discussions in this chapter include: what counts as a social policy?; the changing knowledge and evidence on the contexts and processes of policy; the methodological issues and instruments concerning policy; the place of values in research and policy; and the emergence of inherent circularity implied by the generation of knowledge to inform policy, policy outputs, policy evaluation, and further calls for knowledge and evidence.

This article offers reflections on contemporary debates in policy studies. It starts by mapping the contours of the terrain covered by Policy & Politics over the last 40 years. It does so under four headings: (1) theorising policy (2) evidence and the policy process (3) transforming structures and processes and (4) implementation and practice. It then uses these headings to draw out themes from the articles comprising this 40th anniversary special issue. We conclude by arguing for greater tolerance of diversity in theoretical and empirical enquiry and for continued reflection on the foundational assumptions of the field of policy studies.

This chapter discusses how scale is fundamental to interpreting and defining social life, and explores the implications of this for the study of policy in order to present a clear case for exploring the politics of scale in policy. Working at the crossroads of policy studies and political geography, the chapter sets out the book’s chosen conceptual approach which innovatively integrates critical policy studies with poststructuralist political geography. Specifically, the discussion critically analyses what assumptions about scale are reflected in the field of policy studies, reviews the political geography debates on scale, and outlines the book’s use of political discourse theory and the ‘critical logics of explanation’ approach (Glynos & Howarth 2007). The chapter concludes by introducing the concept of ‘scalecraft’ as a hegemonic practice of policymaking which captures how meanings of policy are co-constituted by ordering political space according to concepts of scale.

This chapter provides a description of how the academic field of Policy Analysis has evolved in Mexico. After presenting the different approaches to policy analysis, mainly “evaluative policy analysis” and “explanatory analysis”, it discusses three periods of policy analysis in the country. The first one goes from 1940 to 1990, when the subject was studied under an authoritarian political system that cared little about policy efficiency and with no relation to the policy analysis methods or approaches which emerged in the U.S. in the 1950s. The second one, 1990-2000, was a decade during which policy analysis finally emerged as a field, with Mexican scholars producing pioneering works and sponsoring the first academic programs and expert journals, all of this in the middle of important economic and political changes in the country. The third period, from 2000 to the present time, has been characterized by an increasing number of publications, academic programs and contributors, reflecting the growing maturity of the field and the more favorable intellectual conditions provided by an emerging democratic environment. Thus, the chapter concludes that policy analysis as a field of study has surpassed in Mexico its visibility threshold, although it still needs to overcome some other challenges.

This chapter focuses on policy process studies as they emerged and developed in France from the 1950s to the early 1980s. To better understand how the establishment of policy process studies within academic research has taken shape, it seems necessary to trace the institutionalization trajectory. This trajectory developed within the academic world but also largely outside it, alongside it and in interaction with it. The influence acquired by the executive and its technocracy since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958 provide also essential data for an understanding of how knowledge and the methods that focus on understanding and controlling public policy in France have developed. The first phase arose from planning and national accountability as vectors of the rationalization of public policy. It was further developed in the 1960s thanks to the transfer of debates and tools developed overseas. The second phase was characterized by the crisis of the Welfare State and the transfer of policy studies knowledge obtained by North American universities. During this second phase, the development and institutionalization of public policy analysis in academic research began to establish policy studies as an autonomous “branch” of French political sciences.

This opening chapter presents and scopes the focus and argument of the book. Specifically, the use of leaders, leading and leadership by New Labour governments (1997–2010) as a strategic policy strategy for bringing about radical reforms to and within schools is outlined. The antecedence of this strategy is presented, and the particular contribution of New Labour is explained. It is argued that New Labour entered and made interventions within a vibrant leadership field, and not only consumed leadership knowledge from the leadership industry, but also contributed directly to the growth and status of this industry. The chapter concludes by presenting the position and approach of the book, and the underlying conceptualization evidence base for the study.

This chapter clarifies why the book explores the politics of scale in policy through a cross-disciplinary lens that integrates policy studies and political geography. Specifically, the chapter argues that in order for policy studies to engage with scale as a political concept, the study of policy needs to engage in a dialogue with human geography literature on ‘space’. A space-sensitive approach to policy analysis would involve being receptive to the idea that spatial concepts and categories are crucial to shaping the practices of policymaking. Its discussion introduces what the study of ‘space’ implies for the research interests of social scientists, suggests a number of reasons for the lack of engagement with space in the field of policy studies, and finally turns to outlining the exciting potential for policy studies to engage with theories of space.

The book’s final chapter discusses how the lens of scalecraft has helped to generate new readings of policy which take into account the scalar politics of policymaking. The discussion reflects on how scale played out in each of the empirical chapters, and how analysis has shed light on the under-examined relationship between policy, scale, and hegemony. Key features of the practice of scalecraft are also developed, including a description of three scalecraft techniques, and by doing so the book offers scholars of policy a clear framework for integrating a critical approach to scale in their analyses. The chapter also discusses how scalecraft contributes to the wider literatures of policy studies, political geography, and education governance. The book concludes by outlining the potential which lies in future work engaging with conceptualisations of spatial politics that go beyond scale.