Abstract
In Chap. 8, we pose the more existential question regarding policy analysis: can we speak “truth to power” as the famous slogan reads already since the eighteenth century, or are knowledge and rationality in policy-making themselves constituted politically? We move away from the representationalist understanding of knowledge—the notion that knowledge represents reality—to an understanding of knowledge as an active ordering of reality. For this we have taken a closer look at the contributions of two great social/political thinkers: Herbert Simon who introduced the concept of bounded rationality; and Charles Lindblom against the so-called Professional Social Inquiry: proposed that policy process is “muddling through” the plurality of policy-relevant knowledge. We also introduce the “the argumentative turn” in policy analysis, to be unfolded in more detail in the next chapter; and reflect on changing understanding of the relationship between knowledge, truth, and experts.
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Selg, P., Sootla, G., Klasche, B. (2023). Speaking Truth to Power? The (Political) Constitution of Knowledge and Rationality in Policy-Making and Governance. In: A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_8
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