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Bringing Society Back in: Actors, Networks, and Systems in Public Policy

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Society as an Interaction Space

Part of the book series: Translational Systems Sciences ((TSS,volume 22))

Abstract

A key thesis of this contribution is that the analysis of policy processes in the last decades has focused too much on governmental and conventional political actors, on the one hand, and too much on actor-centered bottom-up perspectives. As the microfoundation of social explanations has moved to the fore, actor constellations became the core of policy explanations and contextual factors and systemic perspectives moved into the background. The chapter proposes a renewed perspective on public policy with the aim to bring social factors back into play, particularly at macrostructural level. This means not only that non-governmental, civil society organizations and social relations should be given greater consideration, but even more important are various forms of structural differentiation at the macro level of societies which should be reintegrated into policy explanations.

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  1. University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Volker Schneider

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  1. University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

    Hanna Lehtimäki

  2. Frisky & Anjoy, Helsinki, Finland

    Petri Uusikylä

  3. Research and Development, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland

    Anssi Smedlund

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Schneider, V. (2020). Bringing Society Back in: Actors, Networks, and Systems in Public Policy. In: Lehtimäki, H., Uusikylä, P., Smedlund, A. (eds) Society as an Interaction Space. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 22. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0069-5_3

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