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Discursive Approaches to Public Policy: Politics, Argumentation, and Deliberation

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Contemporary Approaches to Public Policy

Part of the book series: International Series on Public Policy ((ISPP))

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the so-called discursive paradigm has emerged in both Europe and the USA to analyze policy and grasp policy processes differently. Rejecting the dominance of rational choice theory and condemning the illusion of an objective knowledge for and on policy, this paradigm draws inspiration from the “linguistic turn” in philosophy and the social sciences and builds on constructivist perspectives in social inquiry. The “discursive” approach pays particular attention to the subjectivity of actors; the forms of knowledge these actors assemble; and, in particular, the multiple interpretations they deploy to create meaning. This chapter presents three aspects: the basic acknowledgment that policy is about political argumentation, that argumentation is a deep epistemological issue that changes mainstream objectivism, and that argumentation requires placing interpretation and emotion back into the research agenda.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These authors therefore focus on specific discursive practices such as argumentation, persuasion, negotiation, conviction, definition, comparison, and injunction. These social practices consistently involve actors who possess specific intentions and discourses, and who interact with other actors, against whom they test these discourses and intentions. Generally speaking, researchers differentiate intentions from their effects in order to illustrate that intentions in no way imply effects, and can in fact even produce unintended outcomes. This is what Austin refers to as the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of discourse. Although the intention is often to achieve agreement and assent, the effect produced can instead be one of indifference or opposition.

  2. 2.

    Like all concepts, the concepts of “positivism” and “neo-postivism” have their limitations. Nonetheless these concepts have a long tradition in epistemological discussions in the social sciences. The use of the term “neo-positivist” is employed to acknowledge that there have been a number of reforms in the “positivist” tradition that recognize the limitations of earlier conceptions of the approach, taken to refer to the pursuit of an empirically rigorous, value-free, causal science of society. That is, there is no one neo-positivist approach. The term is employed as a general concept to denote an orientation that continues to strive for empirically rigorous causal explanations that can transcend the social context to which they apply, but recognizes the difficulties encountered in achieving such explanations. Neo-positivist policy analysts (Sabatier, for example) typically argue that while policy research cannot be fully rational or value-free, analysis should nonetheless be a standard toward which they should strive. For general references to these debates see Hawkesworth (1988) and Fischer (2009).

    vi The NRC advocates offering technical assistance to inexperienced and unorganized groups. In this regard, the NRC Council proposes that policy experts serve as facilitators along the way.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Anna Durnova

  2. University of Kassel and Rutgers University, Kassel, Germany

    Frank Fischer

  3. LAET-ENTPE, University of Lyon, Lyon, France

    Philippe Zittoun

Authors
  1. Anna Durnova
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  2. Frank Fischer
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  3. Philippe Zittoun
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. President of the International Public Po, University of Pittsburgh, USA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    B. Guy Peters

  2. General Secretary of the International P, LAET-ENTPE, University of Lyon, France, Lyon, France

    Philippe Zittoun

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Durnova, A., Fischer, F., Zittoun, P. (2016). Discursive Approaches to Public Policy: Politics, Argumentation, and Deliberation. In: Peters, B., Zittoun, P. (eds) Contemporary Approaches to Public Policy. International Series on Public Policy . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50494-4_3

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