Problem definition and re-evaluating a policy: the real successes of a regeneration scheme

Abstract

This article seeks to problematize notions of objective policy evaluation using the techniques of interpretive policy analysis, and use the findings to develop a new evaluation and new proposals for policy improvement. It presents evidence from ethnographic fieldwork on the same set of urban regeneration (or renewal) policies in two Scottish neighborhoods between 1989 and 2009. The analysis showed that the policy was variously understood as a failure or a success in four different ways: as a failure within the rationality of official evaluation; as a failure because of the stigma in wider society against deprived neighborhoods; as a failure in some ways by local community activists describing their lived experience through local knowledge; and as a success through local knowledge of the improvements to the physical environment. It demonstrates how policy problem definition and evaluation are closely intertwined and therefore for a policy to be judged a success requires a nuanced understanding of policy problems within their wider social context.

Keywords:

• regeneration
• local knowledge
• Scotland
• interpretive policy analysis
• evaluation

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the peer-reviewers; Annette Hastings, School of Social and Political Science, University of Glasgow; and the organizers and participants of the panel on policy success and failure at the International Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference, Sciences Po, Grenoble 2010, for all their constructive comments on previous drafts of this article.

Notes

1. The term deprived neighborhoods is used in this article even though it is recognized that it is problematic and part of the pathologizing of spatial inequality that this article seeks to challenge.

2. Within quoted data local dialect is used throughout to respect the cultural domain of the participants. A glossary is provided at the end of the article to help with understanding.

3. A datazone is a standardized geographical area used in the SIMD with an average population of 1000, similar to census super output areas in England and Wales and census tracts in the United States.