On the social relevance of Critical Policy Studies in times of turmoil

In a forum discussion on ‘What is critical’ published in this journal in 2016, founding and honorary editor of Critical Policy Studies, Frank Fischer, described how the times US-American citizens and social scientists lived in politicized a whole generation: ‘American society had for some time been in serious turmoil in the face of the civil rights movement, the War on Poverty, the Vietnam War, the environmental movement, the feminist movement and the consumer movement.’ (Fischer 2016, 95). It was this experience, Frank Fischer highlighted then, that led policy analysts of the time to shake off the positivist baggage and establish interpretivism, normative political analysis, and critique of ideology and domination as core components of socially relevant policy-related inquiry.

In the 2020s, societies across the globe face turmoil no less serious than did the US-American society in the 1970s. In the face of deadly police violence against people of color (PoC) in the US, the Black Lives Matter movement continues the struggle against racial discrimination in the tradition of the civil rights movement with new means. Social media has enabled global outreach, protest, and rallying in immediate time frames. Similarly, stories on everyday sexism shared globally under #metoo highlight the power of shared narratives and social media community-building in prompting discursive, legal, and societal shifts – but they also make visible the dazzling silencing of sexual harassment in the past, and still in the present in many places. At the same time, the rise of authoritarianism, populism, and revived ethno-nationalism across the world, equally drawing on social media platforms as communication powerhouses, challenge progressive projects and intensify societal polarization. This intensified visibly in the governance of the pandemic, which, since the early 2020s, unleashed highly polarized struggles over the role of expert knowledge in policymaking, over ‘fake news’, over the ‘right balance’ of competing societal norms such as individual freedom vs. public health and security, and over the globally uneven access to resources and public goods (in this case: vaccines).

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there is a widespread perception that War returned from seemingly faraway places and communities to Europe. Arguably that war already started with the capture of Crimea in 2014, and the armed conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s – including much debated NATO involvement – also occurred in the middle of Europe. And yet, beyond the sheer tragedy of everyday deaths and human rights violations in war-struck places, the events unfolding since early 2022 in Ukraine provide a sad focal point for longer standing political struggles. These reach much beyond the question of how relevant NATO should be in the post-Cold-War order and address, inter alia, the role of nationalist and imperialist narratives and myths in legitimizing aggression and exclusion across the globe; the discursive and material conditions which help forge the unprecedented coalition of countries to sanction Russia and stand in solidarity with Ukraine; the contribution of ‘Western centrism’ to how we perceive and respond to crises, including the unequal policy treatment of white vs. PoC Ukrainian refugees but also vs. Syrian, Afghan or Eritrean refugees; the paradigmatic U-turns in some countries’ economic, energy and defense policy in response to War; the dislocation of pressing policy issues in times of War, including climate change, poverty, gender inclusion, women’s rights and racial discrimination.

Time will tell how our contemporary political movements, crises, and conflicts have transformed policymaking, governance, and our societies. What is sure is that our times of turmoil feed a new stream of societal and scholarly politicization and, arguably, nourish further the mission of journals such as ours. We require rigorous critical policy analysis to identify, situate, and critique contemporary crisis narratives, dominant claims to knowledge, TINA policies, and new and old forms of contestation, including struggles over policy practice on the ground. Such analysis continues to be the foundation for articulating democratic alternatives for governing in ways that generate (globally) inclusive societal progress. We look forward to receiving many inspiring manuscripts which help our community to maintain, revive, and expand its social relevance through the present turmoil.

At the beginning of this year, we saw some changes in our team of editors. After having served as a general editor for six years, Dieter Plehwe of the Berlin Social Science Centre (Germany) moved on to be a forum editor, joining Kathrin Braun (University of Stuttgart, Germany). We thank Dieter for his thorough and engaged service for the journal as general editor. His expertise on critical political economy has valuably extended the scope of the journal both in terms of submission and reviewers over the past years. Continuing in this tradition, we welcome Regine Paul, political scientist at Bergen University (Norway), as a new general editor, and joining forces with general editors Jennifer Dodge of the State University of New York (US) and Laureen Elgert of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (US). While Anna Durnová, University of Vienna (Austria) left the forum team, she continues to share her expertise and experience with us as an editorial board member. We warmly welcome several new board members: John Boswell, University of Southampton (UK); Tamara Metze, Wageningen University (The Netherlands); Séverine van Bommel, University of Queensland (Australia), and Imrat Verhoeven, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands).