Symposium: revisiting the three pillars of Deliberative Policy Analysis

ABSTRACT

This mini-symposium revisits the three pillars of Deliberative Policy Analysis (DPA): deliberation, interpretation and practice. DPA was originally intended as a moral-analytical programme that integrated these pillars, but policy analysts working in this tradition seem to have mainly been guided by one specific pillar, interpretation We believe this has not only confounded the nature and potential of DPA but has also limited the knowledge and impact of policy studies. The goal of this mini-symposium is to facilitate a dialogue between representatives of the three pillars and the authors of DPA on how interpretation, practice, and deliberation could be integrated. It originates from a roundtable discussion organized at the ECPR General Conference 2018 in Hamburg. Each representative discusses the nature and development of their pillar and reflects on its value for DPA, followed by an author reflection on the past and future course of DPA. First, Selen Ercan explores the deliberative pillar. Second, Anna Durnová delves into the interpretive pillar. Third, Anne Loeber examines the practice pillar. Finally, Hendrik Wagenaar offers his author reflections. Taken together, this mini-symposium frames the focus and aims of this special issue and sets a course for the future development of DPA.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy analysis
• interpretation
• deliberative democracy
• practice theory
• deliberative policy analysis
• emotions
• pragmatism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Selen A. Ercan is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance/Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra. Her works sits at the intersection of normative democratic theory and empirical political research and examines a wide range of topics including inclusion and exclusion in multicultural societies; public deliberation in the face of value conflicts; and the deliberative potential of the new forms of political participation and protest movements.

Anna Durnová works at the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna and at the Department of Public and Social Policy, Charles University Prague. She is also Faculty Fellow of Yale University Center for Cultural Sociology and Forum Editor of Critical Policy Studies. She researchers the interplays of emotions and knowledge in public controversies around science, health and environment. She has published several articles and two books on the role of emotions in politics (The Politics of Intimacy, University of Michigan Press, 2018 / Understanding Emotions in Post-Factual Politics, Edward Elgar 2019).

Anne Loeber is an associate professor in public policy and governance at the University of Amsterdam. Her research explores the relation between knowledge, power and agency in experimental governing efforts of highly complex societal issues. Insights in how knowledge co-creation and policy co-design may trigger reflexivity and learning she translates into methodologically innovative approaches to policy analysis and evaluation.

Hendrik Wagenaar is senior academic advisor to the International School for Government at King's College London, Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, and adjunct professor at the University of Canberra. He publishes in the areas of participatory democracy, interpretive policy analysis, Deliberative Policy Analysis, prostitution policy and practice theory. He is author of Meaning in Action: Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis (M.E. Sharpe, 2011), and editor of Deliberative Policy Analysis (Cambridge, 2003, with M. Hajer) In the area of prostitution research he published Designing Prostitution Policy: Intention and Reality in Regulating the Sex Trade (with Helga Amesberger and Sietske Altink, Policy Press, 2017).

Notes

1 For a genealogy that links the problem-oriented practice dimension in DPA to the American pragmatism of Peirce, Merriam and Dewey, and Lasswell, and their interpretations of policy analysis as producing practical wisdom (phronèsis; cp. Loeber 2007), see Torgerson 1995.