TY - JOUR
T1 - Policy analysis: Empiricism, social construction and realism
AU - Spash, Clive L.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - In a recent article Ulrich Brand has discussed how best to perform policy analysis. I reflect upon the paper as an interdisciplinary researcher experienced in public policy problems and their analysis with a particular interest in the relationship between social, economic and environmental problems. At the centre of the paper is the contrast between two existing methodologies prevalent in political science and related disciplines. One is the rationalist approach, which takes on the character of a natural science, that believes in a fully knowable objective reality which can be observed by an independent investigator. The other is a strong social constructivist position called interpretative policy analysis (IPA), where knowledge and meaning become so intertwined as to make independence of the observer from the observed impossible and all knowledge highly subjective. Brand then offers his model as a way forward, but one that he closely associates with the latter. My contention is that policy analysis, and any way forward, needs to provide more of a transformative combination of elements from both approaches. Indeed I believe this is actually what Brand is doing.
AB - In a recent article Ulrich Brand has discussed how best to perform policy analysis. I reflect upon the paper as an interdisciplinary researcher experienced in public policy problems and their analysis with a particular interest in the relationship between social, economic and environmental problems. At the centre of the paper is the contrast between two existing methodologies prevalent in political science and related disciplines. One is the rationalist approach, which takes on the character of a natural science, that believes in a fully knowable objective reality which can be observed by an independent investigator. The other is a strong social constructivist position called interpretative policy analysis (IPA), where knowledge and meaning become so intertwined as to make independence of the observer from the observed impossible and all knowledge highly subjective. Brand then offers his model as a way forward, but one that he closely associates with the latter. My contention is that policy analysis, and any way forward, needs to provide more of a transformative combination of elements from both approaches. Indeed I believe this is actually what Brand is doing.
UR - https://oezp.univie.ac.at/index.php/zfp/article/view/291
U2 - 10.15203/ozp.291.vol43iss4
DO - 10.15203/ozp.291.vol43iss4
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2313-5433
VL - 43
SP - 401
EP - 410
JO - Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft (ÖZP) (Austrian Journal of Political Science)
JF - Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft (ÖZP) (Austrian Journal of Political Science)
IS - 4
ER -