Reframing Public Policy

Winner of the the 2017 Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award

In recent years a set of radical new approaches to public policy has been developing. Frank Fischer brings together this new work and critically examines it. He describes the theoretical, methodological and political requirements and implications of this "post-empiricist" approach to public policy.In recent years a set of radical new approaches to public policy has been developing. These approaches, drawing on discursive analysis and participatory deliberative practices, have come to challenge the dominant technocratic, empiricist models in policy analysis. In this text, Frank Fischer brings together this new work and critically examines it. In an accessible way he describes the theoretical, methodological and political requirements and implications of the new "post-empiricist" approach to public policy. The volume includes a discussion of the social construction of policy problems, the role of interpretation and narrative analysis in policy inquiry, the dialectics of policy argumentation and the uses of participatory policy analysis.