Rejecting the notion that policy analysis and planning are value-free
technical endeavors, an argumentative approach takes into account the
ways that policy is affected by other factors, including culture,
discourse, and emotion. The contributors to this new collection consider
how far argumentative policy analysis has come during the past two
decades and how its theories continue to be refined through engagement
with current thinking in social theory and with the real-life challenges
facing contemporary policy makers.
The approach speaks in particular to the limits of rationalistic,
technoscientific policy making in the complex, unpredictable world of
the early twenty-first century. These limits have been starkly
illustrated by responses to events such as the environmental crisis, the
near collapse of the world economy, and the disaster at the nuclear
power plant in Fukushima, Japan. Addressing topics including
deliberative democracy, collaborative planning, new media, rhetoric,
policy frames, and transformative learning, the essays shed new light on
the ways that policy is communicatively created, conveyed, understood,
and implemented. Taken together, they show argumentative policy inquiry
to be an urgently needed approach to policy analysis and planning.
Contributors. Giovanni Attili, Hubertus Buchstein, Stephen Coleman, John
S. Dryzek, Frank Fischer, Herbert Gottweis, Steven Griggs, Mary
Hawkesworth, Patsy Healey, Carolyn M. Hendriks, David Howarth, Dirk
Jörke, Alan Mandell, Leonie Sandercock, Vivien A. Schmidt, Sanford F.
Schram
