Philosophical Foundations of Environmental Policy Analysis: Can Critical Realism Bridge the Neopositivist/Interpretivist Divide?

Andrew Pearce Carter
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Andrew Pearce Carter: Defenders of Wildlife

No u8hgk, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Traditional environmental policy analysis has followed a neopositivist epistemological frame, using the natural sciences as a template as to how social-ecological problems can be analyzed. Such approaches to policy analysis have been caught up in the same crisis as the social sciences have in general: an overarching failure to create a predictive science of society or to consistently provide solutions to social problems. This has led some policy researchers to align with the interpretivist turn, which has had its own drawbacks. In this review I summarize the historical development and main tenets of both approaches, examining their advantages and disadvantages. I then review an alternative epistemological approach to social science, critical realism, which combines an ontological realism with an epistemological relativism, a focus on elucidating causal mechanisms in the social-ecological systems studied, an approach that may be particularly suited for analyzing the complex social-ecological systems studied in environmental policy analysis.

Date: 2021-01-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env, nep-his, nep-hme and nep-pke
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:u8hgk

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/u8hgk

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