The public policy orientation: From technocratic expertise to critical policy argumentation

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Chapter 2 in Critical Policy Inquiry, 2024, pp 25-44 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Chapter 2 begins with a short history of the relationship of knowledge to governance in general and to public policymaking more specifically. It presents the early apolitical technocratic ideas that shaped expert knowledge as the component of good governance. Following Lasswell in part, a version of this approach emerged with the development of modern policy analysis in the United States. Promoted as a problem-solving method for informing policymaking, the orientation turned out to be more complicated than was earlier appreciated. Although public policy became a rapidly growing specialization in the political and social sciences, policy analysis failed to make good on its initial promises. Its subsequent failures to solve pressing problems gave rise to methodological debates in search of usable knowledge. Involving confrontations between positivists and postpositivists, the discussion introduces the postpositivist argumentative turn that underscores much of what follows in the subsequent chapters.

Keywords: Politics; and; Public; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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