陳建強的動向研究所

The policy sciences redux: new roads to post-positivism. By Peter deLeon Policy Studies Journal, Vol.22, No. 1, Spring, 1994,176-184.

The policy sciences have traditionally been oriented towards a positivist epistemological perspective, with economics and many of its applied methodologies serving as the sine qua non of the approach. For a number of reasons, however, these approaches have recently been described as inadequate by themselves in understanding policy dilemmas, let alone prescribing policy remedies. p.176

Policy learning occurs as a function of conflicts, either in terms of internal issue dynamics and/or major perturbations in the external socioeconomic system. p.176

For instance, the authors hypothesize that core beliefs are less prone to change than secondary, policy aspects, which makes perfectly good sense. However, how does one identify a core vs. secondary belief prior to observing the change? Simiar questions could be asked regarding the level of conflict: how is the intensity of the struggle (and its subsequent openness to analytic exchange) determined before the fact? p.177

The proffered case studies do not offer much of a clue, nor is Sabatier's early differentiation especially persuasive. The support offered by the editors' content analyses of the editors' preferred methodological venue) is somewhat more convincing, although hardly apodictic. p.177

Moreover, we went out of our way to indicate that the process, although nominally linear, is anything but straightforward or linear, that it is replete with curves and loops--top-down and bottom-up, legalistic and emotive, right on and dead wrong--i.e., the wonderfully idiosyncratic stuffings of politics. p.178

the context-specific rhetoric character of analytical practices--the ways the symbolism of their language matters, the ways the consideration of their audiences matters, the ways they construct problems before solving them.  p.178

Similarly, Robert Hoppe ("Political Judgment and the Policy Cycle") notes that: "In the case of democracies, ... conflict is managed by a public debate on and a negotiated definition of shared meanings. Policymaking becomes the capacity to define the nature of shared meaning" (p. 77). p.178

Similarly, Bruce Jennings ("Counsel and Consensus: Norms of Argument in Health Policy"): "Policy analysis as counsel mitigates the adversarial ethos of the pluralistic public policy-making process. It recasts the relationship between policy analysts, policymakers, and citizens in the form of a conversation with many voices" ( p. 105). p.179

Drawing heavily on Habermas, Forester argues that, "Democratic discourse is an institutional attempt to achieve political rationality--a social and political learning process characterized by always vulnerable relations of uncoerced participation and justice" (p. 99). p.180

John S. Dryzek…He compiles an especially devastating list of particulars, including: "instrumental rationality destroys the more congenial, spontaneous, egalitarian, and intrinsically meaningful aspects of human association,... is antidemocratic,... represses individuals [and] is ineffective when confronted with complex social problems…. His prescription, primarily via Habermas, is "communicative rationality," which moves analysis to a more participatory posture such that "politics becomes increasingly discursive, educational, oriented to truly public motives, and needful of active citizenry" (p. 13).p.181

The learning activity dictates how the coalition will coalesce and what policies the altered groups will advocate. Critical theory, on the other hand, is less attentive to what the actual change is; rather, it focuses on how change is initiated and maintained. p.182

No longer is speech treated as a means or as "empty rhetoric." Rather, it is a primaty unit of analysis with which to understand the mechanism of policy learning and change, as well as the epistemological epicenter of the matter. Whether it is treated as the argumentative turn, discourse coalitions, closed vs. open fora, or communicative rationality, policy rhetoric seemingly has been elevated to a new and promising prominence. p.182