A Post-Positivist Policy-Analytic Travelogue

Policy analysis involves creating, compiling, and applying evidence, argument, and interpretation in scrutinizing, evaluating, and improving the process and content of public policy. In terms of its relation to the good society, one can think of application in instrumental terms, as identifying the best means to ends that are in turn consistent with improving society by ameliorating social problems. However, there are dangers in this instrumental approach that have been highlighted by critics of the policy analysis mainstream. Sharing these criticisms, I begin as a proponent of what has come to be called the post-positivist tendency in policy analysis. (No policy analysis has ever actually measured up to the canons of logical positivism as philosophy of science and practice, so in this sense the term post-positivist is misleading. However, even proponents of the traditional approach such as Weimer (1999) now recognize the distinction made in this language, so the usage can be accepted, though personally I would rather call the poles “technocratic” and “critical”). The case for post-positivism has to differ quite substantially between the kind of political system in which I live, Australia, and that familiar to most readers of The Good Society, the United States. Here I will develop and compare the cases that need to be made. The differences help to illuminate the inadequacy of what passes for explanatory theory of the policy process, which policy analysis as an applied activity must also take on board in order to account for its own application. Post-positivist policy analysts start with a critique of the role of technocratic analysis and search for subtle influences such as material forces, discourses, and ideologies that act so as to condition the content of policy. While a few analysts might consider these forces pervasive and overwhelming, most would regard them as in some degree contingent, such that it is worthwhile to explore escapes from them. In light of such considerations, postpositivists are interested in conceptions of rationality in society and policy that are more expansive and subtle than the instrumental, means-ends rationality that pretty much defines the technocratic alternative. Many (but not all) post-positivists are interested in a more authentic democratization of the policy process. Thus one finds calls for more genuinely participatory policy analysis (see Fischer, 1993 among others), though process values other than democratic ones could also be brought to bear. Many post-positivists draw on social and political theory in an effort to illuminate aspects of policy and society missed by narrower models of policy analysis. Post-positivism does not, however, connote a well-defined recipe book for doing policy analysis, and in this it is at a disadvantage with more traditional kinds of policy analysis, especially when it comes to curriculum design. It has perhaps done better when it comes to critique of its traditional opponents than in providing such recipes. But most of its proponents would say that the whole point is to replace the illusion of certainty with recognition of the reality of contention and so avoid simplistic recipes. However, some practitioners have indeed thought about and developed methodological guidelines (for example, Fischer, 1995), which are quite demanding and require substantial epistemological self-consciousness.