The Interpretive Turn and the Work of Policy

Abstract

The ‘interpretive turn’ was part of a shift in the analysis of how we are governed, and in particular, of what it was that the term ‘policy’ was labeling. This recognised that the conventional account of authoritative instrumental action (Dye’s ‘whatever government decides to do or not to do’), although significant, was not a good explanation of practice, and led to two linked analytical developments. The first recognised the collective and interactive nature of the policy process. It saw that there are many participants, inside and outside government, with diverse agendas and varying capacity to act, and that policy activity involves interaction and negotiation among a range of participants. The second recognised the interpretive dimension of governing: that it involved ‘collective puzzling’ (Heclo) and the invention of ‘govermentalities’ (Foucault) about what is normal and what is deviant, what demands collective action, how this might be accomplished, and how responsibility is to be attributed – that is, it is about problematisation and problem structuring for issues to become ‘actionable’(Hoppe, 2010). These two interacted on one another, both in practice and in analysis: the diversity of participants meant a diversity of understandings, and how the problem was understood defined who could legitimately participate in its governing. Perhaps the first question is how this shift in the academic focus has impacted on the public discourse about liberal democratic government. Over the last couple of decades, we can see two countervailing themes in this discourse: - one is about standardization, about bringing aspects of social life ‘under control’ through benchmarks, indicators and ‘best practice’, through processes of measurement, reporting and accountability - the other is about empowerment, participation, devolution and diversity, a ‘post-modern’ discourse about the move away from state bureaucratic provision in favour of a broader and more inclusive form of government. The next question is how both of these discursive shifts relate to the practice of policy. Over the last decades of the 20th century, policy had become a form of specialized work. Particularly in the US, and predominantly (but not exclusively) in government, it was common to find ‘Policy Units’ which employed people called ‘Policy Analysts’ or ‘Policy Officers’, who had often been trained in graduate programs in public policy, and by 2000, Beryl Radin could claim that ‘the profession of policy analysis’ had ‘come of age’. But it was also clear that these ‘policy bureaucrats’ were not all doing the same things, and that they were not the only players in the game. Increasingly, non-government organizations felt it necessary to employ similar staff themselves, and in a wide range of fields of governing, interests became more organized, professionalized and more closely oriented to the practices of government, and in turn, became more recognised as legitimate participants in policy development (Colebatch et al., 2010). This panel addresses the many questions about the way that the ‘argumentative turn’ in academic discourse about governing has related to the discourses and practices of practitioners. These include – • questions about problematisation and participation – about the way that the concerns to be addressed are framed, and how this relates to the nature of the participants (and the non-participants) in specific policy contexts • questions about the stabilization of practice, norm-setting, identity and accountability: what constitutes ‘performance’, and what makes for ‘good practice’ ? • questions about linkage between participants in different organized settings, and how meaning is negotiated across different frameworks • questions about the mobilization of public authority in the governing of public problems – how it is accomplished, and the part it plays in narratives about governing. References: R. Hoppe (2010), The Governance of Problems. Puzzling, Powering and Participation, Policy Press, Bristol H.K. Colebatch, M. Noordegraaf and R. Hoppe eds. (2010), Working for Policy, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam

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