Policy Practices as Temporal Formations

Abstract

This panel covers papers that address the fundamental question how time and policy relate to one another. The papers approach this relationship from a variety of different theoretical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives. Common to these different perspectives is the premise that time could not be reduced to a natural force that constitutes an objectively given boundary condition of policy practices. Instead, the papers highlight, each in a specific way, that policy practices are to be seen as temporal formations, meaning that policy and time emerge interdependently. The panel thus highlights the analytical value of time-focussed research strategies, and it demonstrates how different conceptions of time allow for innovative insights in political science in general and policy analysis in particular.

Title	Details
Between Dramatising and Calculating: Futures in Global Social Policy	View Paper Details
Keep Them Waiting, Keep Them Quiet: Waiting as a Strategy of Social Control for Citizens on Social Assistance	View Paper Details
Performing the Present, Forfeiting the Future: The Problem of Prediction from the Perspective of Performative Time	View Paper Details
Temporality and Policy, Theory and Practice: Understanding ‘Complex Needs’ as a Travelling Concept	View Paper Details