The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, edited by Frank Fischer and John Forester in 1993, set out a new orientation in policy analysis and planning: a shift away from the dominant empirical-analytic approach to problem solving to include the study of language and argumentation as essential dimensions of theory and analysis in policy making and planning. The Argumentative Turn Revisited, edited by Frank Fischer and Herbert Gottweis in 2011, takes stock of these developments in an effort to further advance the argumentative direction in policy studies. In our presentation we will argue that the argumentative turn in policy analysis tale, climate change, health, and transportation (Ney 2009). These are problems for which clear-cut solutions are missing--especially technical solutions, despite concerted attempts to identify them. In all of these areas, traditional approaches--often technocratic--have proven inadequate or have failed. Indeed, for such messy policy problems, science and scientific knowledge have often compounded problem solving, becoming themselves sources of uncertainty and ambiguity. They thus generate political conflict rather than help to resolve it. In a disorderly world that is in “generative flux, ” research methods that assume a stable reality “out there” waiting to be discovered are of little help and prone to error and misinterpretation (Law 2004:6-7). We will discuss some of the newly emerging trends in argumentative policy analysis and how they deal analytically with constellations of “messy politics” and uncertainty.
