European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 128

The Role of Theories in Policy Studies and Policy Work

stages heuristic—causality-based versus
narrativist explanation in nonteleological
temporal modalities. It also affected
empirical research in the field—single
case studies, small-N comparative studies
through mixed methods, or large-N
quantitative research and standard causal
analysis.

Another problem inherent in
all stages accounts was that researchers
needed “caesuras” to distinguish
subprocesses from each other. This
frequently meant focusing on artifacts
indicative of “decisions” marking
the transformation of one stage into
another—especially different types of
policy documents or texts, like party
programs, hearings, statutes, termsof-reference for policy advice, bills,
decrees, and evaluation studies. This led
to methodological questions about how
precisely to study such intermediary
policymaking “products”—for example,
through argumentative analysis, goals—
means analysis, discourse analysis, and so
on—and how to assess their meaning in
the larger policy landscape. These kinds
of issues, originating in the discursive
aspects of the stages heuristic, played
a role in the transition to what is now
known as “the argumentative turn in
policy analysis and planning” (Fischer
and Forester 1993).

In all this theorizing about “the
authorities” and their expert-advisers,
the “elephant in the room” was the fact of
conflict. For some participants, the task
could be seen as policymaking; for others,
it was policy resistance. And resistance
to one policy initiative may be in order
to advance another. “The government”
is less an actor than an arena, where
struggles over claims are less likely to
lead to conclusive determinations than

to a temporary pause in a continuing
campaign. How the experience of
partisan contest could be reconciled with
the image of authoritative choice was one
important theme in the second “family” of
approaches to the study of public policy.
Policy(making) as Association
Interactive Involvement

and

The second “family” of policy
process approaches starts from the idea
that policymaking is all about structured
interaction and interactive involvement
of associations of crucial policy actors.
On the one hand, there are theories that
focus on the logic of appropriateness
embedded in roles and institutions that
guide policymaking behavior to the
reproduction of ordered practices; and
bind policy actors together in ties of
familiarity, trust, resources, organization,
and commitment to management. In
terms of powering (Allen 1998), such
theories try to explain how people can act
in concert by organizing and stabilizing
power-with, and, with a view to achieve
some collective purpose, power-to.

The development and significance
of relationships between powerful
associations of policy actors has been
analyzed at different levels. At one level,
it was shown how participants, linked
functionally and strategically by a shared
interest or resource interdependencies
in problem processing on a particular
policy domain, might also develop an
increasingly shared sense of identity.
Richardson and Jordan (1979) identified
specialized “policy communities” in
the United Kingdom. Some argued that
such stable actor associations resembled
“subgovernments” subject to the gaze
of “attentive publics” (Atkinson and

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