European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 157

European Policy Analysis

Time, it turns out, has itself become
such an institutionalized “ordering force”
(Adam 2004; Felt et al. 2014): Time
frames work as social “filters” and “lenses”.
Produced and reproduced in political,
economic, or scientific interactions,
they allow us to order certain events, to
describe causalities by distinguishing
between causes and effects, to experience
surprises against a background of
routines and regularities, and to develop
complex descriptions of the past and the
future. These time frames transcend the
calculative measurements derived from
clock time or astronomical events. They
manifest themselves in culturally variable
understandings of societies as cyclical or
linear, as determined by a certain “telos”,
by critical moments or turning points.
The resulting temporal arrangements
composed of multiple time frames,
temporal rules, and procedures have
been described as temporal orders or
“timescapes” (Adam 2004; Howlett
and Goetz 2014). Analyzing policy in
terms of temporal orders or timescapes
requires investigating how multiple
frames of experiencing and enacting
time are embedded into discursive and
institutional structures, leading to specific
temporal features that determine the
relevance and meaning of past, present,
and future and thus define the scope of
collective action. Temporal orders vary
depending on the level and context of
policies (Goetz 2012; Meyer-Sahling and
Goetz 2009; Tucker 2014).

The result of such complex
temporal orders is not one historical time
but, as Koselleck has already pointed out
following the German philosopher Herder,
“many forms of time superimposed one
upon the other” (Koselleck 2004, 2).
Research following this line of inquiry

asks for the multiple ways these temporal
orders are constituted, maintained, and
changed. Politics and time are mutually
intertwined: “This also highlights the
political role time plays in debates and
justifications of technoscientific and
societal choices, in the proclamation
of urgent problems but also in requests
for citizens” compliance with certain
decisions—always in the name of a
specific future that has to be achieved’
(Felt et al. 2014, 5).

Studies analyzing the multiple
times of policymaking have shown that
imposing “knowledge of acquaintance”
on the policy process actually has the
potential to change time frames and
temporal orders. In their research on
obesity as a social phenomenon, Felt
and colleagues demonstrate how the use
of specific statistical agglomerates has
helped to render linear trajectories of
worldwide obesity dynamics as objective,
constituting a health phenomenon that
makes certain political measures appear
more acceptable in public (Felt et al.
2014). The ever-growing complexity of
modeling techniques and the sensitivity
of computer-based simulations for
irregularities and unexpected dynamics
on different levels of societies in a longterm perspective have changed the
conditions of both policy formulation
and decision making in the present.
Paradoxically and for reasons still subject
to current research, the enhancement of
simulation techniques and other foresight
methods, however, does not seem to
result in an increase in capacities for
action. On the contrary, policymakers
and citizens alike are experiencing a so
far unknown change in the tempo of
modern life, an acceleration of political
and socio-technical dynamics, making

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