European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 180

Integrative Political Strategies—Conceptualizing and Analyzing a New Type of Policy Field

grained picture of integrative-strategic
policy fields. I do so by developing a
generic analytical repertoire for critically
assessing understandings and practices
of integrative and strategic policymaking.
While policy integration as an analytical
focus draws attention to a certain pattern
of policy-field genesis (i.e., the combining
of policies to form integrated policy
arrangements), the political strategy
perspective is meant to reveal patterns
of strategic boundary work that serve
the delineation of policy fields. Together,
integration and strategy form an
analytics that can be used for empirically
reconstructing
understandings
and
practices of policymaking that characterize the form and functioning of
integrative-strategic policy fields.
4.1. Policy Integration as Analytical Focus

Policy integration is not a new
concept in policy analysis. Belonging to
a broader class of analytical perspectives
that address policy interdependencies
and overlapping subsystems (see Lang
and Tosun 2014; May and Jochim 2013),
policy integration refers to activities of
coordinating policymaking in such a
way that external effects are minimized
and complex problems can be solved in
a coherent manner (Briassoulis 2005;
Meijers 2004). Most prominently, policy
integration has been implemented and
analyzed as a principle of environmental
politics (Jordan and Lenschow 2008;
Lenschow 2002). Despite the constantly
growing conceptual and empirical
literature,
considerable
conceptual
confusion and contestations remain. It
is far from clear what policy integration
is all about and based on which
criteria empirical phenomena of policy

integration are to be analyzed. Moreover,
the concept has problematic a priori
political and normative implications,
focusing on either the promotion of some
goals vis-à-vis other ones (Lafferty and
Hovden 2003) or a coherent and rational
policy design (Underdal 1980). This blurs
an analytical view on policy integration,
that is, a differentiated understanding of
the multiple forms of policy integration,
which might have shaped and emerged
around IPS and, thus, form the “substance”
of integrative-strategic policy fields.

To grasp the plurality of
possible understandings and real-world
phenomena of policy integration, I
propose a generic understanding of policy
integration in terms of an analytical
perspective (PI perspective). The PI
perspective is a selective way of observing
the policy world that complements
the dominant “sectoral” view (Bönker
2008). It consists of a differentiated
“universe” of conceptually conceivable
forms of policy integration. This range
of conceptual meanings is based on two
fundamental questions referring to the
“what” and “how” of policy integration
(see Bornemann 2014).

The first question (What is
integrated?) refers to the objects of policy
integration and involves a clarification
of “policy.” Taking into consideration
multiple theoretical and methodological
perspectives, public policy is a term
given to a multilayered constellation
that is meant (and created with the
idea) to address issues of public concern
(Colebatch 2002; Howlett, Ramesh,
and Perl 2009; Scharpf 1997). Such a
general understanding can be further
specified along four basic dimensions,
each comprising several more specific
elements. These dimensions can serve as

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