Critical Policy Inquiry

Frank Fischer, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Politics and Global Affairs, Rutgers University, USA and currently associated with Humboldt University, Germany

• ContentsPreface ixPART I CRITICAL POLICY INQUIRY AND THEARGUMENTATIVE TURN1 Introduction to critical policy inquiry 22 The public policy orientation: From technocratic expertiseto critical policy argumentation 253 The argumentative turn in critical policy analysis:Practical reason and the logic of policy argumentation 454 Critical policy argumentation in Covid controversies:From statistics to political values 65PART II SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION ANDKNOWLEDGE POLITICS5 Social constructivism and the politics of meaning:Foundations of interpretive policy analysis 866 Social constructivism and post-truth: Climate denialismand knowledge politics in policy argumentation 118PART III CITIZEN PARTICIPATION INDELIBERATIVE POLICY PROCESSES7 Confronting technocratic expertise: Citizen empowermentand deliberative policy inquiry 1348 Making governance participatory: Citizens and experts incollaborative policy research 157PART IV TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING ANDCRITICAL POLICY EPISTEMICS9 Critical policy inquiry and transformative learning:Reflexive deliberation as problematization 177Coauthored with Alan Mandell10 Policy epistemics for critical policy inquiry: Notes on theconstruction of knowledge and arguments in discursive politics 196References 223

‘This book synthesizes and expands Frank Fischer’s foundational approaches to critical argumentative and deliberative policy analyses, with an impressive integration of related works. Importantly, these approaches locate policy evidence in a normative framework that foregrounds political context and competing meanings, values, interests, emotions, and ideologies at the heart of contemporary policy disputes, but that are largely ignored by “value-neutral” policy analysis. It thus not only provides a guide for doing critical policy analysis but also demonstrates, with many examples, its power for addressing contemporary policy problems in deeply democratic ways. The climate change chapter is especially illuminating, demonstrating the deep, sometimes surprising and profoundly practical but underappreciated insights critical argumentative analysis can produce.’