Download Free Critical Policy Inquiry Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Critical Policy Inquiry and write the review.

Presenting a critical approach to the study of public policy and policy analysis, this book presents a postpositivist foundation that challenges empiricist and technocratic approaches to policy studies. Frank Fischer advances deliberative policy argumentation and the logic of practical reason, exploring how this approach can be used as a framework for interpreting the interaction of normative and empirical arguments in policy politics.
Critical policy studies, as illustrated in this Handbook, challenges the conventional approaches public policy inquiry. But it offers important innovations as well, in particular its focus on discursive politics, policy argumentation and deliberation, and interpretive modes of analysis.
This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed through discursive methodological approaches in the traditions of critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and discourse theory. This is the first volume that connects this discursive methodology systematically to the field of critical policy analysis and will therefore be an essential book for researchers who wish to include a discursive analysis in their critical policy research.
The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise.
This volume informs the growing number of educational policy scholars on the use of critical theoretical frameworks in their analyses. It offers insights on which theories are appropriate within the area of critical educational policy research and how theory and method interact and are applied in critical policy analyses. Highlighting how different critical theoretical frameworks are used in educational policy research to reshape and redefine the way scholars approach the field, the volume offers work by emerging and senior scholars in the field of educational policy who apply critical frameworks to their research. The chapters examine a wide range of current educational policy topics through different critical theoretical lenses, including critical race theory, critical discourse analysis, postmodernism, feminist poststructuralism, critical theories related to LGBTQ issues, and advocacy approaches.
This text sets out to challenge the traditional power basis of the policy decision makers in education. It contests that others who have an equal right to be consulted and have their opinions known have been silenced, declared irrelevant, postponed and otherwise ignored. Policies have thus been formed and implemented without even a cursory feminist critical glance. The chapters in this text illustrate how to incorporate critical and feminist lenses and thus create policies to meet the lived realities, the needs, aspirations and values of women and girls. A particular focus is the primary and secondary sectors of education.
This text sets out to challenge the traditional power basis of the policy decision makers in education. It contests that others who have an equal right to be consulted and have their opinions known have been silenced, declared irrelevant, postponed and otherwise ignored. Policies have thus been formed and implemented without even a cursory feminist critical glance. The chapters in this text illustrate how to incorporate critical and feminist lenses and thus create policies to meet the lived realities, the needs, aspirations and values of women and girls. A particular focus is the primary and secondary sectors of education.
An exceptional showcase of interdisciplinary research, Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health presents various critical theories, methodologies, and methods for transforming mental health research and fostering socially-just mental health practices. Marina Morrow and Lorraine Halinka Malcoe have assembled an array of international scholars, activists, and practitioners whose work exposes and disrupts the dominant neoliberal and individualist practices found in contemporary mental research, policy, and practice. The contributors employ a variety of methodologies including intersectional, decolonizing, indigenous, feminist, post-structural, transgender, queer, and critical realist approaches in order to interrogate the manifestation of power relations in mental health systems and its impact on people with mental distress. Additionally, the contributors enable the reader to reimagine systems and supports designed from the bottom up, in which the people most affected have decision-making authority over their formations. Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health demonstrates why and how theory matters for knowledge production, policy, and practice in mental health, and it creates new imaginings of decolonized and democratized mental health systems, of abundant community-centred supports, and of a world where human differences are affirmed.
This book considers a range of contemporary approaches to public policy studies. These approaches are based on a number of theoretical perspectives on decision-making, as well as alternative perspectives on policy instruments and implementation. The range of approaches covered in the volume includes punctuated equilibrium models, the advocacy-coalition framework, multiple streams approaches, institutional analyses, constructivist approaches, behavioural models, and the use of instruments as an approach to public policy. The volume concludes with a discussion of fundamental issues of democracy in public policy.
Policy Analysis in the United States gathers a group of original contributions by scholars and leading practitioners of public policy analysis. Originating in the United States, the field of public policy analysis has affected nations around the world and been enhanced by contributions of scholars and practitioners in other regions, but it remains most highly developed and practiced in education and government here. This volume explores the nature of policy analysis in different sectors and at different levels of government, as well as by nongovernmental actors, such as unions, businesses, NGOs, and the media.