Critical Policy Studies: Analyzing Policy Practices in Eastern Europe
Europe (Central and Eastern)
Civil Society
Democracy
Governance
Policy Analysis
Political Theory
Public Choice
Post-Structuralism
Abstract
Challenging conventional theoretical and methodological perspectives, critical policy studies seek to reshape the dominant empirical-analytic discourse in policy studies. This necessitates considering specific policy practices, in particular as they pertain to democracy, governance or social justice. Taking into account recent critical work in policy theory, on policy planning, democracy, participatory practices and general public welfare, this section wants to explore the challenges and the contributions the critical approach makes to explain transformation of governing regimes and reframing of particular policy practices in Eastern Europe.
The critical orientation of policy studies seeks to combine theoretical sophistication with a return to the ‘real world’ of practice. This challenge posed by critical policy studies, however, makes the interpretation of social meanings a central problem. Acknowledging and emphasizing the importance of meanings and values, the critical approach is able to enhance practice by elucidating the ever-present cultural, historical, and political contexts which – in that they both enable and constrain inquiry – need to be taken explicitly into account by any coherent and effective approach to policy studies. From a critical perspective, indeed, the very notion of a ‘neutral’ position appears to be an irresponsible form of bias that either rules out or inhibits clear attention to crucial questions.
If critical policy studies not only focus on the importance of social meanings, but also draw direct attention to the way these meanings are constructed, maintained, and perhaps changed through social forces and political power the area of Eastern Europe and the post-communist transformation becomes a highly-relevant area of analysis that can put critical endeavours to test.
Against this background, we welcome Panels addressing:
1. Theoretical debates that have developed in Eastern Europe in the post-1989 era in the context of political science: such as debates touching on the conditions of establishment of political science as a critical discipline; or debates on particular international intellectual influences of the newly established political science departments.
2. Development of analytic tools and inquiry techniques in the context of the transformation processes in these countries. Critical policy studies highlight that language practices do not merely describe an underlying social reality, but shape the latter; it is therefore interesting to see how this methodological debate has been understood and developed in the context of the reshaping of the political discourse in Eastern Europe.
3. Empirical applications of concepts of policy practices, democracy within specific policy fields that have been re-designed in the Eastern European Countries in the course of the post-1989 transformation. Papers can undertake theoretical debates using concrete empirical examples or they can discuss development of specific policy fields in the context of post-communist transformation.
Biography of Section Chairs:
Anna Durnová is currently Hertha-Firnberg Assistant Professor and Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna. Her research challenges the leading paradigm in policy analysis, which claims that emotions destabilize institutional patterns and agenda-setting and shows that emotions refer to our evaluative judgements of a range of actors presented as the entitled ones to speak or handle, whereas other actors are abandoned as “irrational.” In her analyses: she mainly studies cases from current health care policies and policy planning. Together with Frank Fischer, Douglas Torgerson and Michael Orsini, Durnova co-edited the Handbook of Critical Policy Studies (Edward Elgar, in Press)
She was a visiting professor at the Masaryk University of Brno and from 2009 to 2010 she was a Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Lyon. She has also been a visiting research fellow at universities in Essex (2012), Paris (2007), and Prague (2009). She is Forum Editor of Critical Policy Studies. Beyond her academic activities, she is an external collaborator of Czech daily press Hospodářské Noviny. See more at ww.negotiating-truth.com.
Ondřej Slačálek received his PhD. in Political Science from the Charles University in Prague. Formerly, he has worked as a researcher in the Center of Global Studies and in the Institute of International Relations in Prague and now he is an assistant professor at the Institute of Political Science (Faculty of Arts, Charles University). He has published on political radicalism, discourse analysis and subcultures in the Czech Republic. He is co-author of monograph on history of anarchism Anarchismus. Svoboda proti moci (Anarchism. Freedom Against Power, 2006, with Václav Tomek) and published a chapter presenting a research of Czech rave scene in Marta Kolářová (ed.): Revolta stylem. Hudební subkultury mládeže v ČR (Revolt by Style: Youth Music Subcultures in the Czech Republic 2011, Sociological Publishing). He has also published articles in peer-reviewed journals Ostreuropa, Politologická revue, Politologický časopis and Mezinárodní vztahy.
Convenors: Anna Durnová, Frank Fischer, Ondřej Slačálek
Contact: anna.durnova@univie.ac.at, ondrej.slacalek@ff.cuni.cz