Providing an analytical framework through illustrations of real-world practices, this novel and important volume investigates policy analysis in the context of high inequalities in Asia from critical and pragmatic perspectives.

Through reflective review, cases, and lessons, this book provides discussions and develops a context-sensitive analytical framework: mapping spaces of deliberation from formal to semi-formal and informal; understanding narratives that travel between policy actors; and staying conscious of inequalities in knowledge and socio-political status. With particular focus on the Asian context, this book addresses intellectual and practical discussions in public policy, political science, public administration, and Asian studies. Chapters provide several illustrations and case studies that examine inclusive participation and its transformative potential in policy analysis in Asian settings. Ultimately, this book argues that despite inequalities and constrained possibilities, policy analysis is still able to affect what is politically and socially imaginable, and to be genuinely sensitive to contextual realities. Given that high inequality is a global phenomenon, the conclusions and findings will be widely applicable.

Offering in-depth research and discussion on doing policy analysis in Asia, the book will be relevant to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of policy, political science, public administration, and Asian studies more broadly. Graduate students and policymakers may also find this book of use.

Policy Analysis in High Inequalities in Asia: Critical and Pragmatic Perspectives

This volume arrives at a timely moment for the field of public policy. As inequalities deepen across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, the need for analytical frameworks that are both intellectually rigorous and genuinely responsive to contextual realities has never been more pressing. This book takes up that challenge directly.

Drawing on reflective reviews, case studies, and lessons from practice, the volume develops a context-sensitive framework for policy analysis organized around three core commitments: mapping spaces of deliberation across formal, semi-formal, and informal registers; tracing the narratives that travel between policy actors; and remaining critically conscious of inequalities in knowledge and socio-political status. Rather than importing universalist models, the contributors ground their analyses in the specificities of Asian policy environments, where high inequality, constrained participation, and complex governance arrangements demand approaches that are at once critical and pragmatic.

The book speaks across disciplinary boundaries, engaging scholars and practitioners in public policy, political science, public administration, and Asian studies. Its central argument is both analytical and normative: that even under conditions of entrenched inequality and constrained possibility, policy analysis retains transformative potential, capable of expanding what is politically and socially imaginable.

Given that inequality is a global rather than a regional phenomenon, the frameworks and findings developed here are relevant well beyond Asia. The IPPA community, committed as it is to advancing policy analysis across diverse institutional and political contexts, will find in this volume a substantive and timely contribution to ongoing debates about how policy analysis can be done differently, and done better.

What Scholars Are Saying

"This book represents a welcome and much needed addition to the public policy literature. Distinguishing deliberative settings and apt responses, the authors extend interpretive, argumentative, and critical pragmatic approaches to policy analysis from epistemological critiques to imagine fresh process designs in institutional contexts of hierarchy and inequality." — John Forester, Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University

"This book is an important contribution to Public Policy in Asia. Sacramento, Boossabong, and Chamchong propose an 'epistemic emancipation' that integrates Asian context-sensitivity within highly unequal societies. By exploring how actors, narratives, and deliberative spaces shape policy, they offer a compelling reflection on critical pragmatism and the centrality of the pragmatic perspective in understanding the policy process in Asia." — Philippe Zittoun, Research Professor of Political Science, University of Lyon & General Secretary, International Public Policy Association

"This book makes an important intervention in the literature on policy studies in Asia. Adeptly employing a critical policy studies approach, it questions established norms of power and shows how deliberative policy designs can articulate the voices of newly empowered young people in Asian nations. For public policy scholars, this work is enlightening by elaborating how different cultural norms inform policy engagements outside the Western liberal-democratic mainstream." — Nick Turnbull, Professor of Rhetoric and Public Policy, University of Manchester

"This book offers an important contribution to critical policy studies by examining how policy-analytic practices operate under conditions of deep socio-economic, cultural, and epistemic inequalities. Drawing on Asian case studies of how youth policy issues are problematized in policy labs, the book illustrates how policy analysts, together with other participants like civil society stakeholder organizations and citizens, navigate power, institutional and cultural constraints, and uncertainty in practice. While grounded in global majority Asian contexts, its core contribution is in advancing a critical-pragmatic and deliberative approach to policy analysis, which clearly speaks to global minority Western debates." — Robert Hoppe, Professor Emeritus of Knowledge and Policy, University of Twente

The book is available under this link.