LIST OF PANELS

Theoretical approaches to the process through which policy is generated have been brought together and catalogued in a number of ways, notably the successive editions of Paul Sabatier’s Theories of the Policy Process and the periodic survey articles in the Policy Studies Journal.  This panel aims not simply to repeat these exercises, but rather, to think about the way in which the policy process is theorised, focusing on the ‘cartography’ of policy: how observers generalise and systematise practice, what are seen as the key phenomena, what evidence is gathered and how is it used, and how do the different analytic approaches relate to one another, and to the inherent tensions in the policy process – between choice and structuring, direction and consensus-building, and between the pursuit of specific goals and the continuing management of the problematic.  We are also interested in how practitioners – in government and elsewhere - theorise the process, and how their theorising relates to that of the academic observers.   We invite papers that address any aspect of this problematique, particularly those concerned with how the activity of policy is framed as a process the place of ‘government’ and ‘non-government’ in the framing the tension between choice and structure expertise and the construction of meaning This panel arises from an invitation from a publisher to put together a handbook on the policy process; many of the chapter authors will be giving papers (and will get priority if choices have to be made), but all interested are invited to submit proposals

Since Paul Sabatier launched the first edition of his Theories of the Policy process in 1999, there has been a regular flow of cataloguing distinct analytic approaches to the process through which policy is produced. Sabatier’s book is now in its third edition, the Policy Studies Journal publishes regular update on theory development, and scholars in the US have had the opportunity to attend a ‘shoot-out’ between alternative theories (Eller and Krutz 2009). So there is a well-established chronicling of theoretical approaches to policy (although its breadth and global relevance has been challenged – see Dudley et al. 2000), and we do not propose to repeat the exercise.  Rather, we would like to stand back a little and think about the way in which the policy process is theorised, focusing on the ‘cartography’ of policy: how observers generalise and systematise practice, what are seen as the key phenomena, what evidence is gathered and how is it used, and how do the different analytic approaches relate to one another, and to the inherent tensions in the policy process – between choice and structuring, between direction and consensus-building, and between the pursuit of specific goals and the continuing management of the problematic.  We are also interested in how practitioners theorise the process, and how their theorising relates to that of the academic observers. This panel seeks to draw together the systemic approaches to theorising which are more characteristic of North American scholarship with the social construction and interpretive approaches which are more common in Europe and elsewhere.  It arises from an invitation from a publisher to put together a handbook on the policy process; many of the chapter authors will be giving papers (and will get priority if choices have to be made), but all interested are invited to submit proposals. Dudley, G., Parsons, W., Radaelli, C.M. & Sabatier, P. 2000 Symposium: Theories of the Policy Process, Journal of European Public Policy, 7:1, 122-140 Eller, W. and Krutz, G. 2009 Policy Process, Scholarship, and the Road Ahead: An Introduction to the 2008 Policy Shootout!, Policy Studies Journal 37, 1: 1-4