LIST OF PANELS

A foundational project of critical policy studies is to examine and challenge dominant public policy narratives, discourses, and stories, aiming to uncover sources of oppression and offer alternative conceptualizations of policy and policy processes that might create liberation and freedom. Organized by the Co-Editors of Critical Policy Studies, the objective of this panel is to contribute to understanding current shifts toward the politics of oppression and exclusion seen in public policy in many parts of the world today. In India, for instance, the government has been cracking down on university researchers who practice dissent. In the US, the Trump administration has implemented draconian policies toward immigrants, separating families at the border many of whom have yet to be reunited. Other examples abound. We invite empirical articles examining contemporary forms of oppression and exclusion exercised through public policy and/or on struggles against them, as well as theoretical and methodological articles about different approaches to critical policy studies that illuminate these processes. Recently, critical approaches that have emphasized the significance of struggles over meaning, values and the construction of identities and differences have come under suspicion of having, willingly or unwillingly, neglected “hard” macro-social cleavages, socio-economic power relations and/or objective problems and thereby contributed to the rise of oppressive and exclusionary politics.

Related questions paper could answer include: How can critical policy analysis more effectively illuminate policy dynamics of oppression? What theoretical approaches in critical policy studies are useful to explain the current return of oppressive and exclusionary policies in many countries? (How) Can studies on the struggles over meaning contribute to better understanding the recent revival of elitist and exclusionary styles of policy-making? What perspectives does critical policy studies have to offer to better understand why oppressive and exclusionary policy programs oftentimes receive support from considerable parts of the population? What is the role of policy failures in the past in this context? How can critical policy studies illuminate the conditions for successful resistance against the politics of oppression and exclusion?