LIST OF PANELS

This panel builds on the recent work stemming from the emotional turn that considers emotions as a promising angle of analysis for the renewal of policy research. Although emotions are not totally absent from the policy analysis classics, they are commonly understood as a limit to individual rationality. Adopting a different standpoint, our panel postulates that emotions (both positive and negative ones) are rather integral to rationality and, by extension, are agents of policy change.  Moreover, emotions are embedded in policy discourses. If emotions play this central role in policy making, how can they then be captured in policy research?  This panel proposes that narrative analysis is well equipped to do so because of its attention to the structure and content of language, the latter being one vehicle for the expression of emotions. If some policy scholars have promoted policy narratives as keys to understand the policy process, only a few have studied their emotional structure, although latent in any policy narrative. On the other hand, emotion studies, an expanding research field across social sciences, have not paid great attention to public policy processes. This panel aims at contributing to both literature by questioning the role of emotions for policy analysis methodologically, theoretically and empirically.

Our panel is guided by the following research questions:

1) From a methodological perspective, how can narrative analysis reveal the role of emotions (how to locate emotions from the lexical sources? How to document emotions? How to classify emotions?)?

2) From a theoretical perspective, how can a focus on emotions complement theoretical approaches to public policy (are emotions direct or indirect influences of problems framing or are they frames themselves? What influence do emotions have on other policy processes such as individual or collective behaviors, information processing or solution developments?)?

3) From an empirical perspective, how do emotions participate in the transformation of public policy (what kinds of emotions are involved? What spectra do they cover? How and by whom do they manifest themselves?)?

By taking stock of the role of emotions for policy analysis, this panel will expand our understanding of the different forces at work in the policy process and explore how turning to the emotional structure of policy discourses can enriched narrative analysis itself.  By doing so, this panel provides an opportunity to assess the relevance of the emotional turn for policy studies.

This panel builds on the recent work stemming from the emotional turn that considers emotions as a promising angle of analysis for the renewal of policy research. Although emotions are not totally absent from the policy analysis classics, they are commonly understood as a limit to individual rationality. Adopting a different standpoint, our panel postulates that emotions (both positive and negative ones) are rather integral to rationality and, by extension, are agents of policy change.  Moreover, emotions are embedded in policy discourses. If emotions play this central role in policymaking, how can they then be captured in policy research? This panel proposes that narrative analysis is well equipped to do so because of its attention to the structure and content of language, the latter being one vehicle for the expression of emotions. If some policy scholars have promoted policy narratives as keys to understand the policy process, only a few have studied their emotional structure, although latent in any policy narrative. On the other hand, emotion studies, an expanding research field across social sciences, have not paid great attention to public policy processes. This panel aims at contributing to both literature by questioning the role of emotions for policy analysis methodologically, theoretically and empirically.

Our panel is guided by the following research questions:

1) From a methodological perspective, how can narrative analysis reveal the role of emotions (how to locate emotions from the lexical sources? How to document emotions? How to classify emotions?)?

2) From a theoretical perspective, how can a focus on emotions complement theoretical approaches to public policy (are emotions direct or indirect influences of problems framing or are they frames themselves? What influence do emotions have on other policy processes such as individual or collective behaviors, information processing or solution developments?)?

3) From an empirical perspective, how do emotions participate in the transformation of public policy (what kinds of emotions are involved? What spectra do they cover? How and by whom do they manifest themselves?)?

Our panel invites papers studying emotions (both positive and negative ones) present in diverse policy issues. Although the panel has a special interest in submissions using narrative analysis, papers focusing on the sociopolitical dimensions of emotions and the role of emotions in knowledge making through other methods are also welcome.