LIST OF PANELS

Scientific evidence (the ‘gold-standard’ for which is the randomised-control trial), analyses of big data or costs and benefits and actuarial models and other similar approaches occupy a privileged position in the policy decision-making environment due to arguments for the superiority of ‘objective’ methods. This course starts with a critical examination of that claim to privilege and exposes some often overlooked limitations and ambiguities associated with it. Yet even if subjectivity is inevitable, some hold that its exercise should be restricted to the political or decision-making process. Accordingly, the course next turns to a critical examination of subjectivity in policy research and the tensions researchers may experience when it comes to exercising their subjective judgment in an inhospitable environment. The prospective comparative case study exemplifies methodologically the interaction of subjectivity and objectivity in policy-relevant research. In this type of casework, a researcher uses existing policy experiences as ‘sources’ to develop hypothetical pictures of future improved outcomes in a ‘target’ situation to which lessons from the sources have been applied (Wolf & Baehler, 2018). The success of the method hinges on the researcher’s ability to judge what is relevant, to gain new ideas worth thinking further about, to integrate a wide range of their own and others’ experiences and so on. This method illustrates the subjective exercise of abduction and phronesis in research. Participants will workshop how their judgment is already, and could or should be, employed in their current research. Additional methods will be introduced according to participants’ interests.

Reference: Wolf, A., & Baehler, K., (2018). Learning transferable lessons from single cases in comparative policy analysis. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 20 (4), pp. 420–434

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