LIST OF PANELS

This panel proposed to develop a new perspective on the policy process based on pragmatism and constructivism. By combining American and French conceptions of pragmatism with traditional constructivist insights, the panel advances a relational, situational and dramaturgical approach to understanding the policy process. The unifying theme is the concept of a “policy transaction,” an interaction that co-constructs actors and policies. By taking us beyond a “billiard ball” perspective that views the policy process as a clash of fixed interests and values shaken by external events, a policy transaction approach provides a better understanding of the policy process and yields insights into the role and meaning of policy in an increasingly agonistic and turbulent world.

From a policy transaction perspective, public policy is not simply “what governments choose to do or to not do” (Dye, 1972).  Instead, it is a dialectic between state and society that we call a “transaction” where their respective roles and responsibilities are situationally co-constructed. Whereas most theoretical perspectives on public policy treat state-society relations as an exogeneous variable, the policy transaction approach begins with the assumption that this relationship is continually renegotiated inside policy processes. As a result, the policy process is never simply about instrumentally designing or selecting policies to achieve certain goals; it is understood as a drama that constitutes the meaning of the polity and its publics.  

To develop this perspective, we would like to invite authors who are interested to propose a theoretical, empirical or methodological papers to discuss how the pragmatist conception of “transaction” can helps us to move away from a causal reliance on fixed ontological entities toward a more thoroughgoing processual approach where public policy is understood as a dialectic through which the relationship between government and society are continually redefined. Policy transactions are contingent relationships through which policymakers craft policy problematizations and valuations.  These contingent relationships spin a web of situations where these problematizations and valuations mobilize collective actors, claim public intervention and articulate identities. Such mobilizations lead to political conflict when they are challenged and criticized by other actors, who will seek to undermine them and propose alternatives. In sum, this panel call for papers which discuss policy transactions as the web of political relationships that mediate between a government "in action" and a mobilized public.