Interpretive Policy Analysis

History of Ideas

Interpretive approaches to policy analysis began to develop in the United States in the early to mid-1970s, along with the growth of the field of policy analysis itself. Early challenges addressed the assumption inherent in the then-developing analytic tools that facts and values were distinguishable and not only should, but could, be separable. (This is a classic argument of logical positivist philosophers, one of the reasons that critics of traditional policy analysis see it as having roots in those philosophical presuppositions.) Similar discussion about facts and values was taking place at the same time in the field of urban planning, which is not surprising given that housing and urban development were central public policy concerns in the 1960s and 1970s. The planning literature that critiqued the rational planning model prevalent in the 1960s emphasized the need to involve citizens in planning deliberations, something that is echoed in more recent participatory policy arguments in the interpretive policy analysis literature. Postpositivist critiques of logical positivism and its presuppositions published in fields other than public policy and political science also influenced policy analytic thinking. Notable in this regard were social constructivism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory. In the Anglophone literature, Charles Taylor's 1971 essay “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man” was influential, as was Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures, with its focus on “webs of meaning” as a focus of analysis.

The critique of quantitative policy analytic approaches deepened theoretically in the 1980s. Whereas the planning literature had postulated in the 1970s that to deal with the fact-value dichotomy, the planner need only articulate her values up front and then proceed with the work. critics now argued incisively that this maintained the assumption that facts and values were separable, as if planners could step out of their values. The journal Policy Sciences, under the editorships of William Ascher, Ronald Brunner, and Douglas Torgerson, joined in advancing arguments for interpretive approaches. Building on these and other arguments, interpretive policy analysis developed further in the 1990s and through the turn of the century, often in parallel to advances in feminism and other critical theories.

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