Making interpretive policy analysis critical and societally relevant: emotions, ethnography and language

This article summarises the main achievements of interpretive approaches to policy analysis and signposts ways to develop them to strengthen inclusivity and diversity. By visualising tangible strategies used in the approach, it demonstrates how we can better understand how policies are made and understood. At the same time, the article places a strong focus on emotions and ethnography as a way to strengthen the societal relevance of the approach. Focusing on emotions in policy research goes beyond a simple interest in emotions, using them as a specific critical lens to view the researched phenomenon while considering how policy ideas are framed as relevant or irrelevant through expressive language. Analogously, the article describes ethnography as an epistemological lens for analysing policy wherein researchers embrace human bias and the normativity of their research. To illustrate how these two lenses work in practice, the article concludes by discussing the research design of an analysis of the role of fathers in the policy debate around birth care in Czechia.

Narratives of Crisis: How Framing Urban Shrinkage and Depopulation Shapes Policy and Planning Responses in Spain, Germany and The Netherlands

Academic research on urban shrinkage and depopulation has advanced significantly in recent years, mostly by attributing causality between the reasons and consequences of shrinkage in the positivist tradition of planning research. This paper critically analyzes shrinkage and depopulation as an issue of planning and policymaking in a broader institutional context. By applying a qualitative interpretive policy analysis methodology to planning and policy narratives from Spain, Germany and The Netherlands, this article highlights and scrutinizes how policymakers and planners have framed shrinkage, and how this framing has justified some of the selected planning and policy approaches. It is concluded that framing shrinkage in practice may only partially encompass the scientific definitions. It is also concluded that framing shrinkage and depopulation as a crisis may be determined by locally and temporally important issues as well as differences in planning cultures, which in practice may distance the understanding of the phenomenon from the scientific definitions. Debates on shrinkage conceptualization and the development of new planning concepts can become more applicable in practice by incorporating insights from qualitative investigations. This can bring them closer to planning practice and embed them in a wider planning system context, so as to produce more applicable and contextually sensitive proposals for addressing shrinkage.

How the Belt and Road Initiative Informs Language Planning Policies in China and among the Countries along the Road

Given that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has penetrated most, if not all, fields in China and the countries along the road, this paper attempts to join the existing literature by providing a unique perspective (language planning) to understand the BRI and its impacts. The article presents the way in which the BRI has informed language planning policies among China and approximately 65 countries along the road. From an ecological standpoint, it proposes how BRI language planning aims at promoting and constructing a language-and-discourse ecosystem. Taking an interpretive policy analysis method, it analyzes policy documents and the existing literature by elaborating upon the planners, purposes and principles involved in designing the language planning initiative. Specifically, different ministries, departments and committees have worked together to propose a systemic, sustainable language plan for BRI; BRI language planning then serves communication, discourse power, global governance and socioeconomics purposes. Under the overarching ecosystem planning, specific planning principles, including Chinese language status planning, foreign language planning, language structure planning, language-in-education planning and language service planning, co-evolve to sustain the system. Instead of simply depicting the language-and-discourse ecosystem, this article also discusses challenges that BRI language planning initiative might meet along the way of its implementation, including the avoidance of making language unity the same as language imperialism, and continued efforts to balance language internationalization and language localization.

Policy Analysis of Suppression and Mitigation Strategies in the Management of an Outbreak Through the Example of COVID-19 Pandemic

Objective: The objective of this study is to review the containment approaches adopted by countries to control COVID-19 pandemic. In our analysis, we have used Bacchi’s framework for interpretive policy analysis and examined the measures countries have taken and discussed the premise underlying containment strategies. We have included in our analysis United States of America, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Italy, Turkey, South Korea, Singapore, Japan and China. There are essentially two strategies that are used in the management of an outbreak: suppression or mitigation. Suppression strategy aims to lower the basic reproduction number (Ro) below 1 and thereby reduce the number of infected people or eliminate the person-to-person transmission. Mitigation approach, on the other hand, aims to generate community (herd) immunity by allowing the controlled infection of people. In this approach, the aim is not to bring Ro under 1 but to mitigate the health effects of the outbreak. It is seen that given the epidemiological features of the disease, the scope of the virus, and the limitation of the intervention resources at hand, the suppression approach is accepted more widely by the countries in terms of Covid-19 pandemic. In contrast, the mitigation strategy is approached with suspicion. The approach aiming to achieve herd immunity seems more suitable for situations in which it is possible to protect the high-risk groups by administrating vaccine. These evaluations should be carried out following the circumstances of the country in question. It is essential to form an evidence-based plan that is appropriate for the national context. It should be kept in mind that the solutions for the fight against the virus do not solely consist of those ready-made implementations by choosing one option over the other and that mixed models could be brought to the agenda when required. Conclusion: epidemics, immunity, herd, health policy, infection control

Policymakers’ perspectives on designing school-based health initiatives for Victorian adolescents

Initiatives based on the Health Promoting Schools (HPS) framework have previously been successful in improving health and well-being yet there is little evidence of how these findings translate into policy. This study therefore aimed to analyse the political considerations that underpinned policymakers’ decisions for the design and implementation of a programme based on HPS in middle and high schools in Victoria, Australia. Interpretive policy analysis was undertaken using interviews with a purposive sample of government and non-government policy actors. Interviews explored factors influencing programme design and implementation and were analysed using thematic analysis. Ten in-depth interviews, including 11 participants, were conducted. The analysis revealed four themes. The Achievement Program was designed through (i) the establishment of strategic collaborations and good governance, involving people that made valuable and diverse contributions to the design process while acknowledging their (ii) positions of power, (iii) ensuring careful attention was paid to evidence-informed programme design and (iv) incorporation of real-time feedback from other settings. Policymakers believe this approach has the potential to improve policy adoption. There is a need to explore if this approach to policy development influences adherence and improves health outcomes.

Die Politik der Bildungsarmut

Poor educational performance is caused by a number of factors. In addition to specific student traits and educational inequality caused by students’ background and migration history, educational systems and schools can also be contributing factors. Educational policy plays a central role in this regard. With the help of an interpretive policy analysis, this book shows that society and politics cast the deciding vote on how poor educational performance is defined. Such performance cannot be measured with purely statistical means. Falling rates of poor educational outcomes and rising graduation rates create an impression of a positive development. But this book shows that even as graduation rates rise, students’ knowledge and skills aren’t keeping pace with them. Teachers and policymakers play a major role in this development, not least through education reforms motivated by party politics.

Being Neighbourly: Urban Reserves, Treaty Settlement Lands, and the Discursive Construction of Municipal–First Nation Relations

Ongoing land claims negotiations are creating areas of First Nation authority within and adjacent to many urban centres. Several government agencies and lobby groups have responded to these changes with discussion papers and toolkits, all implicitly or explicitly intended to help municipal and First Nation governments become better "neighbours." Using the theoretical and methodological insights found in critical discourse and interpretive policy analysis, this article examines the prevalence of this "neighbour-to-neighbour" discourse in municipal and other non-Indigenous policy, placing a particular focus on how it is used in land-use planning. I explore how these policy documents discursively construct and articulate a distinctly and deeply settler-colonial perspective on the desired relationship between First Nations and municipalities: one that has clear antecedents in liberal-economic notions of property, and that serves to conceal key aspects of Indigenous authority.

The Duplicity of Choice and Empowerment: Disability Rights Diluted in Australia’s Policies on Assistive Technology

The combination of choice as a contested concept and its increasing adoption as a policy principle necessitates a critical analysis of its interpretation within Australia’s reforms to disability services. While choice may appear to be an abstract and flexible principle in policy, its operationalization in practice tends to come with conditions. This paper investigates the interpretation of choice in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), via an interpretive policy analysis of assistive technology (AT) provision. Analysis of policy artefacts reveals a diminishing influence of disability rights in favor of an economic discourse, and contradictory assumptions about choice in the implementation of legislation. The language of choice and empowerment masks the relegation of the presumption of capacity to instead perpetuate professional power in determining access to resources by people with disability.