Reframing Public Policy Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices [Hardcover]

In recent years a set of radical new approaches to public policy, drawing on discursive analysis and participatory deliberative practices, have come to challenge the dominant technocratic, empiricist models in policy analysis. In his major new book Frank Fischer brings together these various new approaches for the first time and critically examines them. The book will be required reading for anyone studying, researching, or formulating public policy.

Introduction
1. Making Social Science Relevant: Policy Inquiry in Critical Perspective
Public Policy and the Discursive Construction of Reality
2. Constructing Policy Theory: Ideas and Discourse
3. Public Policy and Discourse Construct: Multiple Realities and Interpretative Understanding
Public Policy and Discursive Politics
4. Public Policy and Discursive Analysis
5. Policy Discourse versus Advocacy Coalitions: Interpreting Policy Change and Learning
Discursive Policy Inquiry: Restituting Empirical Analysis
6. Postempiricist Foundations: Social Constructionism and Practical Discourse
7. Interpreting Public Policy: Analytical and Methodological Perspectives
8. Public Policy as Narrative: Stories, Frames, and Metanarratives
9. The Argumentative Turn: Policy Analysis as Discursive Practice
Deliberative Governance
10. Citizens and Experts: Democratizing Policy Deliberations
11. The Deliberative Policy Analyst: Theoretical Issues and Practical Challenges

This book is an excellent presentation and defense of the constructivist perspective on policy analysis, and makes a strong, positive case for the utility of postempiricist reasoning for understanding policy choices. an excellent, well-argues presentation. if a reader wants to understand the discursive peropective on policy, this volume would be a very appropriate place to begin. --Political Science Quarterly

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