Arguing for strategy – strategizing arguments? Discourses, argumentation and the role of policy analysts in policy change processes (Vortrag auf dem Panel “Argumentative strategies in the policy change process”, Section “Policy Design and Policy Change: Time Strategies and Leadership”

Confronted with problems which they perceive as new or even as grand challenges, policy makers increasingly describe their answers no longer in the conventional language of policy analysis as programs or plans. What is required to cope with climate change, lack of innovative capacity or demographic change, so a lot of policy makers argue, is a strategy. The concept of strategy is sometimes presented as an alternative mode of policy-making and problem solving. In these cases, strategy is supposed to replace the concept of policy altogether. In other instances, the use of the term strategy looks more like a conceptual transfer from strategic management. And there are also cases in which the term strategy appears to be merely the fallout of a conceptual drift when policy-makers jump on the bandwagon with the latest fashionable branding.

How can and how should policy scholars deal with a situation in which complex policy change processes are increasingly interpreted with reference to strategic concepts? Should they see their role as policy analysts producing the arguments which seem to be most effective in persuading different addressees and audiences to support the proposed strategies? Should they deconstruct the rhetoric of policy makers inventing new policy strategies by putting their arguments in the context of broader cultural discourses? Could they refer to analytical concepts of strategy-making and strategic steering in order to critically analyse and evaluate argumentative strategies legitimizing the proposed strategies of policy change? The paper argues that the latter is a fruitful approach for those who want to take the argumentative turn not only in the direction of going from argument to discourse, but also back again (Fischer/Gottweis 2012: 7). To that end, it will outline a framework for critical argumentative analysis of political strategies and illustrate its implications with reference to empirical cases.

Key Words: Policy process, strategy, argumentation


Vortrag