Interpretative Policy Analysis - development of a toolbox

Although interpretative approaches to policy analysis have been developed and initiated mainly in the United States, they gained, relatively speaking more influence in Europe. However, it has been rather difficult to transmit these interpretative approaches to policy analysis to a wider array of community scholars and students in the field. The present research project has two main goals: On the one side it studies why interpretative approaches to policy analysis have not been successful in the US scholarship although these approaches support the identification of mechanisms; something empirical approaches that follow a positivist research design have not been able to do. This analysis connects directly to the ongoing American discussion on the political science direction and its public relevance. On the other side it intends to develop a toolbox for the methodical devices available for interpretative policy analysis. This systematisation, clarification and delineation of methodical devices (e.g. frame, narrative, discourse, rhetorical, and emotional analysis) supports the more practical application to policy analysis and allows for building bridges to more `conventional` policy analysis approaches that center around categories such as for example interests, networks, actors and institutions. Thus this research project has essentially two research parts that are interconnected with each other: Part 1 sheds light onto the fact as to why empirical approaches have been so attractive in the US and to investigate as to what mechanisms are underlying their dominance. The debate on the direction of American political science has recently received some media attention and thus some prominent political scientists have been interviewed. I will contact them and by using a snowballing technique I will interview other scholars at Rutgers, Harvard, Cornell, etc. universities. I expect to develop an understanding on how bridges between empirical and interpretative methods applied to policy analysis could be found. This knowledge will then enable me to develop ideas on how to increase the relevance of interpretative methods and to build bridges between empirical and interpretative methods used in policy analysis. Part 2 analyses how concepts developed by interpretative policy analysis approaches are defined, delineated, reconstructed in case analysis, and interconnect with each other. The development of a toolbox, that systematises their application, should then enable me to develop ideas on how to connect interpretative policy analysis to more mainstream political science approaches. The second part is based on text analysis and on the other hand on provisional application to case analysis: The development of a methodological toolbox for interpretative policy analysis and the empirical findings gathered in the course of my research stay in the US will form part of my (planned) habilitation thesis.