Policy and Power: A Conceptual Framework between the 'Old' and 'New' Policy Idioms

During the last few decades, both policy practices and policy idioms have drastically changed. Concepts such as interactive planning, network management, stakeholder dialogue, deliberative democracy, policy discourses, governance, etc. have replaced older ones such as public administration, policy p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy sciences 2004-12, Vol.37 (3/4), p.339-356
Main Authors: Arts, Bas, Jan Van Tatenhove
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural policy
Climate change policy
Concepts
Conceptualization
Deliberative democracy
Discourses
Endangered
Endangered species
Environmental policy
Europeanization
Games
Governance
Idioms
Indexing in process
Interest groups
Modernization
Nuclear energy policy
Policy analysis
Policy making
Policy studies
Political modernization
Political power
Political science
Politics
Power
Public administration
Public policy
Regret
Social construction
Social interaction
Supranationalism
Terminology
Vocabulary
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Summary:During the last few decades, both policy practices and policy idioms have drastically changed. Concepts such as interactive planning, network management, stakeholder dialogue, deliberative democracy, policy discourses, governance, etc. have replaced older ones such as public administration, policy programmes, interest groups, institutions, power, and the like. Although we recognise the relevance and importance of this shift in vocabulary, we also regret related 'losses'. We particularly regret that the concept of power has - in our view - become an 'endangered species' in the field of public policy analysis. We therefore will develop a framework to analyse power - being a multi-layered concept - in policy practices in this article. We will do so on the basis of the so-called policy arrangement approach, which combines elements of the old and new policy vocabularies. In addition, we draw upon different power theories in developing our argument and model. As a result, we hope to combine the best of two worlds, of the 'old' and the 'new' idioms in policy studies, and to achieve our two aims: to bring back in the concept of power in current policy analysis and to expand the policy arrangement approach from a power perspective.
ISSN:0032-2687
1573-0891
DOI:10.1007/s11077-005-0156-9