Societies in Conflict: Experts, Publics and Democracy
8th International Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference (IPA) 2013:
Societies in Conflict: Experts, Publics and Democracyà Vienne (Autriche) du 3 au 5 juillet 2013.
Les communications doivent être proposées avant le 28 février 2013.
Interpretive research in the study of politics represents a leading challenge to positivism and scientism in the name of a methodological pluralism that is sensitive to meaning, historical and social context, and the importance of human subjectivity. Important revisions of policy analysis in its linguistic, argumentative or practice turns have promoted recent research in the field. These concepts and streams have shown to which extent politics and policy practices are governed and shaped by discourse.
The Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna together with the Life-Science-Governance Research Platform (LSG), the Austrian Political Science Association (ÖGPW), the Department of social Studies of Science at the University of Vienna and the Institute of Forest, Environmental, and Natural Resource Policy at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU) hosts the 8th International Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) conference under the title
"Societies in Conflict: Experts, Publics and Democracy".
The IPA conference is an annual meeting of researchers and practitioners from around the world. Its 8th continuation gives a special focus to the intersection of policy analysis with Science and Technology Studies (STS) by highlighting the relation between publics and experts around one of the fundamental keywords of politics: “conflict”. How do we think of the study of conflicts through interpretive lenses? What are current societal challenges of politics and how do these challenges shape the general understanding of democracy, expertise and power? What implications can we derive for policy analysis, when investigating conflicts and controversies in environmental, urban, or health care policies? How are these implications handled in the field of science and technology studies, and what can policy analysis learn from this scholarly work?
The IPA plenary sessions and panels are aimed at rethinking and debating the theory and practice of different methods of interpretation and critical explanation in policy analysis, in particular the relation of policy expertise to publics and democratic governance.
Affairs such as Stuttgart 21, the ‘Occupy movement’s’ response to the financial crisis, ecological problems, or diverse controversies around novel technologies, are timely examples of conflicts between groups of publics and the political establishment. Such movements put into question the status of legitimate knowledge and the articulation of legitimate representation. They question, at the same time, routine operations of traditional democratic institutions, and reintroduce the question of how to define “the political” and “politics” in general.
The 8th continuation of the IPA conference gives therefore a special focus to the intersection of policy analysis with Science and Technology Studies (STS) by highlighting the relation between publics and experts around one of the fundamental keywords of politics: “conflict”. We conceive conflicts as constellations of knowledge and power, in which diverse actors are gathered around values, meanings and practices. The complexity of current policy issues and the institutional ambiguity create a demand for new forms of dealing with conflicts. They also invite us to study formats, in which the meaning of expertise and citizen participation can be renegotiated in performative manners.
Rearticulating policy settings along the relation between experts and publics is one of the main challenges of current research on democracy, governance and policy practices. Actors increasingly establish their positions through argumentations or performances, while the increased need for public acknowledgment recasts the issue of citizen’s participation or the framing of “experts”. These ideas are not entirely new: interpretive policy analysts have investigated mechanisms through which knowledge becomes the central device of power, creates institutions and governs them and/or legitimizes agendas of policy actors. In a similar vein, STS scholars have shown that scientific knowledge can legitimize political agendas or block them. Towards that end, they have investigated, how “experts” get their status and how they shape and are shaped by “publics”. By debating and analyzing the shape of diverse “publics”, they have also launched the question of whose knowledge counts as legitimate in specific time and place.
In the last decades, questions like these have regained the interest in both policy analysis and STS. How do we think about the study of conflicts through interpretive lenses? What aspects do we consider both as analysts and practitioners, when facing conflicts and controversies in environmental, urban, planning or health care policies? In how far do the current policy debates force us to rethink, what we mean by “political” and “politics”? What is the role or function of policy analysis and analysts in times of multiple crises? These are some of the pending issues that will be addressed at the IPA conference 2013 in Vienna.
Programme
Pre-Conference Course on Interpretive Methods
We will organize a pre-conference, following its successful history. This day-long course is intended to introduce participants – from doctoral students to more experienced researchers – to the broad field of interpretive policy analysis. More information will be provided soon.
For any questions or further information, please contact ipa2013_pre-conference[at]univie.ac.at
Keynote Speakers:
Deborah Stone, John Law
Round Tables:
- Politics of Resources
- Migration Studies
- IPA and STS in Asia
- Interpretivism & Critical Realism (?)
Author meets critics
1. Hugh T. Miller;
Governing Narratives. Symbolic Politics and Policy Change
2. Delf Rothe, Chris Methmann and Benjamin Stephan;
(De)Constructing the Greenhouse: Interpretive Approaches to Global Climate Governance
Practice Seminars: “Science interacts with Politics”
Practice workshops will be organized to bring scholars into dialogue with policy makers, practitioners, and professionals. Building on the successful format of the series of practice seminars that were developed in former IPA conferences in Cardiff and Tilburg, practice seminars explore how to bring researchers and practitioners together around shared problems.
Methodology Workshops
These 90-minute workshop sessions feature specialists in different aspects of interpretive policy analysis. Organized as „master-classes“ two experienced researchers will meet a small number of “newer” researchers to discuss issues in using a particular methodological strategy or method. For more information see the website and the list of panels, panel number 100.
- 1_(Re)defining the “Political” in Transition Societies: Shifting Governance Agency(ies)
- 2_Action Research: What Interpretative Policy Analysis Needs?
- 3_Arena-shifting and Urban/Regional Politics: Depoliticization, Conflict and Democracy
- 4_Citizen Engagement in the Risk Apparatus: Exploring the Role of Knowledge Representations, Scientific Methods and Technological Devices
- 5_Conflict as Instrument of Solution. Environmental Justice Research as New Research Paradigm for Policy Making and Bridge between Social and Nature Science
- 6_Conflict, Contradictions, Fetishism, and Hegemony: When Marxism meets IPA
- 7_Fracking: Conflicts over policy, publics, and democracy
- 8_Conflicts over the Boundaries of Belonging in the Age of Migration
- 9_Critical Discourse Analysis & Policy Conflicts
- 10_Dealing with Long Term Policy Problems: Making Sense of the Interplay between Puzzling over Meaning and Powering over Interests
- 11_Debating on CCTV: Controversies, Oppositions and Legitimization
- 12_Discourse and Argumentation
- 13_Discursive Mechanisms towards Saliency, Credibility, and Legitimacy in Scientific Environmental Policy Advice
- 14_Emotions and Discourses: Towards New Paths of Studying Knowledge Production
- 15_Energy Transitions between Forms of Knowledge and Public Controversies: New Tools and Perspectives for the Analysis of Key Turning Points
- 16_Frictions in Creativity and Power from the Perspective of Innovative Practices
- 17_From Deliberative Practice to Policy Outcomes: Connecting Argumentation with Institutionalization
- 18_Interrogating rationalities and expertise in international migration policies
- 19_Governing in Multi-Level Systems: Exploring the Intersection between Democracy, ‘Good Governance’ and Expertise
- 20_How to Think Together Politics and the Policy Process?
- 21_New politics of expertise and policy making: processing knowledge and influence (in Europe and beyond)
- 22_International Think Tanks: Organizing Transfers and Multi-Dimensional Consultation
- 23_Interpreting through Indicators: Science, Politics and Meaning in Measurement
- 24_Interpretive Experimental Studies – Oxymoron or Squaring the Circle?
- 25_Making sense and managing sensitivities of designing and developing multipurpose technological artifacts.
- 26_Interpretive Policy Analysis and Science Technology Studies in the Face of Crises
- 27_Is There a Place for the State in Interpretive Policy Analysis ?
- 28_Joint Fact-Finding: The Role of Science in Public Policy Discourse
- 29_Logos and Ethos: Network Governance, New Publics and the “New” Policy Web
- 30_Making Expertise Public: Dilemmas, Conflicts and Controversies
- 31_Making Knowledge Work – Interactive Approaches to Science-Policy-Society Relations
- 32_Making Sense of ‘Knowledge’ in International Relations
- 33_Missing Communication Links, Diverging Knowledge? The Problem of Weak Networks between Politicians and Citizens.
- 34_On the Power of Experts and the Politics of Time: Inquiring the (De-)Politicization of Expert Knowledge in Policy Processes
- 35_Participation – From Political Demand to Festivalised Offer?
- 36_Participatory Spaces: Facilitators, Experts, Rules and the Management of Dualities
- 37_Participatory Turn and Scientific Controversies
- 38_Perdurable Policy Narratives and Transient Story Lines
- 39_Performativity and Student Protest
- 40_Performing Expertise: Contestation in and around Arm’s Length Governance
- 41_Persistent Problems and Conflicting System Understandings: In Search of Critical Reconstructions
- 42_Policy as Translation: Reassembling Knowledge, Authority and Power across Time and Space.
- 43_Policy Challenges Deriving from Biotechnology. Public Engagement in Conflict
- 44_Power and Conflict from the Perspective of Practice Theories
- 45_Practice, Action, Structure – Competing Concepts of Conflict?
- 46_Practices of Risk and Technology Deliberation: Studying the Dynamics Connecting and Disconnecting Experts, Policy-Makers and Publics in Conflicts over Technology
- 47_Promising Techno-Scientific Innovation. Temporal Narratives in/as Policy Making
- 48_Public Experts or Expert Publics: How Agency and Empowerment Challenge ‘Legitimate’ Knowledge
- 49_Reclaiming Space, Reclaiming Stories
- 50_Regulating Prostitution: the Possibilities and Limits of Moral Policy. What Research Can Tell Us.
- 51_Representing Climate Change
- 52_Representing Practice
- 53_Re-Thinking Critique - Recent Economic Crises and New Paths in Critical IPE?!
- 54_Rethinking Research-Policy Dialogues at Times of Contested Knowledge
- 55_Rhizomic Network Analysis / Actor Network Theory
- 56_Science and Expertise as an Action Tool of Techno-Critical Movements. What is it? Who uses it? To what effect?
- 57_Self-organizing Publics – A Social Media (R)Evolution?
- 58_Social Justice: Normative Visions and Policy Frames
- 59_Taking Morals Seriously: Policy Change, Policy Conflicts and the Transformation of Morality
- 60_Tensions between Conceptual and Instrumental Scientific Advisory Work.The role of policy advice in transforming social and economic security.
- 61_The Contentious Politics of the Internet: New Actors, Practices, and Expertise in Digital Policymaking
- 62_The Dynamics of Escalation in Policy Conflict
- 63_The Local, National and Global in Educational Policy
- 64_The Role of Reflexivity in Conflicts and Policymaking
- 65_Top Leaders or Toy Soldiers? Reconsidering Discursive Agency in Policy Research
- 66_Where/When is the Conflict? The Contentious Politics of STS
- 99_Open Section
- 100_Methodology Workshop