Grundwissen Politik Band 43 PDF

# Grundwissen Politik: Band 43 ## Politikfeldanalyse - Akteure, Diskurse und Netzwerke in der öffentlichen Politik #### By: * Volker Schneider * Frank Janning ## Vorwort der Reihenherausgeber With politically focused analysis, political science evolved as a theory-driven and still applicatio...

# Grundwissen Politik: Band 43 ## Politikfeldanalyse - Akteure, Diskurse und Netzwerke in der öffentlichen Politik #### By: * Volker Schneider * Frank Janning ## Vorwort der Reihenherausgeber With politically focused analysis, political science evolved as a theory-driven and still application-oriented empirical science. Politically focused analysis asks what political actors do, why they do it, and what effect they ultimately have. At the center of the analytical interest are political decisions and their implementation in concrete contexts, taking into account their influencing factors. By focusing on empirically observable behavior, the perspective of politically focused analysis differs from legalistic-institutionalistic questions which dominated German political science until the 1960s and 1970s. These focused on the functioning of political institutions in a democracy with its constitutional framework and its normative mandate. Politically focused analysis understands the institutions of the political system, however, rather as a relevant context, in addition to situational and idealistic factors, for political decisions. With this textbook, which is based on a course at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Volker Schneider and Frank Janning present the first monograph on politically focused analysis in 15 years. First, there is a brief overview of the history and the general aims of politically focused research. Next, basic concepts and different theoretical approaches to explaining state action are presented and their application is illustrated using case studies from various policy fields. The focus is on actor- and structure-centered approaches which serve as a theoretical framework for integrating qualitative and quantitative research methods such as game theory, network analysis, and content analysis. This course also provides an overview of newer discourse and knowledge models of policy-making which take into consideration situations that require problem-solving and the issue of the democratic legitimation of political decision-making processes. This textbook provides students and all other readers with a kind of toolbox that can be used to analyze collective decision-making processes in policy fields. It is therefore essential for the political science analysis of state activity and for the study of public coordination and decision-making processes, in a narrower sense. ## 1.2 Die Geschichte der Policy-Forschung Politically focused research is presently an international area of research, with the transfer of theories and methods beyond national borders and the respective applications being the rule rather than the exception. However, the rise of politically focused research in Europe during the last 20 to 30 years clearly displays a dominant influence of behaviorism-influenced Anglo-American political science and its attempts to find empirically verifiable findings within manageable research designs. Interestingly, there has been an evolution apparent in recent years. More recent discussions in the American politically focused research for a more prominent role for qualitative orientation can be observed in the continental political science as more broadly accepted and further disseminated as part of the international academic discussion. ## 1.2.1 The Development of Politically Focused Research in the USA As already mentioned, the analysis of public policy is largely defined through the dependent variable, what is to be explained, rather than through specific methods or theories. This is particularly evident in the origins of this field of research which are traditionally dated to the publication of the book "The Policy Sciences" in 1951 in the USA. (Hesse 1985, Parsons 1995, Schubert 1991) Fueled by the empirical-analytical fervor of the behavioral revolution, these two editors - Lerner/Lasswell (1951), the latter of whom is often seen as the pioneer of empirical political science, set out with this anthology to found a kind of societal problem-solving science, a new interdisciplinary social science that would achieve for society roughly what medicine achieves for the human body. In this specific case, this means mobilizing the entire spectrum of theoretical approaches available in the social sciences, particularly the scientifically exact methods (e.g., statistical decision theory, communication theory, computer simulation, cost-benefit analysis, cybernetics, econometrics) and bringing them together for the purpose of better explaining the problem-solving behavior of private and public organizations. The knowledge available for this purpose should be gathered together in a kind of theory and method bank, without focusing on the existing disciplinary barriers. This problem-oriented, interdisciplinary and multimethod approach was described further by Lasswell in an article in the "International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences" 15 years later: "The policy sciences study the process of deciding or choosing and evaluate the relevance of available knowledge for the solution of particular problems. When policy scientists are concerned with government, law, and political mobilization, they focus on particular decisions. Policy scientists also study the choosing process of nongovernmental organizations and individuals and consider the significance of the current stock of knowledge for specific issues. Since an official decision of a private choice is a problem-solving activity, the five intellectual tasks are performed at varying levels of insights and understanding: Clarification of goals; description of trends; analysis of conditions; projection of future developments; and invention, evaluation, and selection of alternatives. The policy sciences integrate philosophy, history, science, prophecy, and commitment." (Lasswell 1968: 182.) ## 1.3 Methods, Research, and Explanatory Approaches From the perspective of the approaches discussed so far - with the essential inclusion of Lowi’s policy typology - the analysis of public policy is primarily based on the research subject as the dependent variable. The aim of a politically focused analysis is to explain the development of a public policy, including its effects. Now, the concept of explanation in the philosophy of science is itself a contentious issue. It is not just a matter of what means and under what conditions the social sciences are able to provide explanations at all. The entire debate is essentially a controversy about the scope of what is meant by an explanation. While, on one side, the well-known explanatory model of Hempel and Oppenheim places very precise demands on the logic of a causal explanation - the explanandum must first be a logical consequence of the explanans, second, the explanans must at least include one law, and third, the explanans must be empirically testable - interpretive approaches allow for less concrete methods such as “interpretation” and “understanding”. The distinction between “explaining” and “understanding” can be connected with the divergent analytical perspectives of deductive and inductive research. From the former perspective, explanations are understood as logical-deductive systems of concepts which derive the phenomenon to be explained from a theory, which presupposes that in such a theory logical and lawful relationships are expressed. In this sense, explaining a state policy would be an application of one or more state or political theories to the empirical representation of the formation and development patterns of a policy development. Empirical politically focused research serves here to test and thus falsify one or more theoretical assumptions which, based on this test, are assigned to the overarching context of logically closed statements, or not. Such a test of theoretical assumptions must be based on a large number of cases or variants in order to prove the general applicability of the theoretical statements. For the inductive approach, it is characteristic that it rather uses the intensive engagement with a single case or a comparative analysis of a lesser number of cases, and that takes into account the complexity of the empirical material and the contradiction of individual findings over several steps to construct plausible connections and underlying patterns. Here, theory-building does not come at the beginning but rather at the end of scientific procedures. Inductive politically focused research can therefore contribute to our being able to develop plausible, logically sound theoretical assumptions about certain policy fields or about the effects of specific measures, about which we have little information yet, and which do not succumb to the complexity of individual cases. The implied separation of tasks between deductive and inductive procedures in politically focused research has to be taken with the caveat that the distinction between deductive and inductive approaches and research perspectives in the social sciences is only conditionally sensible and possible. This is partly because purely deductive theory-building can hardly occur without recourse to empirical experiences and observations (e.g., from inductive case studies), and similarly, inductive interpretation of individual cases already operates with cognitive schemas and criteria of relevance which are not directly drawn from the specific case but rather refer to a storehouse of implicit background theories.