Irene Rafanell (University of the West of Scotland) & Sarah Vaughan (University of Edinburgh)

Interaction, Consensus and the Practice of Development

Central to much thinking about the movement of policy from one domain to another seems to be a residual assumption that some essential meaning of the policy remains, but is variously interpreted in different contexts. We argue, by contrast, that the new consensuses that emerge in the process of dissemination and implementation themselves (re)constitute the policy. In doing so, we stress both the open-ended nature and the constitutive power of the new knowledge which emerges from micro-processes of interaction in policymaking. We suggest that understanding social phenomena as underdetermined helps explain how and why the 'translation' of a policy developed in one context and implemented in another is inherently unpredictable.

 We illustrate the utility of this approach by tracing the processes by which a Public Sector Capacity Building Programme (PSCAP), developed and devised by the World Bank, was discussed, developed, and implemented in Ethiopia, and how it evolved in practice. Empirical discussion focuses on the ways in which World Bank officials recruited senior government support for their policy; how these policymakers rethought and shaped the policy in their own interests; and, finally, how the exceptionally mixed understanding and reception of the policy in different parts of rural and urban Ethiopia continued a process by which original outcomes were importantly transformed. What was initiated as a technocratic project became a highly political undertaking, with problematic consequences for those who first conceived it.

Nina Amelung (Technical University Berlin)

Production of Standards as stabilizer for deliberative policy instruments

Policy instruments are institutions that determine actors' behavior; they allow forms of collective action to stabilize;

hey include certain interests and actors and exclude others. Therefore the choice

of an instrument is a political issue because it structures the political process and its results.

(Lascoumes/LeGales 2007)

Claiming on Deweys call for new participatory forms of democratic governance and many other

democracy and communication theory oriented approaches (e.g. Habermas, Dryzek) deliberative

policy instruments emerged over the last decades. A huge spread of deliberation methods, tools,

procedures on local, national or even international level can be observed (planning cells, citizen

juries, scenario workshops, worldwide views etc.). Connected to this a "deliberative industry" is

visible with instrument designers, facilitators and variety of applications and implementations who

built a social life around those instruments. In this "industry" actors and networks are involved in

cooperation and competition for enforcing the innovation processes of single instrument designs and

bring them from invention to implementation and stabilization. This is nested in discourses of

standardization of instruments.

This paper investigates the phenomenon of two trends in the field of deliberative procedures

evolving in the last three decades. One is that there is a designer community of deliberative

procedures (practitioners, facilitators) who developed and redeveloped concrete procedures as tools

for implementation (sometimes even with protecting them as a brand with a trademark) that

become de facto standards and another is an ongoing process of national and international

standardization discourses about technical standards and quality standards that influences the

designing process itself, the choice for instruments and finally its spread when policy instruments

materialize with own dynamics in implementation contexts which allows them to become dominant

designs.

In this paper an approach of mapping the genealogy of deliberative instruments is presented. Based

on literature review 10 instruments and their historical genealogical innovation journeys, their

standardization processes and its influence on theirs spreads are analyzed and interpreted.

Hugh T. Miller ( Florida Atlantic University)

Public Policy and Administration as Discursive Dominance: The Process of Structuration  and Institutionalization

TBA

Marte Feiring (Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research)

This paper explores two processes of policy-making in action. On the one hand, it looks into the processes of defining the field, i.e. how the concept of self-help is defined and redefined by the practitioners and policy-makers in Norway. On the other hand, it follows the processes of how of structuring or regionalising the self-help field to a service for all citizens of Norway. 

In the Norwegian self-help field today there is a debate on how to delimit and define the concept of self-help. One contested theme is how to delimit assistant self-help (or professional supported self-help work) from self-help that takes place without professionals and without a leader. By following the actors in their every-day activities, I am interested in what tensions, negotiations and alliances exit between the different agencies (i.e. private and public, administrative and service-oriented, lay-people and professionals).

The self-help field in Norway is based on organisational diversity of networks made up of civil agents as well as professional and bureaucratic agencies at state, regional and local levels. At state level the Directorate of Health is an expert body in charge of administrative, technical and professional tasks; while all health care services are governed by the Ministry of Health and Care Services. Specialists health services are state responsibility and taken care of in regional trusts, while the local authorities are in charge of primary health and social services. The field of self-help is in the making and main actors represent politico-administrative bodies such as in the Directorate of Health as well as the main self-help bodies (as for example Self-help Norway which is a nodal point and a clearing house).

This research project is funded by the Norwegian Directorate of Health; it starts in March 2009 and will lasts for two-four years. Methodologically speaking, it applies the ethnographic approach "follow the actors" in order to development of the field at national, legal and local level. Case-studies including documentary research, interviews and observation are the main methods.

Trine Vilumsen & Cristian Bruger

Security Expertise after Securitization: Coping with Dilemmas of Engaging with Practice

The end of the cold war saw several security analysts pose the question of whether academic security analysis was "actually part of the solution or part of the problem", contributing more to the manufacturing of insecurity and threats than it did to 'de-securitizing' contemporary politics. A normative dilemma was formulated: "how to write or speak about security, when security knowledge risks the production of what one tries to avoid, what one criticizes: that is, the securitization of migration, drugs, and so forth". Analysts have shown, for instance, how the discipline of strategic studies helped construct the language of nuclear politics and define its universe of the thinkable. 1990s constructivists sought to show that the end of the cold war was influenced by the proliferation of new strategic thought, and contemporary empirical studies stress how security professionals manufacture insecurity. Given this evidence it seems a dangerous business to do security research. The sharp distinction between theory and practice - which left theory in an ivory tower detached from the world of practice - is replaced by a 'field of power' encompassing theory-practice-policy. In this field, questions of the potential political role of the analyst become central. But, how to be a security expert in the face of the 'normative dilemma'? Answers to this question have been almost absent from debates. Problematizations of the role of the analyst have become widespread, but solutions have been scarce. This paper tries to fill this gap by developing three positions/practices available to the security analyst 'after securitization'. These are; first, the notion of the 'organic intellectual' based on (Neo-) Gramscian thought; second, the concept of the 'collective intellectual' developed from the work of Bourdieu; and third, the vision of an 'ironist' inspired by the work of Richard Rorty and John Dewey . The paper introduces the core dilemmas analysts face, and proceeds to discuss the different answers the three ideal types suggest.  Equipped with these ideal types, the security intellectual will have tools to contemplate his/her position towards the world of practice and un-intended securitization may be minimized.