David Laws & Nanke Verloo (University of Amsterdam)

In this paper we propose to explore conflict as a context for studying policy practice. Conflict has some clear virtues in this regard. In situations of conflict, the self-evident flow of action is disrupted, whether through the efforts of other actors or through turns of events, rendering the tacit structure of practice more observable.  Analytic leverage is created in the counternarratives of protagonists, which provide a kaleidoscope of juxtapositions against which the accounts of policy-practitioners can be read. It also provided by the liminal spaces that open when conventional practices break down and the unfolding logic of the situation still requires a response.  Practitioners' improvisations in these unsettled moments provide a view onto the way they read the demands that are posed and reason about what sort of action is appropriate and possible.

 The paper will reflect on these and other features of conflict as a domain for research on practice through a review of experience in two cases from urban neighborhoods in the Netherlands. Through a combination of ethnographic fieldwork, extended interviews, and narrative analysis, we reconstruct 'stories' of policy practice as it is performed and experienced in episodes of conflict in these neighbourhoods. The cases provide a view on how policy-makers negotiate meaning, space, and practice in these critical moments and develop the relationships on which their practice depends. In one case, the death of a young man triggered a crisis marked by divergent interpretations in which policy-makers had to negotiate proposals for action while the meaning of events remained open and was being shaped by their own response. In the other case, policy-makers in a new town development in The Hague found themselves in a controversy in which the tactics and strategies of a group of residents disrupted and persistently contested their efforts to create a sphere of local community from within limits posed by their commitment to administrative rationality.

 In addition to reflecting on conflict as a context for research on practice, we will present a preliminary account of 'what policy makers do' based on our analysis of these, and other, episodes.  This account emphasizes the significance of conflicts as 'critical moments' in policy-practice and the mismatch between the action repertoire provided by conventional practice and the demands that emerge in these critical moments.  The significance of the critical moments can be accounted for in the way three networks-an action network, a semantic network, and a physical network of objects and spaces-are related and, momentarily it seems, become open to change.  Experience in these settings also highlights the limits of the conventional repertoire, particularly the limited use of interactive practices (dialogue, debate, bargaining, and negotiation) that might respond to the interdependence dramatized in these episodes.  Here our analysis confirms and extends prior accounts of the force of convention, but also points to a way out. 

Frank Nullmeier & Tanja Pritzlaff (University of Bremen)

How do practitioners interact with each other in the practice of policy-making? Are there typical sequences of interaction that can be identified at the micro-level of politicians' day-to-day activities? How can a com-prehensive typology of political practices be developed?  

 The aim of the paper is to present a range of typical forms of political interaction, i.e. of political practices, that can be discovered using video-based ethnography. These typical forms of interaction may serve as a starting point for a comprehensive typology of political practices. Video-based ethnography, also referred to as microethnography (Curtis D. LeBaron; Jürgen Streeck; Charles Goodwin), offers a chance to understand what policy-makers do and how they make sense of what they do. The systematic, video-based analysis of both practitioners' talk and their nonverbal, embodied behaviour opens up new possibilities to identify, isolate and categorize typical sequences of interaction.

 Focussing on audiovisual data from actual committee meetings at different levels of the political system, the paper presents examples of four different types of political practices:

 1. Practices of translation can be identified as sequences in which participants in political face-to-face inter-actions, like for example committee meetings, try to integrate their different background assumptions and webs of meaning into a unified and harmonized use of concepts - a practice referred to in German as "of-fizielle Sprachregelung" ('official version').

 2. Practices of repair can be identified as micro-interventions during sequences of conflict, misunderstanding or disagreement. These practices have the function to put the respective meeting on the right track again. The self-image of the respective participants as political decision-makers becomes particularly apparent in the course of these kinds of repair-sequences.

 3. Practices of renarration are typical practices in the context of joint decision-making. By renarrating a pro-posal that has already been made - by telling a slightly different version of the story from their own perspec-tive - agents seem to be able to integrate the proposed decision into their own, differing background assump-tions and evaluative standards. In addition, the multiple - although revised - repetitions of the suggested solution seem to add substance to the idea of a joint solution that the agents as a group can adopt as their decision. Through their nonverbal behaviour, participants signalize the growing coherence of the group, their increasing approval of the story that is told again and again in slight variations.

 4. Practices of self-authorization are sequences in which participants reassure each other of their authority as decision-makers, i.e. in which they define and reinforce their position to legitimately make the actual deci-sion at hand.

 These four typical sequences of interaction serve as introductory examples and as a starting point for a com-prehensive typology of political practices, i.e. of practices through which practitioners reinforce their self-image as policy-makers.

Steve Connelly (University of Sheffield)

An important aspect of the development of and prognosis for new forms of governance is their legitimacy: for authority to be successfully devolved and diffused to new institutions and actors not previously engaged in policy- and decision-making it must, by definition, become legitimate.   Yet it is widely recognised that the traditional certainties of legitimacy conferred by the ballot box on decision makers, and by technical expertise on their advisers, (to a contested extent) break down in 'the new governance', raising the questions of how and why new forms of governance actually take root and become acceptable and accepted. 

 To some extent this process becomes visible in explicit 'legitimacy discourse', through which actors explicitly set out, justify and often contest processes in terms which draw from political, and other, theoretical positions (e.g. norms of inclusivity, representativeness, effectiveness and so etc.)   Empirical research has also used interviews to engage practitioners in reconstructing similar arguments through reflections on their practice.   However, this approach plausibly leads to an over-theorisation, biasing analysis towards an understanding of legitimacy as arising from contests between defined theoretical positions. 

 In contrast, this paper explores the possibilities opened by two other bodies of theoretical work.  On the one hand, theories of practice and practices suggest that legitimacy arises through the doing of governance (conceived as an interactive, skilled, and situated activity) rather than in arguments about legitimacy.  On the other, social and psychological theories have explored how innovative practices and their associated power relationships become legitimate in contexts such as management innovations within commercial organisations i.e. setting which are not 'political' in the classic sense of being engaged in the authoritative allocation of value in the public sphere.  

 Illustrated by drawing on observations made by the author in various participant/observer roles and governance settings, this paper explores how these two perspectives allow an analysis of how new governance processes become legitimate, both through being practiced in legitimate ways and through shaping new norms of legitimacy.  However, it also seems important not to lose the normative evaluatory power of political theory - pre-eminently to enable us to make judgements about the democratic qualities of governance.  The paper thus concludes by suggesting how political and social theories of legitimacy can be reconciled in the analysis of governance practice. 

Merlijn van Hulst, Laurens de Graaf & Gabriël van den Brink (Tilburg University)

In order to understand the way so-called 'exemplary practitioners' (van Hulst, de Graaf and van den Brink 2009) work in changing urban environments, we are studying a group of approximately 50 practitioners, civil servants, professionals and active citizens. Five Dutch cities are involved in the project: Amsterdam (12 actors), The Hague (12 actors), Leeuwarden (7 actors), Utrecht (12 actors), Zwolle (7 actors). We use a set of methods and techniques that resembles ethnographic fieldwork in local governance (Van Hulst 2008) and policy making more general, but gives it a twist.

 In this paper we do two things.

 First, we describe the way we have done our investigation. We have used scouting to find the actors we want to study. That is, we have sent someone (a non-academic) into the field to talk to people and make a list of exemplary practitioners. As a next step we have followed the 50 actors for one day. Finally, we have interviewed these people, focusing on a specific topic they propose themselves, guided by John Forester's approach to making practitioners profiles. We thus both watch practitioners in action and hear them and people around them talk about it.  

 Second, we describe how and what our investigation tells us about the way these practitioners work. The practitioners we study are selected not for being ordinary or even good policy makers. They are selected because they stand out, because they do things differently. We would suggest that they make a difference because they do things differently (hence the title, referring to Gregory Bateson's dictum). We want to know how they try to make a difference, what activities - verbal and non-verbal - they engage in, in order to cope with problems. Focusing on these actors and their agency in the context of their work gives us specific, grounded insights about their everyday, exemplary practice. It teaches us about the elements of their practice and helps us to further develop and critically examine the concepts and ideas that are part of the interpretive, practice-oriented vocabulary-in-use (e.g., local knowledge/knowing, practice stories). This second part of our paper builds on previous work on practitioners and practice, including that of Schön (1983), Forester (1999), Wagenaar (2004) and Yanow (2004).

Christian Bueger (Institute for Development and Peace)

Why do some novel policy ideas in global governing achieve a wide audience and are institutionalized while others are not? Why are policy ideas such as 'Human Security','Peacebuilding' or the 'Responsibility to Protect' so successful?

 Answers to these questions remain incomplete. To explain the success of policy ideas, International Relations (IR) scholars have pointed to the importance of policy entrepreneurs or advocacy communities and have identified the structural condition of uncertainty as a necessary condition. This paper complements these claims. In arguing that ideas should be understood as fashion, I advance three additional arguments: 1) the success of an idea depends on the practices of producing it; 2) for an idea to be successful an object or artifact needs to be manufactured which allows the idea to travel; 3) the better the idea is flexible enough to be adaptable to local needs the wider it will spread. To make these three interrelated arguments this paper draws on the Sociology of Translations and uses the Responsibility to Protect as an illustrative case.

 The Sociology of Translations, also known as Actor-Network Theory, argues against a logic of diffusion and for a logic of translation. Diffusion posits that an idea remains stable while it travels. Translation suggests that the spread of policy ideas is a paradoxical process in which ideas are stable and flexible the same time. They are capable to accommodate a global as well as a local meaning. Moreover, translation commits to the core ideas of the 'logic of practicality' (Pouliot), that is, knowledge cannot be understood independently from practice. In this sense, translation picks up the core idea of the logic of practicality and develops it further to understand the spread of policy ideas and, in extension, policy change.

 Section two introduces the logic of translation in clarifying how it takes the logic of practicality further and interrogates the similarities and differences to a logic of diffusion. Section three elaborates the three core arguments of this paper in drawing on the case of the Responsibility to Protect. The Responsibility to Protect, meanwhile abbreviated by the acronym R2P, is a policy idea which reframes the problem of humanitarian intervention. Developed in 2001 by an international commission composed of elder statesmen and academic experts it has spread widely, is debated in global governance discourses worldwide and has even been formally adopted by all heads of nation states at the 2005 UN World Summit. As will be shown the sociology of translations puts us in a favorable position to understand why the idea was so successful on the one side, but why it remains controversial on the other.

 In summary, the paper advances the current debate on a logic of practicality and provides a better understanding of why and how global governance ideas travel.

Ellen Wiemer (Wageningen University)

This paper departs from the stance that far-reaching public sector reforms are not only driven by the rationale of transformation, but also, and foremost, by the belief, identity and social context of the individuals who have to put the reform into practice. This study will analyse how individual civil servants make sense of such a public sector reform that formally introduces new working modes and relations with other public institutions.

 The public sector reform that is central to this analysis is the Investment Fund for Rural Areas (ILG) through which the Dutch national government delegated the implementation of national rural spatial policies to the twelve provinces. This decentralisation entails a shift of duties and responsibilities towards the provinces. Hence, a formally new relation was introduced between the national government - particularly the ministry of agriculture - and the provinces.

 The new formal arrangement is put in practice by individual civil servants. They have to make sense of the formal arrangements and integrate them into a highly complex, dynamic and ambiguous context. This paper will tackle the question of how this sensemaking process passes off. Special attention will be paid to the newly to develop relations between the individual national and provincial actors involved.

 First findings disclose that in finding this new role, provincial and national civil servants balance between two extremes: trust in the goodwill of the other party on the one hand, and insisting on formally stipulating details on the other hand. The latter could be interpreted as a manifestation of scepticism in the goodwill or capability of the other party - and some respondents say so. Exploring this ostensible contradiction, and to understand the sensemaking process in a broader sense, implies to first have a close look on what individual civil servants do, the meaning they give to what they are doing, before assigning interpretations to it in scientific terms.

 Since a substantial part of civil servants' daily routines consists of attending meetings and writing documents, I expect that a substantial part of the sensemaking process evolves in discursive practices. Discursive practices are not only what civil servants do; in them they also give arguments and account for doing what they are doing, or plan to do, in a social setting. For that reason, the empirical data for this study are collected through overt observations of meetings both at the ministry level, as well as on provincial level concerning the ILG, ethnographic interviewing of individuals participating in these meetings and studying of relevant policy documents.

 Even though some studies have paid attention on how individual civil servants make sense of formal arrangements in their daily routines, none of them has put special attention on changing relations in it. Therefore, the paper will enhance the understanding of the sensemaking process of individual civil servants in translating formal arrangements into a practical context and changing relations it.

Martin B. Carstensen (Aalborg University)

An argument that has done much to secure the status of  ideational explanations in political science is that the institutionalisation of ideas has significant effect on actors' identification of their interests as well as the interests of their political adversaries. Despite its strength in arguing for the importance of ideas, the focus on institutionalisation of ideas has had as an unfortunate consequence that actors implicitly are argued to internalise ideas, in effect

making it difficult to understand how actors are able to change the ideas and institutions they themselves uphold. Drawing on cultural sociology and sociological institutionalism, the paper introduces the 'bricoleur' as an alternative vision of agency. It is argued, first, that actors cannot cognitively internalize highly structured symbolic systems, and ideas are thus outside the minds of actors. Second, using the cognitive schemas at their disposal, actors construct strategies of action based on the pre-constructed ideational and political institutions. Third, actors have to work actively and creatively with the ideas and institutions they use, because the cultural structure that the actor is part of does not determine the actors' response to problems or new circumstances. Fourth, as a vast number of ideational studies have witnessed to, actors face a complex array of challenges in getting their idea to the top of the policy agenda, which makes it all the more important to act pragmatically, putting ideas together that may not be logically compatible but rather answers to a political and cultural logic. In sum, agency often takes the form of bricolage, where bits and pieces of the existing ideational and institutional legacy is put together in new forms leading to significant political transformation.

Neil Hutton (Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and University of Strathclyde)

Between 1993 and 2003, a multi-disciplinary research team (IT, Law, Political Science and Sociology)  worked with senior judges in Scotland to design, build and eventually implement a Sentencing Information System. The aim of the system was to enable judges, when deciding sentence in a particular case, to search the database for similar cases and thereby pursue the goal of greater consistency in sentencing while retaining their discretion. The challenge for the designers was to find a way of representing seriousness to allow cases to be compared in a way that was acceptable to judges. Scotland is a common law jurisdiction without a codified legal system so classifications of offences which are used by prosecutors are broad and complex and of little use for comparing seriousness

The aim of the project might also be described as an attempt to change the object of sentencing. The paper  describes how the translation from an intuitive model of sentencing to one based on evidence was performed and how the eventual "definition" of seriousness was enacted through the negotiations of the judges, researchers, court clerks, court managers, government research funders and other agencies and objects.  The SIS does not display the methods of its production. This paper shows  the complexities, uncertainties and resistances which were worked through. This is  also a  story of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which power was exercised (and not exercised) in a process which was continuously contested. The author of this paper was the sociologist member of the research team.