Jan-Peter Voß (Berlin Institute of Technology)

The paper explores shifting practices of policy-making in connection with the institutionalisation of policy knowledge, especially theoretical knowledge about how to govern society devised by professional policy designers.

I wish to probe a diagnosis of ongoing developments in policy practice since about WWII as the emergence of range of differentiated technologies of governing: While the development of policy knowledge is undergoing professionalization, policy-making becomes less a matter of ad-hoc programme design, and more a matter of choosing from a set of universally available design. This introduces a division of labour between local policy networks where choices are made and global designs are fitted to and translated with local contexts, and global design networks where policy instruments are developed, maintained, and evaluated. A constitutive feature of this emerging constellation is the objectification of policy knowledge in form of tools, instruments or modes of governance. While policy expertise is increasingly "sourced out" to private consultants and service providers, policy instruments gather a transnational constituency of expert designers, service providers and evaluators which may become further institutionalised in form of specialised service industries catering for a particular policy instrument (e.g. emissions trading, consensus conferences, new public management, regulation of infrastructures, public-private partnerships, cross-border leasing, e-government). This means that policy instruments take on a social life of their own and introduce a distinct force to the dynamics of governance change. Against this background transnational policy change (e.g. privatisation and liberalisation, new public management, participatory governance) can be reinterpreted as partly driven by emerging technologies of governing and their dynamics.

The paper develops concept and diagnosis with close attendance to emissions trading and citizens' juries as two exemplary cases.

In conclusion I discuss new insights into the dynamics of policy change and the ambivalences of technologisation in policy-making as regards governing capacities and their democratic control.

Tim Tenbensel (University of Auckland)

This paper addresses the fact that policy workers are frequently subject to conflicting criteria for evaluating policy processes, based on different ideas of what constitutes relevant policy knowledge, and conflicting ideas of accountability. Academic debates about policy process, knowledge and accountability are frequently mirrored in dilemmas of policy practice. This paper outlines a practical, heuristic metaphor, based on principles of 'requisite variety' that can assist policy workers to juggle the competing understandings of 'good policy process'

Arata Yamamoto (University College London)

Over the last three decades or so, the language of public participation, be it deliberative, communicative or collaborative, has become prevalent in both the theory and practice of policy making and planning. Yet, planners themselves continue to express scepticism towards public participation, often quoting the threat of NYMBY-ism and the need to have regard to just planning outcomes as well as procedures. Nevertheless, given this prevalence, the present paper argues that discourses and storylines of public participation themselves should be regarded as significant categories of political analysis. Accordingly from Hajarian discourse analytic perspective, this paper firstly argues that the attitudes, motivations and actions of planners towards public participation are shaped within constantly shifting institutional context, or changing communicative relations between planning stakeholders. Subsequently, this paper further argues that forcing planners to accept unwanted participatory practices will only be de-legitimised by their manipulation of the existing institutional context. This argument is then examined using qualitative empirical data gathered from interviews and published materials on the participatory processes established for the first London Plan making process at the Greater London Authority between 2000 and 2004. This paper concludes by claiming that stakeholders in pursuit of more deliberative processes need to accommodate unequal communicative relations between planning stakeholders in their political strategy and to consider whether their planning goals and interests might be better served by expressing them using ideas, concepts and discursive categories that are unrelated to the prevailing perception of public participation.

Hal Colebatch (University of New South Wales)

The emergence of 'policy analysis' as a skilled occupation in the governmental process raised questions about the significance of this work for democratic control in government, and the relationship between the discourses of elected leadership, expert policy analysis, and public norms and understandings, in the construction of policy.  The questions are even more acute in the 'transitional polities' of Eastern Europe, where the norms of democratic accountability are less well established, but the rules of the game are 'under reconstruction'.  This paper reviews the way the themes of professionalism and participation relate to policy work in transitional polities, the tensions that policy workers face, and the way that the diverse discourses available are mobilized in the discursive construction of policy and policy work.

Lim Sang Hun

This research is on the interpretations of a pharmaceutical regulation in South Korea, the separation of prescribing and dispensing (SPD), and the resulted formulation of policy in the policy-making process in the period between 1981 and 2000. By examining this case, this research aims at exploring how a healthcare policy can be interpreted as a policy alternative of different policy issues by different policy actors, and how changes in policy-making process alter the contestation of these interpretations and formulation of policy.

Korea traditionally had a one-stop system, where doctors were allowed to distribute drugs and pharmacists to dispense any drug without doctor's prescription. The SPD was a regulation which delimits roles of doctors and pharmacists so that doctors only prescribe drugs and pharmacists dispense drugs only by prescription. This research examines (1) how this policy has been interpreted by different policy actors - healthcare providers such as doctors and pharmacists, consumers' groups represented by NGOs, and the government; and (2) how democratisation, which changed the relationship between the government and society, as well as policy-making process, has affected on the formulation of the SPD policy through contestation of interpretations in the policy-making process.

With this aim in view, this research analyses such documents as reports, announcements, pamphlets and newspapers published by the government and interest groups involved in the policy-making process. In addition, interviews were conducted with policy actors - politicians, government officials and interest group leaders.

Yasmine Debarge (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan)

This presentation will describe the conditions which eased the enactment of laws institutionalizing Child Access Services in Hungary during the late 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st.These services are places where the custodial parent can leave the child so that the noncustodial parent can practice its visitation rights. The visitation can be supervised by a third person not related to the couple. Parents sometimes come in from their own initiative but more often judges send them in. These services concentrate on the noncustodial parent who are most of the time biological fathers who recognized the child at birth. The first child access service has been created by children care professionals in the late eighties: in 1992, they funded a non profit organization which gave them an administrative protection and a ground for the promotion of their activities. In the mid-nineties, they received a training in mediation from a foundation which imported the practice from the United States. Child access services then became a tool for the recognition of family mediation as a professional activity and the group lobbied for its mention in the law: they had professional support, experience to back up their ideas and access to the law makers through their network. At the same time, a convergence of public discourses around childhood and family set the proper context for their view to be heard. After the ratification of the Children Rights Convention in 1990, child protection institutions were reformed. A child protection law was voted in 1997 and modified in 2005: it made it an obligation for local authorities to provide child access services. It argues that children have a right to access both of their parents, in any circumstances as long as danger is prevented. In 1999, the non profit organization started a training course with a diploma recognized by the Ministry of justice which saw mediation as a tool to relieve courts of some of their burden: most of the professionals who are taking care of child access services throughout Hungary underwent this training. In some aspects, child access services are reminders of social services as they were practiced by guardianship authorities during the sixties, when Hungary was under soviet influence. With a view on the historical background of social work, this presentation will focus on the discursive and political contexts and how they favored the ascension of a professional group through a peculiar service. Influences of the administrative heritage, opportunities given by the creation of the civil society during the transition from a communist regime to a democratic one, EU orientations in terms of equality between parents and use of alternative conflict resolution: the combination these elements allowed a professional network to argue that their specific service was a necessary part of the child protection and family policies.

Martin Nekola (Charles University)

This paper reports findings of empirical research on the policy workers of Czech drug policy and their perspectives. Main objective is better understanding of the opinions, attitudes, and values that different actors have concerning these issues and to reveal and present different viewpoints and perceptions in a systematical and structured way. In particular, the paper (1) identifies policy workers' perspectives on illicit drug use, drug-related problems and policy measures with focus on controversial topics of Czech drug policy, (2) outline areas of conflict and consensus, and (3) analyze relationship between different levels of policy beliefs (Sabatier's policy core and secondary aspects).

Methodology: For that purpose, empirical survey based on Q methodology was carried out to systematically elicit individual and shared perspectives. At the beginning, initial set of statements (concourse) extracted from both public and professional discourse (i.e. mass media, research and government reports and professional journals). After pilot survey, 38 statements were selected to be used in the Q study. On the basis of literature review, initial set of actors was identified and approached. During field work, snowball sampling was used to ensure that no relevant actor was omitted. In total, 24 participants completed Q sorts.

Preliminary results: The study revealed three distinct perspectives on drug policy - (1) Pragmatic professionals, (2) Repressionists and (3) Maintainers of the status quo.

Sonja van der Arend (Delft University of Technology) & Jelle Behagel (Wageningen University)

Academics and governmental officials tend to share an institutional focus on the participation of stakeholders, NGOs and/or citizens in policy

making: they usually describe public participation in terms of institutional design, the rule-based role of participants, project/process management, and the location of authority. Hence, they usually understand and describe public participation as something to organize and manage within policy projects. On a different level, participation is also understood as a practice, as the dynamic, real-life activities of non-governmental actors. Their prime concern is more practical: how can we participate effectively? We adopt this last understanding in our approach of public participation as practice. Therefore, we move away from an institutionally inspired problem definition and draw on ethnography-inspired research methods. In particular, we follow participants' activities rather than institutions or policies, and we are critical towards official accounts of public participation. In this paper, we apply our practice-oriented approach in a study of the activities and experiences of non-governmental actors that have actively engaged in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the Netherlands.

In the WFD, the idea of public participation is predominantly elaborated as a principle for institutional design, in line with the White paper on EU Governance and the Aarhus convention. Dutch government made several efforts to organize public participation in the WFD implementation process, mainly in a top-down fashion: through the institution of sounding boards, information meetings and workshops. In contrast, the participatory practices of NGOs we observed took on diverging dynamics and occurred on unplanned venues as well as planned venues. Moreover, we found that the impetus for public participation - be it organized or not - principally lay with non-governmental actors. In addition, participants appear to place their most strategic participatory activities outside of the formally organized venues, thus creating informal participatory places themselves. Such informal places of participation are not part of an official institutional design or any managerial intervention from above. Yet, they are shaped by many existing institutions and professional strategies. Finally, the participatory practices of the NGOs were found to be situated within larger, ongoing, and cross-cutting water policy networks, rather than being limited to the WFD implementation process.

We conclude by discussing the limited efficacy of institutional design, organization and management on participatory practices. Although we found occasions where these practices were harnessed in formal venues, we also found participation to take place in informal and other unexpected ways and places. Sometimes these informal practices complemented efforts to organize public participation, at other times they collided. These results underline the importance of an integrative understanding of public participation. For academics, our findings imply that an institutional design perspective in the study of participation should at least be complemented by a practice perspective.