Toward an Epistemology of Emotions in Policy Analysis

Panel Chairs:

Anna Durnová, LET - ENTPE, University of Lyon, anna.durnova@univie.ac.at

Michael Orsini, University of Ottawa

Angelika Sjöstedt Landén, Mid Sweden University

Abstract:

In recent years, there has been greater attention to the role of discourse and meaning-making in shaping policies and practices. While this has helped to counter the rational approach to policy that has been dominant for several decades, it has left less space for considering what specific layers of meanings make discourses "legitimate", "right" or "satisfactory". The panel argues that such layers can be found in analysis of emotions. Emotions figure into the way we think about and talk about policy and how we think about collective problems. However, what does it mean to 'bring the emotions in' to the practice of policy analysis?

This panel is interested in theoretical and empirical papers that address the myriad of emotions that are invoked in deliberations about policy choices, the "emotional work" performed by policy actors (e.g.: bureaucrats, civil society actors) on the political stage, as well as the ways in which the emotional "nature" affects policy formulation and policy implementation processes.

Papers are welcome from a number of disciplinary traditions and addressing a range of policy fields, including, but not limited, to health, science and technology, urban studies, and social policy. We are especially interested in papers that take seriously the question of how to think about the broad epistemological questions raised by the "emotional turn" for students and analysts of public policy.