{"title":"Conjectures on a relational turn in policy studies","authors":"Raul P. Lejano, Wing Shan Kan","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09574-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We explore emerging work around the relational dimensions of public policy. What constitutes a relational frame of analysis is a broad terrain, but some general tenets characterize these approaches, including the foregrounding of relationships between policy actors along with the idea that these relationships are, at least in part, constitutive of the role and identity of these actors. In fact, relationality has long been a feature of studies on policy processes and implementation. More recent scholarship in policy and public administration attempts to more systematically theorize and analyze relationality. This draws from the “relational turn” in sociology and other social sciences. After reviewing the relevant literature on relationality, we offer several propositions on the immediate relevance of the concept of relationality for policy studies. Short of accepting strong ontological and teleological claims regarding relationality and society found in the broader literature, there nevertheless is value in the systematic exploration of the relational dimensions of public policy—i.e., as a mode of description of the practice of policy in the everyday, and as a rich, new lens by which to understand institutions in society. While previous policy literature will acknowledge the relevance of the relational in policy life, there has yet to be a concerted effort to foreground relationship and relationality so as to be the primary focus of analysis.</p>","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Policy Sciences","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09574-9","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We explore emerging work around the relational dimensions of public policy. What constitutes a relational frame of analysis is a broad terrain, but some general tenets characterize these approaches, including the foregrounding of relationships between policy actors along with the idea that these relationships are, at least in part, constitutive of the role and identity of these actors. In fact, relationality has long been a feature of studies on policy processes and implementation. More recent scholarship in policy and public administration attempts to more systematically theorize and analyze relationality. This draws from the “relational turn” in sociology and other social sciences. After reviewing the relevant literature on relationality, we offer several propositions on the immediate relevance of the concept of relationality for policy studies. Short of accepting strong ontological and teleological claims regarding relationality and society found in the broader literature, there nevertheless is value in the systematic exploration of the relational dimensions of public policy—i.e., as a mode of description of the practice of policy in the everyday, and as a rich, new lens by which to understand institutions in society. While previous policy literature will acknowledge the relevance of the relational in policy life, there has yet to be a concerted effort to foreground relationship and relationality so as to be the primary focus of analysis.
期刊介绍：
The policy sciences are distinctive within the policy movement in that they embrace the scholarly traditions innovated and elaborated by Harold D. Lasswell and Myres S. McDougal. Within these pages we provide space for approaches that are problem-oriented, contextual, and multi-method in orientation. There are many other journals in which authors can take top-down, deductive, and large-sample approach or adopt a primarily theoretical focus. Policy Sciences encourages systematic and empirical investigations in which problems are clearly identified from a practical and theoretical perspective, are well situated in the extant literature, and are investigated utilizing methodologies compatible with contextual, as opposed to reductionist, understandings. We tend not to publish pieces that are solely theoretical, but favor works in which the applied policy lessons are clearly articulated. Policy Sciences favors, but does not publish exclusively, works that either explicitly or implicitly utilize the policy sciences framework. The policy sciences can be applied to articles with greater or lesser intensity to accommodate the focus of an author’s work. At the minimum, this means taking a problem oriented, multi-method or contextual approach. At the fullest expression, it may mean leveraging central theory or explicitly applying aspects of the framework, which is comprised of three principal dimensions: (1) social process, which is mapped in terms of participants, perspectives, situations, base values, strategies, outcomes and effects, with values (power, wealth, enlightenment, skill, rectitude, respect, well-being, and affection) being the key elements in understanding participants’ behaviors and interactions; (2) decision process, which is mapped in terms of seven functions—intelligence, promotion, prescription, invocation, application, termination, and appraisal; and (3) problem orientation, which comprises the intellectual tasks of clarifying goals, describing trends, analyzing conditions, projecting developments, and inventing, evaluating, and selecting alternatives. There is a more extensive core literature that also applies and can be visited at the policy sciences website: http://www.policysciences.org/classicworks.cfm. In addition to articles that explicitly utilize the policy sciences framework, Policy Sciences has a long tradition of publishing papers that draw on various aspects of that framework and its central theory as well as high quality conceptual pieces that address key challenges, opportunities, or approaches in ways congruent with the perspective that this journal strives to maintain and extend.Officially cited as: Policy Sci
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