北京师范大学
教育研究方法讲座系列 (2):
教育政策研究
第二讲
教育政策研究的知识论基础：理论视域的探讨
A. Perspectives in Policy Studies in Education: An Overview
1. Analytical-technical perspective
a. Epistemological premise: Public policies are social facts. They are
social actions, programs and projects undertaken by the modern
state to intervene the state of affairs of particular public domains in a
modern society.
b. Aims of enquiry: Accordingly, policy studies is scientific enquiry aims
to provide causal explanation for the question why the state
undertaking particular policy actions and not the otherwise. More
specifically, it aims to analytically identify and verify the antecedent
conditions that caused the policy action to take place.
c. Practical premise: Based on the causal relation verified by policy
studies, policy makers can then make prediction, means-ends
calculation, and technical engineering about the policy situation
concerned. It aims to impose technical control over the situation.
2. Interpretive-political perspective:
a. Epistemological premise: Public policies are social construction of
realities. They are meanings, values, preferences and desires
attributed by the modern state and others interest groups to the
state of affairs of particular public domains in a modern society.
b. Aim of enquiry: Accordingly, policy studies is social enquiry aims to
interpret and explain why particular meanings and values are
signified in a policy “text” in a policy context, and not the otherwise.
c. Practical premise: Based on the interpretations and understandings
revealed by policy studies, policy participants can then engage in
communication and dialogue which aim to facilitate mutual
understanding, to nurture consensus, and plausibly to work out
politically reciprocal solution to the policy issue in point.
3. Discursive-critical perspective:
a. Epistemological premise: Public policies are authoritative values
and even “effective discursive totality” legitimized and imposed by
the modern state on the state of affairs in a particular public domain
in a modern society.
b. Aim of enquiry: Accordingly, policy studies is critical enquiry aims to
reveal how and why particular policy discourses are legitimized in a
policy arena.
c. Practical premise: Based on the critical studies on policy discourse,
policy critics can then reveal and assess the possible systemic
biases and distortions hypostatized and legitimatized in particular
policy domain and to strive to liberate human and social potentials
from these biases and distortions.
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(I)
The Analytic-Technical Perspective in Policy Studies
A. The Epistemological Basis: Analytical Positivism
1. Stuart Nagel’s conception of policy analysis model
a. “Public Policy analysis can be defined as determining which of
various alternative public or governmental policy will most achieve a
given set of goals in light of the relations between the policies and
the goals. That definition brings out four key elements of policy
evaluation which are:
i. Goals, including normative constraints and relative weights for
the goals.
ii. Policies, programs, projects, decisions, options, means, or other
alternatives that are available for achieving the goals.
iii. Relations between the policies and the goals, including relations
that are established by intuition, authority, statistics, observation,
deduction, guesses, or other means
iv. Draw a conclusion as to which policy or combination of policies is
best to adopt in light of the goals, policies, and relations.” (1986,
p. 247)
b. Stokey and Zeckhauser’s Framework for policy analysis
i. Establishing the Context. What is the underlying problem that
must be dealt with? What specific objectives are to be pursued in
confronting this problem?
ii. Laying out the alternatives. What are the alternative courses of
action? What are the possibilities for gathering further
information?
iii. Predicting the consequences. What are the consequences of
each of the alternative actions? What techniques are relevant for
predicting these consequences? Of outcomes are uncertain,
what is the estimated likelihood of each?
iv. Valuing the outcomes. By what criteria should we measure
success in pursuing each objective? Recognizing that inevitably
some alternatives will be superior with respect to certain
objectives and inferior with respect to others, how should
different combinations of valued objectives be compared with
one another?
v. Making a choice. Drawing all aspects of the analysis together,
what is the preferred course of action?
c. In searching of causality, prediction, and prescription for policy
action and logical positivism emerged from natural science
seemingly pointing the way. And three basic premises of logical
logical positivism
i. Methodological monism
ii. Logical empiricism as the ideal-typical method of verification
iii. Deductive-Nomological model as the idea-typical model of
explanation
2. Deductive-Nomological (D-N) explanation: The ideal-typical model of
causal explanation in logical positivism:
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The D-N explanation is the type of explanation commonly used in
researches in natural sciences. It makes up of three parts:
a. The explanatory premises or the casual law (covering law), which is a
universal statement of the sufficient and necessary conditions
(explanans/cause) for the truth of the explanandum (effect).
Accordingly, a causal law in natural science must comprises the
following components
i. The factual truth of both the the explanandum (i.e. the
phenonmenon to be explained) and the explanans.
ii. The conditionality between the explanandum and explanans
- Sufficient conditions: It refers to the kinds of conditionality
between the explanandum and explanans, in which the
explanans can exhaustively but not universally explain the truth
of the explanandum.
- Necessary conditions: It refers to the kinds of conditionality
between the explanandum and explanans, in which the
explanans can universally but not exhaustively explain the truth
of the explanandum.
- Sufficient and necessary conditions: It refers to the kinds of
conditionality between the explanandum and explanans, in
which the explanans can both exhaustively and universally
explain the truth of the explanandum.
iii. The temporal order of the explanans must be in precedence to
the explanandum
b. The initial condition, which defines the property of a specific case of
the explanandum.
c. The conclusion, which state the exhaustive explanation of the
specific explicandum by the explanans.
3. The compromised model: Statistical-Probabilistic (S-P) explanation:
The S-P model is the type of explanation commonly use in quantitative
researches in social sciences. It is also made up of three parts similar to
those in nomological-deductive explanation. There are two differences
in probabilistic explanation. One is that the explanatory premises is not
in the form of law-like / nomological statement of the sufficient and
necessary conditions of the truth of the explanandum but only a
probabilistic statement specifying the likelihood of the causal
relationship between the explanans and explanandum. The second
difference is that in the conclusion, the specific explanandum under
study cannot be exhaustive explained by the explanans but can only be
explained in probabilistic terms.
4. Logical-empiricism: The exemplary method of verification in
logical-positivism
a. By empiricism, it refers to the method of verification based primary
by sensory experiences of human being. More specifically, it is
based on recorded experiences methodically collected by scientists.
More importantly, these recorded experiences will then be set
against their respective propositions to see whether they
correspond each other. And it is through this operation of so call
correspondence principle that scientific propositions will be verified
against the external national world.
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b. Apart from empirical verification that rely on human experiences,
scientists can also rely on pure logical inference and mathematical
calculations to verify their propositions. For example propositions in
in geometry and mathematical physical are usually not verified with
empirical data but pure mathematical and logical inferences.
B. The Ontological Basis: Technical Rationalism
1. The concept of instrumental and technical rationality
a. The concept of rationality: Rationality can be defined as conscious
and knowledgeable ways human beings approaches and even
masters the world around them. Rationality therefore is a state of
mind and a way of life, in which human beings strive to master their
physical and even their social environments.
b. The concepts of instrumental and substantive rationality
i. Instrumental rationality refers to conscious and knowledgeable
process through which human beings calculate and choose the
most expedient means to achieve preconceived and/or
predetermined end.
ii. Substantive rationality refers to conscious and knowledgeable
process through which human beings decide the ends most
worthy of achieving.
c. The instrumental-technical turns in policy studies
i. Policy scientists who adhere to value-neutral or even value-free
method of inquiry advocate that substantive choice of policy end
are political decisions and should be left to politicians.
ii. Accordingly, they contend that policy scientists should confine
themselves to the technical issues of choosing the best, or more
specifically the most cost-effective policy instruments or means
to attain the “politically” pre-determined ends.
2. Technical-rational perspective in policy studies
a. Following the conclusions drawn from analytic-positivist policy
studies, the next task to be performed by policy analysts is to work
out, if possible to the last technical details, the action plan to carry
out the policy measures. Hence, it is a task guarded by instrument
and technical rationality.
b. Assumptions of comprehensive (technical) rational model in policy
studies: (Forester, 1989, Pp. 49-54)
i. The agent/actor: A single decision-maker (or a group of fully
consenting decision makers) who is a utility-maximizing,
instrumentally rational actor
ii. The setting: Analogous to the decision-maker’s office, “by
assumption a closed system”
iii. The problem: Well defined problem, “its scope, time horizon,
value dimensions, and chains of consequences are clearly given”
and close at hand.
iv. Information: Assumed to be “perfect, complete, accessible, and
comprehensible.”
v. Outcome: A single best solution or the most optimum resolution
C. Criticisms and Revisions
1. Herbert Simon’s concept of bounded rationality
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a. Simon’s defines that “rationality denotes a style of behavior (A) that
is appropriate to the achievement of a given goals, (B) within the
limits imposed by given conditions and constraints.” Simon, 1982,
p.405)
b. The concept of satisfice: Simon differentiates two stances in regard
to (A), i.e. the degree of “appropriateness to goal achievement.
i. Maximizing or optimizing stance of the “economic man”: “While
economic man maximizes - selects the best alternative from
among all those available to him”
ii. Satisificing stance of the “administrative man”: “Administrative
man satifices - look for a course of action that is satisfactory or
‘good enough’. (Simon, 1957, p. xxv)
c. The concept of bounded rationality: In regard to (B), Simon indicates
that “It is impossible for the behaviour of a single, isolated individual
to rearch any high degree of rationality. The number of alternatives
he must explore is so great, the information he would need to
evaluate them so vast that even an approximation to objective
rationality is hard to conceive. Individual choice takes place in an
environment of ‘givens’ – premises that are accepted by the subject
as base for his choice; and behaviour is adaptive only within the
limits set by these ‘givens’.” (Simon, 1957, p. 79; my emphasis)
Simon specifies limitations imposed by the environment of givens
are
i. Limitation of the knowledge
- Incomplete and fragmented nature of knowledge,
- Limits of knowledge about the consequences, i.e. predictability
of knowledge
ii. Limitations of the cognitive ability of the decider makers
- Limits of attention
- Limits on the storage capacity of human mind
- Limits of the learning ability of human beings, i.e. observation,
communication, comprehension, ….
- Limits on changes of status quo, i.e. human habits, routine,
mind set, …
- limits on organizational environments.
2. Dahl and Lindblom’s conception of rational calculation
a. Limitations and difficulties in means-end rational calculation
i. Information deficiency: Relevant or even essential information to
the means-end rational calculation may be incomplete,
unavailable, difficult to obtain, …
ii. Communication problem: Available information may not be able
to be dissimulated to all decision-making parties or the
information may appear to be difficult to comprehend.
iii. The number of variables involved is too many to be exhausted.
vi. The complexity of the relations among variables is too
complicated to be comprehended not to mention exhausted.
b. Scientists’ solutions to cognitive deficiency in means-end rational
calculation
“Scientists deal with the problem of information by systematic
observation, with the problem of communication by developing a
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precise and logical language usually including the language of
mathematics; with the problems of an excessive number of and
complex relations among variables by specialization, controlled by
experiment, quantification, rigorous and system analysis, and
exclusion of phenomena not amenable to these methods.” (Dahl &
Lindblom, 1992, p. 78) In summary, these methods include
i. Codification: Method of reducing and unifying numerous,
complicated and disorderly information into comprehensible units
ii. Quantification: Method of quantifying information and units into
comparable values.
iii. Sampling: Selectively analyzing a fragment, a specimen of the
phenomenon under observation.
vi. Observations in control situations or by randomization.
v. Modeling: Model “is a purposeful reduction of a mass of
information to a manageable size and shape, and hence is a
principal tool in the analyst’s work-tool. Indeed, we will be
employing models throughout this book.” (Stokey & Zeckhauser,
1978, p.9)
3. Choices under calculated risk
a. Risk can be construed as “the residual variance in a theory of
rational choice” (March, 1994, p. 35) or more specifically, the
unexplained variance in a causal modeling equation. It is basically
grown out of the epistemological constraints of the scientific
means-end rational model.
b. Therefore, “calculated risks are often necessary because scientific
methods have not yet produced tested knowledge about the
probable consequences of large incremental changes…and existing
reality is highly undesirable.” (Dahl & Lindblom, 1992, p. 85)
c. Growing industry for risk estimation and risk management in public
policy
4. Charles Lindblom’s science of muddling through
Charles Lindblom agrees with Simon on the limitations of human
rationality, yet Lindblom diagnoses that the sources of these limitations
are more than the cognitive capacity of human mind. He suggests that
limitations are integral parts of the very process of policy making.
Lindblom characterizes this process as “successive limited comparison”
and “muddling through”.
a. “Incrementalism is a method of social action that takes existing
reality as one alternative and compares the probable gains and
loses of closely related alternatives by making relatively small
adjustments in existing reality, or making larger adjustments about
whose consequences approximately as much is known as about the
consequences of existing reality, or both.” (Dahl & Lindblom, p. 82)
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b. Lindblom’s two models of decision-making
Rational comprehensive
Successive limited comparison
1a
Clarification of values or
objectives distinct from and
usually prerequisite to empirical
analysis of alternative policies
1b
Selection of values, goals and
empirical analysis of the needed
action are not distinct from one
another but are closely intertwined
2a
Policy formulation is therefore
approached through means-ends
analysis: first the ends are
isolated; then the means to
achieve them are sought
2b
Since means and ends are not
distinct, means-ends analysis is
often inappropriate or limited
3a
The test of a ‘good’ policy is nthat 3c
it can be shown to be the most
appropriate means to desired
ends
The test of a ‘good’ policy is typically
that various analysts find themselves
directly agreeing on a policy (without
their agreeing that it is the most
appropriate means to an agreed
objective)
4a
Analysis is comprehensive; every 4b
important relevant factors is
taken into account
Analysis is drastically limited:
a. important possible outcome are
neglected;
b. important alternative potential
policy are neglected;
c. important affected values are
neglected
5a
Theory is often heavily relied
upon
A succession of comparisons greatly
reduces or eliminates reliance on
theory
5b
5. John Forester’s typology of bounded rationality (see Table 4)
a. Bounded rationality I: Cognitive limits
b. Bounded rationality II: Social differentiation
c. Bounded rationality III: Pluralist conflict
d. Bounded rationality IV: Structural distortions
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D. A Case Study HKSAR
1. Analytic-positivist perspective in education policy
a. Codification
i. The case of MOI: MIG, EMI-capables, EMI-schools,
ii. The case of HKSAR education reform: Quality schools, quality
teachers, quality school management, quality indicators
b. Quantification:
i. The case of MOI:
- MIGAI, II, and III,
- EMI-capables: the top 40% in pre-S1 HKAT,
- EMI-schools = on a 3-year average, 85% of S1 intakes being
EMI-capables
ii. The case of HKSAR education reform
- Performance Indicators for HK Schools, which are analytically
divided into 4 domains, 14 areas, 28 components, 186
performance evidences each of which is in turn measures a
4-point scale
- 23 Key Performance Measures,
- Value-added index of SVAIS,
- Basic Competence Assessment
- The teacher Competencies Framework , which are analytically
divided into 4 domains, 16 areas, and 46 indicators; which are in
turn are measured by 5-point scales and ranked into 3 levels.
- 5-level Language Proficiency (Benchmark) Assessment for
teachers
c. Sampling and randomization: Sampled schools and their attributes
found in policy studies can be applied to other non-sampled schools
in the assumption that factors other than those controlled by policy
measures can be randomized.
i. The case of MOI policy:
- Classification of MIG-I, -II & -III or EMI-capable students
- Classification of EMI and CMI schools
ii. The case of HKSAR education reform
- Classification of quality schools
- Classification of professionally competent and/or linguistic
proficient teachers
- Classification of students and schools passed the Basic
Competence Assessment
d. Modeling:
i. Monolingual model of mother-tongue instruction vs. triglossiic
model
ii. Input-output model: Value-added model, linear regression model,
ordinary-least-square model, multi-level regression model, …
iii. Educational process model: Quality school model,
Quality-Assurance Inspection, School-Self Inspection model,
External School Review…
iv. Model of professional teachers: Analytically fragmented and
technocratic professional vs. heuristic learned-professional
2. Technical-rational perspective in education policy
a. Technocratic procedures of assessments and evaluation
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i. Procedures and criteria of the application for EMI schools
ii. Procedures and criteria of TSA, pre-S1 HKAT, value-added index
ii. Procedures of QAI, SSE, and ESR in Quality Assurance
Mechanism
iii. Procedures of benchmark and/or competence assessments of
teachers
b. Technocratic divisions of constituents in education system
i. EMI and CMI divisions
ii. Quality divisions/ stratifications for schools, teachers & students
c. Differentiated educational treatments (positive or negative)
i. Ascending and descending mechanism in MOI policy
ii. Outstanding Teachers and Schools Awards
iii. Schools to be shut down
(II)
Interpretive-Political Perspectives in Policy Studies
A. Interpretive Perspective in Policy Studies: From of Fact to Meanings
1. David Easton defines public policy as “the authoritative allocation of
values for the whole society.” (Easton, 1953, p. 129)
2. Stephen Ball indicates that “Policy is clearly a matter of the ‘authoritative
allocation of values’; policies are the operational statements of values,
‘statements of prescriptive intent’ (Kogan 1975 p.55). But values do not
float free of their social context. We need to ask whose values are
validated in policy, and whose are not. Thus, The authoritative allocation
of values draws our attention to the centrality of power and control in the
concept of policy’ (Prunty 1985 p.135). Policies project images of an
ideal society (education policies project definitions of what counts as
education).”(Ball, 1990, p. 3)
In another occasion, Ball specifies his own approach to policy study that
“in current writing on policy issue I actually inhabit two very different
conceptualization of policy. …I will call these policy as text and policy as
discourse. …The point I am moving to is that policy is not one or the
other, but both: they are ‘implicit in each other’.” (1994, p.15)
3. Dvora Yanow defines “public policy as texts that are interpreted as they
are enacted by implementers, (and)…as texts that are ‘read’ by various
stakeholder groups.” (2000, p. 17)
Therefore, an interpretive approach to policy analysis …is one that
focuses on revealing the meanings, values, and beliefs expressed and
signified in a given policy text, and to analysis the process by which
these meanings are communicated to and ‘read’ by various audiences.
4. Basic assumptions of interpretive approach to public policy studies:
a. Public policy is not construed as self-defined phenomenon and/or
natural phenomenon treated in natural science, but is taken as
human artifact deliberated and constructed by human beings with
specific intents and particular meanings. Accordingly, policy studies
are research efforts to identified the meanings and values allocated,
imputed, and attributed to a particular policy phenomenon by all
parties concerned.
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b. Since the primary meaning-constructor (or more appropriately put
‘author’) of public policy is the modern state. As by definition the
modern state is the sovereign power and authority over a definitive
territory and its residents, hence public policy studies are research
efforts to investigate what are the intents, meanings or values that
the state has ascribed to a particular public policies and why.
c. Furthermore, in pluralistic and democratic political system, the
author of public policy is not confined to the sovereign state. Various
interested parties may also attribute different or even contradictory
meanings to a same policy phenomenon and take different or even
antagonistic stances towards a policy prescription.
c. Accordingly, public policy study is research efforts striving
i. to explore what and how meanings and values are written /
encoded into policy “texts” by the state or the government.
ii. to explore what and how meanings and values are read /
decoded from public policy “texts” by interest groups / interpretive
communities, i.e. hermeneutic and ethnographic studies of
interpretations of public policy by social groups.
iii. to explore what authoritative meanings and values are emerged
and constituted amid these diverse interpretations of public
policy.
iv. to expose the politicking processes via which authoritative
meanings and values are constructed within the political context
of a public policy.
B. Intentional explanation: Explaining the State’s Acts
1. Georg H. von Wright’s Two Traditions of Inquiry
a. “It is therefore misleading to say that understanding versus
explanation marks the difference between two types of scientific
intelligibility. But one could say that the intentional or nonintentional
character of their objects marks the difference between two types of
understanding and of explanation.” (von Wright, 1971, p.135)
b. Distinction between causal and teleological explanations
i. Causal explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation, which
attempt to seek the sufficient and/or necessary conditions (i.e.
explanans) which antecede the phenomenon to be explained (i.e.
explanandum). Causal explanations normally point to the past.
‘This happened, because that had occued’ is the typical form in
language.” (von Wright, 1971, p. 83) It seeks to verify the
antecedental conditions for an observed natural phenomenon.
This mode of explanation can further be differentiated into
- Deductive-nomological explanation
- Inductive-probabilistic explanation
ii. Teleological explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation,
which attempt to reveal the goals and/or intentions, which
generate or motivate the explanadum (usually an action to be
explained) to take place. “Teleological explanations point to the
future. ‘This happened in order that that should occur.’” (von
Wright, 1971, p. 83) This mode of explanation can be
differentiated into
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- Intentional explanation
- Rational-choice explanation
- Functional explanation (Quasi-teleological explanation)
2. Re-orientating the mode of explanation in policy studies:
a. Intentional explanation has been advocated by some social scientists
as the typical mode of explanation used in social sciences. In fact, as
Jon Elster underlines, its feature "distinguishes the social sciences
from the natural sciences." (Elster, 1983, p. 69)
b. However, to inquire into the intentions and subjective meanings of
actors and groups of actors in public policy, for examples statesmen,
politicians, frontline policy service deliverers, policy service recipients,
political parties, interest groups, etc. Policy researchers encounter
one of the central methodological problems in social science. This
aporia has be aptly depicted by Max Weber as follow:
"Sociology is a science concerning itself with the interpretive
understanding of social action and thereby with causal explanation of
its course and consequence." (Weber, 1978, p.4)
C. Policy Studies as Intentional Explanation of the State’s Actions (1):
Interpretative Approach
1. What is meaning? a phenomenological tion
a. Alfred Schutz, one of the prominent phenomenological sociologists of
the twentieth century suggests in his book The Phenomenology of
Social World has offered a solution to Weber’s Aporia in interpretative
social science and more specifically interpretive policy studies as
follows
b“Meaning is a certain way of directing one’s gaze at an item of one’s
experience. This item is thus ‘selected out’ and rendered discrete by
a reflexive Act. Meaning indicates, therefore, a peculiar attitude on
the part of Ego toward the flow of its own duration.” (Schutz, 1967, p.
42)
c. This definition may be discerned with the three constituent concepts
in phenomenology, namely, attention, intention and protention. In
other words, meanings are made up of the attention, intention and
protention that the Ego has attribute to an object in the concrete and
discrete world.
i. Attention refers the act of one’ consciousness in “selecting out”
an object from the concrete and discrete world
ii. Intention refers the act of one’s consciousness in forming a
perception and attitude towards the object and retaining it and
recalling it in the future
iii. Protention refers to the act of consciousness of formulating an
action plan (a project) to fulfill one anticipation towards the object
2. Schutz’s concept of action
By applying the conceptual apparatus derived from phenomenological
philosophy, Schutz proposes to clarify Max Weber’s conception of
subjective meaning of social action in interpretive sociology in the
following way.
“Now we are in a position to state that what distinguishes action from
behavior is that action is the execution of a projected act. And we can
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immediately proceed to our next step: the meaning of any action is its
corresponding projected act. In saying this we are giving clarity to Max
Weber’s vague concept of the ‘orientation of an action’. An action, we
submit, is oriented toward its corresponding projected act.” (Schutz,
1967, p. 61)
3. Schutz’s concept of meaning-context
a. By applying the constituent concepts of phenomenology, Schutz
further suggests that meanings forged within one’s Ego are
“configurated” into a whole, which Schutz called “meaning-context”.
By meaning-context, Schutz characterized it as follows
“Let us define meaning-context formally: We say that our lived
experience E1, E2, …, En, stand in a meaning-context if and only if,
once they have been lived through in separate steps, they are then
constituted into a synthesis of a high order, becoming thereby unified
objects of monothetic attention.” (Schutz, 1967, p.75)
b. Schutz indicates that meaning-context derived within one’s inner time
consciousness bears numbers of structural features. (Schutz, 1967,
p. 74-78)
i. Unity: Though intentional acts and/or fulfillment-act various
meaning-endowing experiences are unified and integrated into
coherent whole within the Ego. Hence, meaning-context
generated from meaning-endowing experiences also bears the
internal structure of unity and coherence.
ii. Continuity: As lived experiences are set within the stream of
consciousness of duration (i.e. Durée), therefore, the
meaning-context thereby derived is internally structured into a
continuity of temporal ordering.
iii. Hierarchy: Through her lived experiences in different spheres of
the life-world, individual will congifurated various
meaning-contexts for lived experiences in various spheres of life.
And these complex meaning-contexts are structured in
hierarchical order according to their degree of meaningfulness
and significance.
4. Accordingly, interpretive policy studies can be construed as research
efforts to investigate
a. what are the attention, intention and protention that the state granted
to a policy phenomenon and/or issue;
b. what are the attention, intention and protention that interested parties
within a policy arena attributed to the policy text produced by the
state;
c. how these attentions, intentions and protentions are related to the
meaning-context of the state and to those of the interested parties;
and why.
D. Policy Studies Intentional Explanation of the State’s Actions (2):
Hermeneutic Approach
1. Hermeneutic study of public policy
‘Hermeneutics is a discipline that has been primarily concerned with the
elucidation of rules for the interpretation of texts.” (Thompson, 1981,
p.36)
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2. What is interpretation?
a. “Interpretation … is an attempt to make clear, to make sense of an
object of study. This object must, therefore, be a text, or a
text-analogue, which in some way is confused, incomplete, cloudy,
seemingly contradictory  in one way or another unclear. The
interpretation aims to bring to light an underlying coherence or
sense. …The object of a science of interpretation must thus have (a)
sense (coherence and meaning) , distinguishable from its (b)
expression, which is for or by (c) a subject.” (Taylor, 1994,
p.181-182)
b. “When we speak of the ‘meaning’ of a given predicament, we are
using a concept which has the following articulation:
i. Meaning is for a subject…
ii. Meaning is of something…
iii. Things only have meaning in a field, that is, in relation to the
meanings of other things.” (Taylor, 1994, p. 185-186)
c. Dimension of linguistic meaning: “Meanings …. is for a subject, of
something, in a field. This distinguishes it from linguistic meaning
which has a four- and not three-dimensional structure. Linguistic
meaning is for subjects and in a field, but it is the meaning of
signifiers and it is about a world of referent.” (Taylor, 1994, p.186)
i. Meaning for a subject
ii. Meaning in a field
iii. Meaning of something
- Meaning of the signifier
- Meaning about a world of referent
3. What is a Text? (Ricoeur, 1981, p. 145-164)
a. "A Text is any discourse fixed by writing" (p.145) i.e. a fixation of
speech act by writing.
i. Fixation enables the speech to be conserved, i.e. durability of
text
ii. A text ‘divides the act of writing and the act of reading into two
sides, between which there is no communication. … The text
thus produces a double eclipse of the reader and the writer.’ (p.
146-47)
iii. Policy text can therefore be primarily conceived as the
authoritative fixation of meanings by the government
b. Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation (Ricoeur, 1981, p. 131-44)
i. Text as language event and speech act
- Distanciation between language event and meaning
- Articulation of meaning in language event is ‘the core of the
whole hermeneutic problem.’ (p. 134)
ii. Text as work
- Distanciation between text as the work and its authors
- ‘Hermeneutics remains the art of discerning the discourse in the
work; but this discourse is only given in and through the
structures of the work. Thus interpretation is the reply to the
fundamental distanciation constituted by the objectification of
man in work of discourse, an objectification comparable to that
expressed in the products of his labour and his art.’ (P. 138)
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iii. Distanciation between act of writing and act of reading
‘The text must be able to…”decontextualizse” itself in such a way
that it can be “recontextualise” in a new situation – as
accomplished…by the act of reading.’ (p. 139)
vi. Distanciation between the text and the reference and denotation
of discourse
- The world the text: ‘Reference…distinguishes discourse from
language, the latter has no relation with reality, its words
returning to other words in the endless circle of the dictionary.
Only discourse, we shall say, intends things, applies itself to
reality, expresses the world.’ (p. 140)
- ‘The most fundamental hermeneutical problem … is to
explicate the type of being-in-the world (life-world) unfolded in
front of the text’. (p.141)
v. Four hermeneutic problems in policy-text study
- Hermeneutic problem of bridging the distanciation between
policy texts and policy meanings, values and measures
- Hermeneutic problem of bridging the distanciation between
policy texts and authors’ (governmental) intents
- Hermeneutic problem of bridging the distanciation between
policy texts and readers ‘reading of the texts
- Hermeneutic problem of bridging between the distanciation
between the policy texts and their referencing world
4. From texts to textuality and intertextuality
a. The concept of textuality: Apart from retrieve the meanings
embedded in texts, hermeneutic study can also explore another
dimension of texts, i.e. “the texture of texts, their form and
organization” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 4). By introducing the concept of
textuality into hermeneutic study, text analysis can then go beyond
studying texts in linguistic forms (written or spoken) and explore
texts, which take on multi-semiotic forms.
b. The concept of multi-semiotic textuality is especially significant in the
age of mass communication and then the information age
i. In the mass-communication age, television, the exemplar text of
multi-semiotic form is television.
ii. In the information age, literal texts have been further replace by
digital-imagery texts through computer-mediated-communication
and in the internet.
c. Dimensions of textuality of the policy text:
i. Genre
ii. Frame
iii. Rhetoric
iv. Narrative
(To be discussed on Lecture 6: Policy Making Process)
c. As the concept of texuality is applied to policy studies in the
information age, it becomes apparent that analysis of policy text
should extend beyond the analysis of the policy documents in its
literal form and to analyze meanings and values embedded in policy
texts in multi-semiotic forms, such as documentaries, commercials,
and news footages in TV; and websites in Internet.
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d. The concept of intertextuality: It refers to the texture of the text when
it is set against its social and history contexts. In other words,
“intertextuality implies ‘the insertion of history into the text and of this
text into history’. (Kristeva, 1986, p. 39) By ‘the insertion of history
into the text’, …text absorbs and is built out of texts from the past.”
(Fairclough, 1992, p.102)
e. As the concept of intertextuality is applied to policy studies, it implies
that policy documents should be analyzed in conjunction
synchronically with other current policy texts and/or diachronically
with policy texts in the past.
5. Multi-lateral hermeneutic study of public policy
The multi-lateral process of writing (encoding) and reading (decoding)
of policy texts (Ball, 1992)
a. Multiple authors in the production processes of policy texts
b. Multiple readers in the processes formulation and implementation of
policy texts
c. Notions writerly and readerly texts:
i. The writerliness of policy texts refers to the flexibility built in
policy texts which “invite the reader to ‘join-in’, to ‘co-operate’ and
co-author’. (p. 11) In other words, it provides readers rooms to
interpret or even re-write the policy texts.
ii. The readerliness of policy text refers to the rigidity built in policy
texts which provide “minimum of opportunity for creative
interpretation by the reader(s).” (p.11)
d. Reciprocating, bargaining and interacting relationship between
writers and readers of policy texts
6. Conception of interpretive communities in policy study (Yanow, 2000)
a. Given the multi-lateral features in policy interpretations, policy
arguments are therefore involved multiple communities, each of
which can have their own interpretations of the policy text and
subsequently produce their own texts (in multi-semiotic forms) in
relation to the policy argument.
b. Hence, the starting point of interpretive inquiry into a particular policy
issue is to identify the various interpretive communities participate in
the formulation and implementation processes of the policy.
c. The second step access the “local knowledge”, i.e. the definition of
situation, knowledge at hand and system of relevance, produced by
different interpretive communities. The access can be attained by
means of document analysis, conversational interviews and
participation observations with different interpretive communities
d. By juxtaposing and mapping out the similarities and differences in
the local knowledge produced by various interpretive communities
with regard to the policy in point, the architecture of arguments
constituted around the policy issue in point can be revealed.
E. Policy Studies as Rational-Choice Explanation of the State’s Actions
1. Apart from the phenomenological perspective, another perspectives,
namely ration-choice theory, has also formulate an approach to
intentional explanation with its conceptual apparatus.
2. Assumptions of rational-choice theory in intentional explanation: Jon
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Elster underlines that in order to avoid the idiosyncratic and subjective
nature of intentional explanation under phenomenological perspective,
we can assume that the actors in point, i.e. the state, are agents who
are endowed with rationality and autonomy; and their undertakings are
conscious and rational actions.
3. Intentional explanation: In light of these two assumptions, Elster has
reformulated intentional explanation by analytically decompose it into "a
triadic relation between action, desire and belief." (Elster, 1983, 90)
“A successful intentional explanation establishes the behavior as action
and the performer as an agent. An explanation of this form amounts to
demonstrating three place relation between the behavior/action (A), a
set of cognitions (C) entertained by the individual and a set of desire (D)
that can also be impute to him. (Eslter, 1994, P. 311)
Cognition
Action
Desire
Given this basic schema, Elster formulated intentional explanation with
the following three propositions:
(1) Given C, A is the best means to realize D
(2) C and D cause B
(3) C and D cause B qua reasons
3. Rational-choice explanation: Accordingly, Elster asserts further that
“rational-choice explanation goes beyond intentionality in several
respects.” (Elster, 1994, P.313) The basic requirement is that the triadic
schema must be consistent both internally and externally.
a. Internal consistency: In order to turn a subjective intentionality into a
rational project of action, Elster suggests that it must comply with
two propositions
(4) The set of beliefs C is internally consistent
(5) The set of desires D is internally consistent
b. External consistency: Elster further asserts that “one might want to
demand more rationality of the beliefs and desires than mere
consistency. In particular, one might require that the beliefs be in
some sense substantively well grounded, i.e. inductively justified by
the available.” (Elster, 1994, P.314) As a result, there are three more
conditions to be complied with:
(1b) The belief must be the best belief, given the available
evidence
(2b) The belief must be caused by the available evidence
(3b) The evidence must cause the belief ‘in the right way’
Accordingly, the triadic schema may then be reformulated as follow
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Evidence
Cognition
Action
Desire
Source: Elster, 1994, P. 318
4. More recently Elster has further reformulated the model of
rational-choice explanation as follows
Information
Beliefs
Action
Desire
Source: Elster, 2009, P. 15
F. Policy Studies as Quasi-Teleological Explanation of the State’s Actions:
Functional Explanation of Institutional Persistence
1. This type of explanation is most commonly used in biology. It "takes the
form of indicating one or more functions (or even dysfunctions) that a
unit performs in maintaining or realizing certain traits of the system to
which the unit belongs." (Nagel, 1979, p. 23) For example, in
explaining why human being has lung, the typical explanation in biology
is that lung (L) performs the function of breathing (B), i.e. provide
oxygen to the of the proper maintenance of the system of a human body
(H). Accordingly functional explanation consist of the followings
a. L perform the function of B to the system of H
b. B therefore explains the existence of L or H's possession of L.
2. However, there is a basic logical setback in this functional-explanatory
structure. That is, since L performs B, therefore L must be an
antecedent of B. However in the cause-effect explanatory structure, the
existence of an effect (L) could not have anteceded that of its cause (B).
Therefore, B could not have been the cause of L.
3. Nevertheless, in biology this setback can be compensated by the
mechanism of natural selection in the theory of evolution. That is the
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seemingly temporal ordering mismatch between B and L can be
explained away within the much longer timeline within the mechanism of
natural selection and adaptation found in the evolutionary process of
species.
4. The missing selection and adaptation mechanism in social science:
However, in social sciences there seems to be no social ecologicalselection theory available in support of its functional explanation that is
comparable to the evolutionary theory in biology and ecology. If that
seems to be the case, then we may have to accept Jon Ester’s
suggestion that functional explanation is not applicable in social science
research.
5. Revisions of functional explanation in social sciences: In social science
research there are at least three formulations, which attempt to provide
some sort of selection mechanism in social development processes
upon which the functional explanation for social phenomena can be
built.
a. The concept of equilibrium in Social System Theory: The first
selection mechanism supporting the functional explanation for social
activities are put forth by US sociologists, such as Talcott Parsons
and Robert K. Merton, who were the leading figures of the Social
System Theory. The theory was one of the dominant schools in
sociology in the 1960s. It advocates that human society can be
conceptualized as a well-integrated social system, which is made up
of numbers of subsystems or called social institutions. It is assumed
that each of these subsystems will develop its own set of structure
and function. Together these subsystems will work concertedly to
attain a state of equilibrium for the system as a whole. And it is further
assumed that this state of equilibrium of the system will maintain itself
over a definite period of time. It is suggested that this “grand theory”
of social equilibrium can be taken as the evolutionary basis of the
selection mechanism for the functional explanation in social sciences.
That is, the functional explanation for the existence of a social activity
can be accessed in terms of its contributions to the maintenance of
social equilibrium of the social system, which the social practice in
point is embedded.
In retrospect, it is common knowledge within the discipline of
sociology that such a grand theory of social evolution and social
equilibrium has been challenged and criticized by social scientists
from the perspectives of conflict theory. As a result, the functional
explanation in social sciences has to look for another more creditable
conception selection mechanism as its theoretical basis.
b. The “consequence law”: G.A. Cohen, a prominent Marxian
philosopher in Oxford University, has put forth another attempt to
provide a selection mechanism for functional explanation in social
science. Instead of building a grand theory for the social ecological
environment as a whole, Cohen suggests that social scientists could
settle with the “consequence law”. (Cohen 1978) By “consequence
law”, it refers to the “beneficial consequence” that a particular social
activity could bring to its participants. And as result it would motivate
its participants to continue to take part in the social activity in point
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and in turn it would sustain the social endeavor as a whole. Cohen
suggests, For example, within Marxian conception of relation of
production or class relation, one can render a functional explanation
for the existence of a particular form of relation of production by the
consequence it entailed. That is, a particular relation of production
will sustain itself over time (or in Marian term reproduce) as long as it
can render its participants “good enough” beneficial consequences
that they would remain within that relation of production and rather
than overthrow it, i.e. wage a class revolution.
c. Functional explanation by institutional persistence: In recent decades,
there are several further revisions on the selection-mechanism basis
for the functional explanation in social sciences. (Kincaid, 1994; 2007;
Pettit, 2002) These revisions aim to further retreat from the
theoretical claim of providing an overall evolutionary theory of the
social system for the functional explanation in social science. Instead,
they further revise that
i. Persistence as explanandum (the effect to be explained): Both
Kincaid (2007) and Pettit (2002) have suggested that functional
explanation for the existence of a particular social activity should
simply aims to provide an explanation for the persistence or
reproduction of the social activity in point, instead of rendering
any exhaustive causal mechanism of how the social activity
come about.
ii. Distinction between current persistence and origin of the
explanandum: Both Kincaid (2007) and Pettit (2002) have further
suggested that in functional explanation of the existence of a
social activity, the explanandum should only be it persistence or
reproduction in a particular point in time rather than to trace the
whole evolutionary process of the social activity back to its origin
of formation.
iii. Institutional embeddedness: In functional explanation, the
explananda are no long rational actions deliberately carried out
by agents as presupposed in model of rational-choice
explanation, instead they are social persistence and resilience
found in institutional contexts. Therefore, it is assumed that
functional explanation must be sensitive to the historical and
institutional contexts in which the explananda are embedded.
(Kincaid, 1994; 2007; Pettit, 2002)
iv. Distinction between optimal and stable consequences: Kincaid
(1994; 2007) has further underlined that the beneficial
consequences in use to provide functional explanation for social
activities should not be defined in optimal terms as some
rational-choice theorists insisted. Instead, the beneficial
consequences in functional explanations should only be defined
in terms of “stable consequences” or in Herbert Simon’s terms
“satisficing” or “good enough” consequences.
v. Distinction between particularistic and universalistic explanations:
Given all these revisions, the model of functional explanation in
its present form could not have claimed to render a universal and
exhaustive explanation to its explanandum. All it could claim is
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that it has provide one of the contributing factors to the
persistence of a particular social activity within a particular
institutional context in ea particular point in time.
d. The state of the art of the functional explanation in social science:
Given the revisions reviewed above, the current functional
explanation model may be summarized as follows.
other factors
Function at t0
Social
Action
Function at tn
Persistence
Institutionalization
Persistence
Contextual Embeddedness
InstitutionalizationPersistence
G. Policy as Political Bargain and Compromise to Meaning and Value Conflicts
1. David Easton’s conception political system: Easton differentiates his
conception of public policy as authoritative allocation of values into
three components of a political system
a. Input of political demands and supports
b. Conversions of input into authoritative allocation of values
c. Output of policy
2. Gabriel A. Almond functional categorization of political system
a. Input functions
i. Political socialization and recruitment
ii. Interest articulation
iii. Interest aggregation
iv. Political communication
b. Output functions
i. Rule-making
ii. Rule-application
iii. Rule adjudication
3. Dahl and Lindblom’s conception of political bargaining in polyarchy
a. Robert Dahl’s of polyarchy
i. Two theoretical dimensions of democratization
- Public contestation: It indicates “the extent of permissible
opposition, public contestation, or political competition” of the
government. (Dahl, 1971, p. 4)
- Inclusiveness of participation: It indicates “the proportion of the
population entitled to participate on a more or less equal plane
in controlling and contesting the conduct of the government.”
(Dahl, 1971, p. 4)
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ii. The concept of polyarchy: “Polyarchy may be thought of as
relatively (but incompletely) democratized regimes, or to put it in
another way, polyarchy are regimes that have been substantially
popularized and liberalized, that is, highly inclusive and
extensively open to public contestation.” (Dahl, 1971, p. 8)
b. Social pluralism and political bargaining as necessay conditions of
polyarchy
i. Social pluralism: “Polyarchy requires a considerable degree of
social pluralism, that is, a diversity of social organizations with a
large measure of autonomy with respect to one another.” (Dahl
and Lindblom, 1992, P. 203)
ii. Political bargaining as necessity for polyarchy in social pluralism
In social pluralism, “if leaders agree on everything they would
have no need to bargain; if on the nothing, they could not bargain.
Leaders bargain because they disagree and expect that further
agreement is possible and will be profitable. …Hence, bargaining
atkes place because it is necessary, possible, and thought to be
profitable.” (Dahl and Lindblom, 1992, p. 326)
4. Corporatism: Criticism on pluralism in policy studies
a. Schmitter’s juxtaposition of concepts of pluralism and corporatism
i. “Pluralism can be defined as a system of interest representation
in which the constituent units are organized into an unspecified
number of multiple, voluntary, competitive, nonhierarchically
ordered and self determined ( as to type or scope of interest)
categories which are not specifically licensed, recognized,
subsidized, created or otherwise controlled in leadership
selection or interest articulation by the state and which do not
exercise a monopoly of representational activity within their
respective categories. (Schmitter, 1979, p. 15)
ii. “Corporatism can be defined as a system of interest
representation in which the constituent units are organized into a
limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive,
hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories,
recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a
deliberate representational monopoly within their respective
categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their
selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports.
(Schmitter, 1979, p. 13)
b. Liberal and authoritarian corporatism
i. Liberal corporatism: Liberal/societal corporatism refers to the
kind of interest-mediation mechanism constituted by liberal
democratic states mainly between interest organizations of the
labor and the capital. It aims to construct a kind of welfare
corporatism or welfare state within which two major interests
namely the labor and the capital can work out some
collaborations under the mediation of the state; e.g.
Scandinavian welfare state and post-WWII welfare state in UK.
ii. Authoritarian corporatism: Authoritarian/state corporatism refers
to the kind of interest-mediation mechanism of constructed by
bureaucratic-authoritarian state among interest organizations
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licensed by the state. Within authoritarian corporatism, the state
is more or less secluded from societal and political pressures and
can absolve chosen interest groupings into the corporatism to
legitimate and/or facilitate its ruling, e.g. authoritarian regimes
established in south America in the 1960s; regimes in the 1970s
in east Asia, especially the four little dragon.
H. Policy as State Apparatus in Resolving Societal Conflicts or Struggles
(To be discussed in Topic 3)
I. Education Policy as text interpreted by actors, mediated and enacted by
actors in institutional settings (To be discussed in Topic 7-8)
J. Synthesizing Models of Explanation in Policy Studies
(Level I)
Cognition
Information
/E
Causal Explanation（in-order-to Explanation）
Social
Action
Intentional Explanation (because-of explanation)
Other
Factors
(Level II)
D
Teleological Explanation
Quasi-teleological Explanation
(Functional Explanation)
Persistence
Function t0
(Level III)
Function tn
Institutionalization
Contextual Embeddedness
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(III)
Discursive-Critical Perspective in Policy Studies
A. Argumentative and Persuasive Turns in Policy Studies
1. Public policy as argumentative and persuasive practices
a. Redefining the nature of public policy: “As politicians know too well
but social scientists too often forget, public policy is made of
language. Whether in written or oral form, argument is central in all
stages of the policy process.” (Majone, 1989, p.1)
b. Redefining the role of the policy analysts: “In a system of
government by discussion, analysis - even professional analysis has less to do with formal techniques of problem solving than with
process of argument. The job of analysts consists in large part of
producing evidence and arguments to be used in the course of
public debate. Its crucial argumentative aspect is what distinguishes
policy analysis from the academic social science on the one hand,
and from problem-solving methodologies such as operations
research on the other. … They must persuade if they are to be taken
seriously in the forums of public deliberation. Thus, analysts, like
lawyers, politicians, and others who make a fundamental use of use
of language, will always be involved in all the technical problems of
language, including rhetorical problems. (Majone, 1989, p. 7)
2. Public policy as practice of persuasion
1. Redefining the nature of public policy: “All our talk of ‘making’ public
policy, of ‘choosing’ and ‘deciding’, loses track of the home truth …
that politics and policy making is mostly a matter of persuasion.
Decide, choose, legislate as they will, policy makers must carry
people with them, if their determinations are to have the full force of
policy. …To make policy in a way that makes it stick, policy makers
cannot merely issue edicts. They need to persuade the people who
must follow their edicts if those are to become general public
practice.” (Goodin et al., 2006, p. 5)
2. Redefining the core of the discipline: “Not only is the practice of pulic
policy making largely a matter of persuasion. So is the discipline of
studying public policy making aptly described as itself being a
‘persuasion’. It is a mood more than a science, a loosely organized
body of percepts and positions rather than a tightly integrated body
of systemic knowledge, more art and craft and genuine ‘science’.”
(ibid)
B. Discursive Perspective in Policy Studies
1. Locating the level of study for policy discourse
a. The concept of discourse has become popular in social sciences in
past decades. As the concept being used by various disciplines in
social sciences, the meanings of the concept have become
heterogeneous if not chaotic.
b. At conversation level, the concept of discourse can refers to speech
act, language use, or parole. For example in classroom discourse
study, discourse is taken as speech act and speech exchange
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between teachers and students in the classroom context.
c. At institution level, discourse can refers to cognitive, regulative and
normative rules governing the circulation and practice of ideas,
concepts, categories and representations of social meanings within
a social institutional domain. For examples, in medical institution,
discourse may take the form of a certification issued by a doctor to a
patient indicating the health condition of the latter and the whole
institutional configuration making this certification effective; and in
educational institution, discourse may take the form of a certificate
issued by government to a student certifying passing of an
examination of the latter and the whole institutional configuration
making this certification effective.
d. At socio-cultural system level, discourse can refers to the dominance
or hegemony governing the circulation and/or practice of ideas,
concepts, categories and representations of social meanings in a
society. For example, the discourses of neo-liberal capitalism or
socialism in economy system; discourse of liberal democracy or
proletarian dictatorship in political system; etc.
2. The conception of discourse in public policy
a. Frank Fischer defines “Discourse …is an ensemble of ideas and
concepts that give social meaning to social and physical relations.”
(2003, p. 90)
b. David Howarth defines Discourse refers “to historically specific
systems of meaning which form the identities of subjects and
objects.” (2002, quoted in Fischer, 2003, p. 73
c. Maarten Hajer defines discourse as “a specific ensemble of ideas,
concepts, and categories that are produced, reproduced, and
transformed to give meaning to physical and social relations.” (1995,
quoted in Fischer, 2003, p. 73
e. Taken together these conceptions of discourse, policy discourse can
then be characterized as a historically specific ensemble of ideas,
concepts and categories which gives meaning to physical and social
relations and forms identities of subjects and objects within a
particular policy domain and/or around a specific policy issue. For
example, the neo-liberalism in public policy; the “Washington
consensus” in fiscal policy; the welfare state or the workfare state in
welfare policy; comprehensive- egalitarianism or quasi-market
discourse in education policy.
C. Michel Foucault’s Theory of Discourse
1. Conception of Statement
a. The statement – the constituent unit of a discourse
“The statement is not the same kind of unit as the sentence, the
proposition, or the speech act…The statements is not …a structure
(i.e. a group of relations between variable elements...); it is a
function of existence that properly belong to signs and on the basis
of which one may then decide, through analysis or intuition, whether
or not they ‘make sense’, according to what rule they follow one
another or are juxtaposed, of what they are the sign, and what sort of
act is carried out by their formulation (oral or written).” (Foucault,
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1972, p. 86-87)
b. Accordingly policy statement can then be defined as a specification
or even a prescription (in oral or written format) circulating in a
particular public policy domain. It defines the “conditions of
existence” the objects in the specific public policy domain are
qualified to obtain. For examples, policy statements identify the
insane person, the infected patient, the welfare dependent, the
convicted criminal, the university dropout or graduate, the
EMI-capable, the benchmarked English teacher; and they also
stipulate the institutional treatments to be imposed on them.
2. Conception of discourse
a. A discourse “is the totality of all effective statements (whether
spoken or written). ... Description of discourse is in opposition to the
history of thought. There…a system of thought can be reconstituted
only on the basis of a definite discursive totality. …The analysis of
thought is always allegorical in relation to the discourse that it
employs. Its question is unfailingly: what is being said in what was
said? …what is this specific existence that emerges from what is
said and nowhere else?” (Foucault, 1972, p. 27-28)
“We can now give a full meaning to the definition of
‘discourse’. …We shall call discourse a group of statements in so far
as they belong to the same discursive formation. …It is made up of a
limited number of statements for which a group of conditions of
existence can be defined.” (p. 117)
b. Hence, a policy discourse is a totality and unity of effective policy
statements within a public policy domain in specific historical,
cultural, and socio-economic contexts. For example, the
quasi-market discourse on education reforms implemented by
capitalist states in developed countries in the last decade of the 20th
century can be construed as a totality of effective policy statements
which stipulate the underlying principles as well as the operational
mechanism of the schooling system in these countries.
3. Foucault’s Theory of Discursive Formation
Foucault differentiates the formation of a discourse into four interrelated
parts.
a. The Formation of Object:
ii. Mapping the surface of the emergence of the object
ii. Describing the authorities of delimitation
iii. Analyzing the grids of specification
b. The Formation of Enunciative Modality
i. Identifying who is speaking, who is accorded the right to use this
sort of language, who is qualified to do so.
ii. Describing the institutional sites from which the discourse is
made and form which the discourse derives its legitimate source
and point of application
iii. Analyzing the position of the subject, in which s/he occupies in
relation to the various domains and groups of objects
c. The Formation of Concepts: the formation of the organization of the
field of statements where they appeared and circulated
i. Identifying the forms of succession, e.g.
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- Orderings of enunciative series
- Types of dependence of the statement
- Rhetorical schemata according to which groups of statements
may be combined
ii. Identifying the forms of coexistence
- Field of presence
- Field of concomitance
- Field of memory
iii. Identifying the procedures of intervention that may be legitimately
applied to statements, e.g. technique of rewriting , method of
transcribing, mode of translating, means of transferring, method
of systematizing
d. The Formation of Strategies or theoretical and thematic choice
i. Determining the points of diffraction of discourse
- Point of incompatibility
- Point of equivalence
- Point of systematization
ii. Analyzing the economy of the discursive constellation
iii. Analyzing the other authority, e.g. functional to fields of
non-discursive practice, observing the rules and processes of
appropriation of discourse
5. Foucault’s Theory of Power/Knowledge and Discourse
a. The relation between discourse and power:
“Discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power…
Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it.” (Foucault,
1978, 101, my italic)
b. The concept of power/knowledge
i. “It is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together”
(Foucault, 1978, p. 100) and constitute what Foucault
conceptualized the power/knowledge.
ii. “We should admit … that power and knowledge directly imply one
another; that there is no power relation without the correlative
constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does
not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.
These power/knowledge relations are to be analyzed, therefore,
not on the basis of a subject of knowledge who is or is not free in
relation to the power system, but, on the contrary, the subject who
knows, the objects to be known and the modalities of knowledge
must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental
implications of power/knowledge and their historical
transformations. In short, it is not the activities of the subject of
knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or
resistant to power, but power/knowledge, the processes and
struggles that traverse it and of which it is made up, that
determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge.
(Foucault, 1977, p. 28)
D. Critical Discourse Analysis
1. Assumptions of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): As a research
approach, CDA has assigned numbers of particular features to the
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understanding of discourse
a. Discourse as social practice: Discourse is no longer construed as
individual language use in forms of text or talk, but as social
practices which implies
i. Representation and/or expression of meaning and value
ii. Acts upon the world
iii. Acts upon social relations between human beings
b. Constitutive nature of discourse: Construed as social practice,
discourse therefore takes on a constitutive nature. In other words,
human beings use discourse to construct the worlds or realities
around them. This constitutive nature of discourse may manifest in
at least three aspects
i. Ideational construction: “Discourse contributes to the
construction of system of knowledge and belief.” (Fairclough,
1992, p. 64) For example, discourse of science contributes to the
construction of the material world around us so are discourse of
myths or religion.
ii. Relational construction: “Discourse help construct social
relationship between people.” (ibid) For example, liberaldemocratic discourse derived from the Enlightenment contributes
to the constitution of the political realities of modern societies.
iii. Identity construction: Discourse contributes to the construction of
social subjects, self and social identity. For example, the identity
of citizenship is constructed through the liberal-democratic
discourse in the past three centuries in human societies.
c. Dialectic relationship between discourse and the social structure
“It is important that the relationship between discourse and social
structure should be seen dialectically if we are to avoid the pitfalls of
overemphasizing on the one hand the social determination of
discourse, and on the other hand the construction of the social in
discourse.” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 65) In other words, the dialectic
perspective in the relation between discourse and social structure
takes both social determination and social construction into to
consideration and assumes them to be in a interactive and
mediating relation.
d. Discourse is historical: CDA takes discourse as concrete social
practice in particular historical and socio-cultural contexts. Hence,
analysis of contexts, where the discourse takes place, is an essential
part of CDA.
e. Ideological effect of discourse: The core question CDA attempts to
explore how discourse serves as means to legitimatize and
reproduce prevailing power relations and the ideological effects
formed in different forms of social dominations, such as class, race
and gender. Hence, to wage critique on inequalities in power
relations and social distortions and biases in ideological
configurations is what makes CDA “critical”.
2. Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework of CDA
a. Three-dimensional analytical framework of CDA (Figure 1)
i. Text analysis: This dimension of discourse analysis includes
- Analyses of text
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- Analysis of textuality
- Analysis of intertextuality
ii. Discourse analysis: It covers analysis of the process of
production, distribution and consumption of a discourse. In other
words, it basically correspond Foucault’s conception of
discursive formation.
iii. Ideology analysis: This aspect of discourse analysis aims to
reveal the ideological effect embedded and/or constituted in a
particular discursive practice. By ideological effect of a discourse,
it refers to effect of a discourse in legitimating and reproducing
prevailing inequalities in power relations and social distortions
and biases in social-cultural practice.
Furthermore, as an ideological effect of a discourse has achieved
the cognitive status of “taken for granted” or “common sense”
among participants of a discourse, then it has constituted, what
Gramsci conceptualizes, hegemony. Hegemony is “an
ideological complex” (Gramsci, 1971; quoted in Fairclough, 1992,
p. 92), which constitutes “leadership as well as domination
across the economic, political, cultural and ideological domains
of a society.” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 92)
b. The mediating function of discursive practices between textual
practices and social-cultural practices.
“Critical discourse analysis is very much about making connections
between social and cultural structures and processes on the one
hand, and properties of text on the other.” (Fairclough and Wodak,
1997, p. 277) Critical discourse analysts have construed the
dimension of discursive practice as the mediator between the two.
They have characterized the connection to be mediating in nature. In
other words, the connection is neither direct nor deterministic but in
the form of dialectic and interactive.
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Figure 1
Analytical Framework of Critical Discourse Analysis
E. Policy Studies as Social Critiques
1. Conception of social critique and critical social science
a. According to Jurgen Habermas, a prominent figure of Critical Theory
in Germany, the primary concern of critical social scientists and
social critiques in general is to refute the assumption of
empirical-positivistic social researcher that social regularities
revealed in social researches are given facts comparable to those
natural facts discovered in natural science. Accordingly, they must
reflect on the legitimation foundation, which the prevailing social
regularities are built upon. More specially, they have to go beyond
the status quo and try hard to reveal the possible
"power-hypostatized" social relations and "ideologically-frozen"
social discourses at work. (1971, P. 310)
b. Applying these ideas to policy studies, critical policy studies can then
be construed as attempts to unmask the possible
i. distorted social relations hypostatized in specific public policies,
which are bias in favor of the dominants and/or against the
dominated, and
ii. distorted social discourses frozen in particular policy arenas, that
ideologues of the advantageous have forged in order to mystify
and/or rationalize the prevailing biases against the
disadvantaged.
c. As a result, the objective of critical social science, including critical
policy studies, is to emancipate
i. the disadvantageous and dominated from distorted and biased
social relations instituted in prevailing social arrangements;
ii. the articulations and voices of the disadvantageous and
dominated, which have been silenced in the ideologies forged by
the ideologues of the dominants.
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2. Aspects of criticality in policy studies
a. Critique on policy issues and frames: Critical policy researchers can
set out to reflect on the way a policy issue is formulated and framed
by the dominant policy discourse of the state. And see if there are
any relational and ideological distortions embedded in a particular
formulation of policy issue.
b. Critique on policy stances of specific parties: Critical policy
researchers can reflect on the possible relational distortion
embedded in the discursive process of a particular policy arena.
That is, they can assess the chances and capacities that different
interest parties possess in articulating their concerns and in
redressing their grievances. Furthermore, critical policy studies can
also reflect on the ideological distortions found in the arguments
formulated and proclaimed by different parties concerned.
c. Critique on policy context: The third aspect of criticality in policy
studies is to reflect on the macro socio-historical context and/or
meso institutional context, form which a particular policy issue is
originated. More specifically, it can assess whether there is any
relational and ideological distortions embedded in these context,
which give rise to the policy issue at point.
d. Critique on policy practice: The final aspect of criticality in policy
studies is to reflect on the possibilities of transformation and
emancipation that a policy practice can bring about in rectifying the
relational and ideological distortions embedded in a policy
phenomenon.
F. Education Policy in Critical Discourse Perspective: Discursive Analysis of
Lifelong Learning Education Reform in HKSAR
1. In search of discursive object of HKSAR education reform
a. In terms of policy document
b. In terms of temporal demarcation
c. In terms of discursive theme: Lifelong learning?
2. Analysis of the Enunciative Modality in HKSAR education reform
a. Speakers and the their positions and/authority to speak
b. Languages used in discourse
c. The institutional sites within which the discourse takes place
3. Understanding the discursive concept of HKSAR education reform
a. Understanding the formation of discursive concept in academic
discourse: Two versions of lifelong long education reforms
i. Lifelong learning education reform for economic rationalism
ii. Lifelong learning education reform for social inclusion and
political empowerment
b. Understanding the formation of discursive concept in global policy
context
i. Conceptual and methodological qualifications
ii. Empirical comparisons
c. Understanding the formation of discursive concept in HKSAR: In
paradigmatic comparative perspective
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4. Analysis of the discursive strategies of HKSAR education reform
a. Points of equivalence and systematization: The construction of the
quasi-market mechanism
b. Points of incompatibility
c. Economy of discursive constellation of public policy of HKSAR
Government
5. Analysis of the ideological and hegemonic practice of the discourse of
HKSAR education reform
a. Discursive domination / hegemony of market system and
bureaucratic- administrative system over education system
b. Distortions and bias against communicative-communal discourse in
education
c. Distortion and bias against critical-emancipatory discourse in
education
d. Suppression and bias against the discourse of the education
profession
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