The argumentative turn in critical policy analysis: Practical reason and the logic of policy argumentation

This chapter presents the “argumentative turn” in policy analysis. After outlining its development, the discussion introduces the logic of policy argumentation as a critical method of inquiry. It shows how this turn to arguments is linked to a critical postpositivist epistemology and the search for a socially relevant methodology that resonates with critical theory. Recognizing that the public policy process is constituted through discursive practices, the orientation seeks to critically comprehend and reconstruct what policy analysts do when they do it, to understand how their research findings are communicated, and how the analyst’s advice is interpreted and used by those who receive it. Presented as a form of practical reason, the logic and its discursive steps are delineated, followed by a discussion of its theoretical and methodological implications. The chapter closes by presenting practical reason and argumentation as a basis for the discursive methodology of deliberative policy analysis.