European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 140

The Role of Theories in Policy Studies and Policy Work

Figure 2. Problematizing policy work as mediation

More than other policy workers,
“problematizers” are deeply convinced
that policy problems are always claims of
one group of citizens on another group
(Hoppe 2010, 66–67); and, hence, that
“policy issues spark a public into being”
(Marres 2005). The inevitable implication
is that in public policymaking puzzling,
powering and institutionalizing are
strongly intertwined and hence, in
terms of policy workers’ performance,
equally important. Compared to other
types of policy work, this demands an
extraordinary amount of reflexive skills.
It requires more than Schön’s “double
vision” of ex post reflection-on-action
of the accomplished policy scholar
who, as spectator, spots the exemplar or
generative metaphor from his professional

repertoire in a past problem situation;
and the ex durante reflection-in-action
of the accomplished practitioner who, as
actor, conducts a reflective conversation
with the current new problematic by
respecting its uncertainty, instability,
and uniqueness (Schön 1983). It actually,
on top, requires a kind of “triple vision”
of simultaneous awareness of puzzling,
powering, and (de)institutionalizing, in
full acknowledgement of the relational
sometimes conflictual and agonistic
character of these three activities. This
makes the policy worker part of the
chorus, not necessarily its conductor,
engaged
in
the
communicative
performance of politics as making sense
together (Forester1989, 119–133; Hoppe
1999).

140