European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 179

European Policy Analysis

prescribed function, such as steering), a
field perspective draws attention to their
actual forming and functioning. From a
field perspective, IPS are not necessarily
means for governing the policy system
toward certain ends, but venues for
interactions, which have to be described
before they are assessed with regard to
their functional implications.

Second, in line with general
field theoretical accounts (Fligstein and
McAdam 2012), a policy-field perspective
highlights the socially constructed
nature of IPS, that is, what IPS mean
to policymakers and how this meaning
affects policymaking. Therefore, a fieldtheoretical perspective reorients the
view from objectively measurable effects
of policy programs to the subjectively
relevant action-guiding effects of IPS:
the construction of a shared but not
necessarily consensual understanding
of IPS’s purposes, and how this
understanding structures the thinking and
doing of policy actors, that is, the “field
effect.” Considering both their theoretical
significance for capturing the formation
of policy fields and their actual practical
relevance for orienting policymaker,
“integration” and “strategy” can be
regarded as cornerstones around which
the construction of IPS and, therefore, the
field effect emerges.

Third, considering IPS in terms
of a new type of policy field (rather than
a policy program, a way of steering,
problem solving, or the like) broadens
the analytical view in several respects. A
field perspective does not only open up
to more dynamic inquiries about what
happens over time around and within IPS,
that is, their changing configurations and
boundaries, but it also implies that IPS
are part of a larger and evolving policy

landscape, a “complex web of strategic
action fields” (Fligstein and McAdam
2012, 8) with which they are connected
in multiple ways, and, therefore, expands
the analysis toward their nestedness in a
broader environment of policy fields.

Overall, I argue that IPS should be
regarded not only as instrumental means
to solve complex problems and govern the
policy machinery toward certain longterm goals, but they also signify a new type
of policy field emerging from two broader
movements in the policy system—the
integration of increasingly differentiated
areas of policymaking, on the one hand,
and the rise of strategy, on the other hand.
IPS are manifestations of these types of
policy fields. Rather than following the
logic of differentiation, IPS are based on
a rationale of integration; and instead
of drawing on stable institutionalized
boundaries, IPS build on the logic of
strategy which is geared toward flexible
boundary work. This concept of IPS as
manifestations of new types of policy fields
has major implications for how IPS are to
be analyzed. These are further elaborated
in the following section.

4. Toward an Integration- and
Strategy-Oriented Policy Analysis

F

ollowing the proposition that
integration and strategy signify
the emergence of a new type of
policy field and serve as important
practical orientations for policymakers—
how can policy analysis systematically
take account of these cornerstones of
integrative–strategic policy fields? In the
following two subsections, I outline an
integration- and strategy-oriented policy
analysis that is suppo sed to deploy a finer-

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