European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 185

European Policy Analysis

relevance in policy fields that emerge in
an institutional void, that is, the absence
of relatively stable institutionalized
boundaries. Strategic boundary work with
regard to these policy fields refers to all
kinds of strategic moves and interactions
that are designated to (re-)negotiate, (re-)
define, (re-)move, and (de-)stabilize the
boundaries of both existing and newly
created policy fields (for generic types of
boundary work, see also Gieryn 1999).
Following the general understanding
of political strategy outlined earlier, I
suggest analyzing strategic boundary
work with regard to the following basic
categories: strategic actors, strategic
orientations, strategic practices, and
strategic interactions.

First, the political strategy
perspective assigns strategic actors a
central role in defining and redefining
the boundaries of policy fields. The
universe of strategic boundary workers
includes two types of actors—those
who already participate in the policy
arenas that constitute an integrative–
strategic policy field (see Section 4.1);
and additional actors who have not been
engaged in the policy arenas of integrated
policies. Whereas the former comprise
all kinds of political, administrative, and
societal policy actors; the latter ones
involve boundary workers with a specific
integration task, such as governmental
core executives (Bornemann 2011).
Regardless of these contexts, the actors
can adopt different roles in creating
and maintaining an integrative policy
field. They can play an active part in
constructing or deconstructing field
boundaries, mediate among conflicting
actors, or assume more passive roles as
external observers.

Second, these actors follow

specific strategic orientations that consist
of success-oriented and dynamic goal–
means–context calculations. Elaborating
on insights about the differences between
political and administrative logics of
action (Hansen and Ejersbo 2002), a
political strategy perspective draws
attention to fundamentally different
strategic orientations that are aligned
with the particular action contexts of the
actors. Considering the complexity of “the
political” within modern policy systems
(Tils 2005) the diverse orientations of
multiple policy actors in creating and
demarcating policies can be captured by
referring to polity, politics, and policy.
Administrative actors, for example,
are oriented toward policy and polity
aspects, such as resources, expertise,
administrative practicability, and legality
(Raschke and Tils 2013; Smeddinck and
Tils 2002; Tils 2001). Therefore, they
can be expected to engage in boundarydemarcation strategies with a focus
on pushing through their expertise to
enhance resources and competencies
for their own administrative unit in
relation to other (competing) units. Party
elites in governmental positions follow
a different orientation as they attempt
to succeed in both policies and politics.
They consider the demarcation of a policy
field from the viewpoint of power and its
profiling possibilities within the political
context of party competition, coalition
government, mass media, lobbying, and
so on. They seek to cut a policy area to
elicit a positive response from the public
and the voters. In contrast, other actors,
such as those in civic organizations, are
primarily interested in substantial aspects
of policy-field demarcation. They might
want to tailor problem-solving processes
and structures to arrive at the best

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