Policy Analysis in 750 Words: power and knowledge

This post adapts Policy in 500 Words: Power and Knowledge (the body of this post) to inform the Policy Analysis in 750 words series (the top and tails).

One take home message from the 750 Words series is to avoid seeing policy analysis simply as a technical (and ‘evidence-based’) exercise. Mainstream policy analysis texts break down the process into technical-looking steps, but also show how each step relates to a wider political context. Critical policy analysis texts focus more intensely on the role of politics in the everyday choices that we might otherwise take for granted or consider to be innocuous. The latter connect strongly to wider studies of the links between power and knowledge.

Power and ideas

Classic studies suggest that the most profound and worrying kinds of power are the hardest to observe. We often witness highly visible political battles and can use pluralist methods to identify who has material resources, how they use them, and who wins. However, key forms of power ensure that many such battles do not take place. Actors often use their resources to reinforce social attitudes and policymakers’ beliefs, to establish which issues are policy problems worthy of attention and which populations deserve government support or punishment. Key battles may not arise because not enough people think they are worthy of debate. Attention and support for debate may rise, only to be crowded out of a political agenda in which policymakers can only debate a small number of issues.

Studies of power relate these processes to the manipulation of ideas or shared beliefs under conditions of bounded rationality (see for example the NPF). Manipulation might describe some people getting other people to do things they would not otherwise do. They exploit the beliefs of people who do not know enough about the world, or themselves, to know how to identify and pursue their best interests. Or, they encourage social norms – in which we describe some behaviour as acceptable and some as deviant – which are enforced by (1) the state (for example, via criminal justice and mental health policy), (2) social groups, and (3) individuals who govern their own behaviour with reference to what they feel is expected of them (and the consequences of not living up to expectations).

Such beliefs, norms, and rules are profoundly important because they often remain unspoken and taken for granted. Indeed, some studies equate them with the social structures that appear to close off some action. If so, we may not need to identify manipulation to find unequal power relationships: strong and enduring social practices help some people win at the expense of others, by luck or design.

Relating power to policy analysis: whose knowledge matters?

The concept of‘epistemic violence’ is one way todescribe the act of dismissing an individual, social group, or population by undermining the value of their knowledge or claim to knowledge. Specific discussions include: (a) the colonial West’s subjugation of colonized populations, diminishing the voice of the subaltern; (b) privileging scientific knowledge and dismissing knowledge claims via personal or shared experience; and (c) erasing the voices of women of colour from the history of women’s activism and intellectual history.

It is in this context that we can understand ‘critical’ research designed to ‘produce social change that will empower, enlighten, and emancipate’ (p51). Powerlessness can relate to the visible lack of economic material resources and factors such as the lack of opportunity to mobilise and be heard.

750 Words posts examining this link between power and knowledge

Some posts focus on the role of power in research and/ or policy analysis:

• Policy analysis for marginalized groups in racialized political systems
• Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) Decolonizing Methodologies 
• Carol Bacchi (2009) Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? 

These posts ask questions such as: who decides what evidence will be policy-relevant, whose knowledge matters, and who benefits from this selective use of evidence? They help to (1) identify the exercise of power to maintain evidential hierarchies (or prioritise scientific methods over other forms of knowledge gathering and sharing), and (2) situate this action within a wider context (such as when focusing on colonisation and minoritization). They reflect on how (and why) analysts should respect a wider range of knowledge sources, and how to produce more ethical research with an explicit emancipatory role. As such, they challenge the – naïve or cynical – argument that science and scientists are objective and that science-informed analysis is simply a technical exercise (see also Separating facts from values).

Many posts incorporate these discussions into many policy analysis themes.

• Reflecting on your role as a policy analyst compares pragmatic and critical approaches to policy analysis.
• Entrepreneurial policy analysis warns against a too-strong focus on the agency – rather than the unequal status and resources – of successful political actors.
• Who should be involved in the process of policy analysis? highlights the tensions between ‘evidence based’ and ‘co-production’ approaches (regarding who should be involved, and how to prioritise evidence)

See also

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Power and Ideas

Education equity policy: ‘equity for all’ as a distraction from race, minoritization, and marginalization. It discusses studies of education policy (many draw on critical policy analysis)

There are also many EBPM posts that slip this discussion of power and politics into discussions of evidence and policy. They don’t always use the word ‘power’ though (see Evidence-informed policymaking: context is everything)