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Reinventing the policy sciences: Three steps back to the future

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Abstract

This article examines the contemporary condition of the policy sciences in terms of its shortcomings, which can largely be attributed to an over reliance on instrumental rationality; the complexity of the problem contexts; and an increasingly technocratic orientation. These have combined to distance the policy sciences from their original multidisciplinary character and goals of human dignity and democratic governance. The essay argues that a return to these first principles requires three inter-related steps: a revision of the present policy sciences paradigm; the development of more democratic or participatory procedures; and a focus on problem definition. The article concludes by proposing means by which these steps could be operationalized.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. — George Bernard Shaw, ‘Maxims for Revolutionaries,’Man and Superman (1903).

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  1. Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado at Denver, 80202, Denver, CO, USA

    Peter Deleon

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Deleon, P. Reinventing the policy sciences: Three steps back to the future. Policy Sci 27, 77–95 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00999600

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