ICPP7 - Chiang_Mai 2025

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a systematic approach to understanding the role of narratives in the policy process. Narrative text and images are ever-present in our political and social spheres, and they effectively shape the thinking and preferences of the public and decision makers. This all-day workshop will comprise of a morning session devoted to an introduction to the NPF, operational definitions of key NPF concepts, some methods, and ethical issues. Whether you are new to the NPF or a seasoned NPF scholar, the afternoon session will be devoted to your NPF research (or potential research). We will have practice exercises and consultations/brainstorming about NPF research questions, data, and methods.  

Natural Language Processing (NLP) offers transformative potential for public policy research, enabling innovative analysis of large volumes of textual data from news, official documents, social media, and other sources. This full-day introductory course provides a comprehensive overview of NLP techniques, including rule-based approaches, unsupervised and supervised learning, and the emerging capabilities of large language models (LLMs).

Through real-world examples and interactive hands-on exercises, participants will learn how NLP can be applied to key areas of public policy research, including understanding policy processes, analyzing policy design, and evaluating policy outcomes. For example, attendees will explore how sentiment analysis can reveal public opinion towards a new policy and how topic modeling can uncover trends in ongoing policy debates.

While this course is designed for researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds, a basic working knowledge of Python or R would be helpful for participating in the hands-on coding exercises. Participants with limited programming experience can leverage pre-written code templates and practical tools to implement NLP techniques, enabling them to apply these methods to their own research.

Attendees will leave the course with a strong foundational understanding of NLP techniques, diverse applications across geographies and domains, and actionable insights for leveraging NLP to address complex policy challenges.

Design Recovery Case Studies (DRC) is an emerging technique inspired by Michel Barzelay’s reinterpretation of Herbert Simon’s classic perspective on understanding organizations and social or political undertakings as artificial phenomena, or “artifacts.” These artifacts are purposefully designed and implemented, serving as organizational solutions that bridge internal functionality with external adaptation to their environment and context. DRC seeks to explore this interface by uncovering or reconstructing the processes through which organizational solutions are developed and executed.

As a research methodology, DRC offers a scientific lens and a cross-disciplinary toolkit of concepts and strategies for identifying public organizations and initiatives as artifacts and devising investigative approaches to examine how they function—or fail to function. The course is divided into two parts: the first introduces and discusses the perspective and its core concepts in class, while the second involves collaboratively selecting a case or experience with participants and developing a research design in class.

In this course you will learn how to use concepts and frameworks of policy learning to strengthen and advance your research across a wide range of topics and approaches in public policy. We will cover the conceptual foundations of policy learning, its types, and effects on public policy, and how it integrates into - and strengthens- existing theoretical approaches to policy process research. Next, we will examine in depth various ways of measuring the presence of learning in public policy and discuss how to establish the causal effects of learning in individuals, groups and complex organizations, drawing on exemplary case studies. 

We will finish the course with practical suggestions on how to benefit from the policy learning framework in your own research: for this reason, we invite participants to prepare a short (3-4) page description of their project, research plan, or paper drafts. 

Social equity was adopted as the fourth pillar of public administration, along with economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Johnson and Savara (2011) defined social equity as the active commitment to fairness, justice, and equality in the formulation of public policy, and management of all institutions serving the public directly of by contract. Public administrators, including all persons involved in public governance should seek to prevent and reduce inequality and injustice based on significant social characteristics and to promote greater equality in access to services, procedural fairness, quality of services and social outcomes. This demonstrates a unique set of opportunities and challenges to public policy study in defining, measuring and evaluating social equity in public policy.

The purpose of this course is to provide participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to critically think, understand and analyze social equity and public policy. This course will introduce students to a wide range of public policy areas along with the core dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and economy. More specifically, this course advances the participants’ understanding about social equity and its relationship to public policy both from conceptual and practical perspectives.

Upon the successful completion of this pre-conference course, participants will be able to:

1) Compare and analyze the conceptual underpinnings of social equity

2) Critically apply the importance of social equity within public administration/public policy

3) Discuss measurement approaches relating to social equity analysis of public policies and

4) Engage in constructive dialogues on critical concepts related to social inequities in our society.

Join this half-day course to gain the knowledge and skills to conduct ethical, culturally sensitive, and theoretically and methodologically rigorous policy research. Students will learn to:

- Understand the ethics and logic of the scientific method

- Make appropriate decisions regarding theory and methods

- Design a rigorous policy study

- Assess the quality of policy research designed by others.

Students will submit a one-page design summary of their own project prior to the start of the course to be discussed during class.

This course explores Critical Policy Analysis (CPA), a research orientation that bridges contemporary theoretical and methodological discussions—both normative and empirical—on the analysis of public policy at local, national, and global levels. Emphasizing socially inclusive values, CPA seeks to bring social meaning back into the understanding of policy through analytical approaches like framing, narrative analysis, argumentation, reflexive critique, and the role of emotions.

Rather than adhering to a single method, critical policy analysis tailors its approach to the nature of the policy being analyzed, the site of its production, the purpose of the research, and the positionality of the researcher. Grounded in  interpretive social science and critical theory,  CPA rejects the positivist notion of neutrality, instead focusing on understanding policymaking processes not only in terms of inputs and outputs but also through the lenses of interests, meanings, normative assumptions, and values. At its core, this approach is committed to the promotion of democratic governance and social justice.

Throughout the course, participants will engage with various key frameworks and critical methodologies—such as framing, using them to interrogate and analyze public policies through a lens of social justice, equity, and democratic values.

The course will provide students with conceptual lenses and methodological insights for the study of the governing of sustainable transitions processes from a public policy research perspective.

This course examines the challenges posed by the governing of ecological transition processes for public policy research. By contrast to public policy

developments in well-defined domains of state intervention, it is characterized by overlapping policy frontiers, transversal public policy issues and ambiguous policy goals. The multi-actors/cross-sectoral nature of these dynamics has led to diverse heuristics that analyze the multiple interactions and the way these processes are governed, each one with different assumptions on their influencing factors. In keeping with the multidisciplinary nature of ecological transitions and how they are addressed in comparative policy research, this course will aim at: conceptualizing the role of public policies in transition processes; including this perspective into research designs and applied research; Examining what resources and capacities are draw upon in order to monitor and administer processes of change; incorporating conflicts, resistances and mobilizations; applying these concepts and tools across a range of policy areas/political contexts in order to generate new assumptions and research agendas for studying the governing of ecological transition processes.

Dr. Charlotte Halpern holds a PhD in political science. She is FNSP Senior research fellow with tenure at Sciences Po, Centre for European studies and

comparative politics (CEE), CNRS, France. She has done extensive teaching and research on state restructuring, comparative climate governance and the selection of policy instruments. Her current research focuses on the politics and policies of ecological transitions, with a focus on sustainable mobility transitions and carbon measurement in Europe, South East Asia and South America. She has co-edited Policy analysis in France, Policy press, 2018 (with P. Hassenteufel and P. Zittoun); Policy instrumentation, Presses de Sciences Po, 2014 (with P. Lascoumes and P. Le Galès), special issues and articles in academic journals (Comparative European Politics; West European Politics; Politique européenne; Espacestemps.net) and chapters in peer-reviewed books. She is the co-director of the LIEPP (Laboratory for interdisciplinary evaluation of public policies) environmental policy research group and the director of the Sciences Po Institute for environmental transformations. She also heads the Sciences Po executive master programme “Regional governance and urban development”.

The course proposes to examine the main research question, concepts, and theory elements of a constructivist and pragmatist approach to study the Policy Process empirically. Inspired by Pragmatist Philosophy (Dewey, James), by Pragmatist Sociology (Boltanski, Latour) and by the linguistic Turn in Social Sciences, this approach proposes to observe the policymakers "in action" involved in the policy process to impose a policy solution in the policy process and to understand it as a political activity. This approach proposes to take into account the cognitive skill and the discursive capacity of the stakeholders and the policymakers not only to define a wicked problem but also to transform it as a treatable problem that can be solved and to match it to a policy solution. 

Ref. P. Zittoun, "The political process of Policymaking, a pragmatist approach on public policy

The course explores theoretical and methodological challenges in studying systemic corruption. The course will be divided into two sections. The first section will introduce students to the corruption consolidation framework. This analytical framework is designed to understand and make sense of corruption practices in places where corruption has become the rule. It offers a theoretical proposition to understand how corruption becomes organized and which could be the main conditions under which these practices remain stable and become main institutions. Notably, agents who want to make a change in places with systemic corruption face surmountable challenges. The second section of the course will discuss these challenges, and bring examples from different places taking advantage of recent publications on the topic. Desirably, students interested in the course could be prepared to contribute with their county-or-case examples, their methodological challenges, and related queries on the topic.

Emotions play a crucial role in shaping political discourse, public policy, and institutional legitimacy. They are not merely individual experiences but socially embedded phenomena that structure the way knowledge, power, and decision-making processes unfold. This half-day pre-conference course introduces participants to Interpretive Emotions Analysis (IEA)—a methodological approach designed to systematically analyze emotions in policy debates, institutional action, and public controversies.

The session will first provide a concise theoretical overview of the role of emotions in policy studies, drawing on scholarship from political sociology, feminist epistemology, and discourse analysis. We will explore how emotions act as knowledge-producing elements (Ahmed 2013) and how they shape public legitimacy (Durnová 2019). The course will then focus on the practical application of IEA, demonstrating how interpretive methodologies allow researchers to analyze emotional language, in policy texts, media representations, and other examples of political discourse.

By the end of the session, participants will be familiar with key analytical strategies, including coding emotional registers, identifying semantic clusters, and tracing the socio-political context of emotions in different types of data. The session will include hands-on exercises and discussions on how to integrate IEA into participants’ own research projects.

Course Outline

1. Introduction: Why Study Emotions in Policy Research?
• Emotions as socially and politically embedded (Ahmed 2013; Berlant 2004)
• Emotions in public policy: legitimacy, governance, and political action (Durnová 2019; Gould 2009)
2. Theoretical Framework of IEA
• The interplay of emotions, power, and knowledge 
• Emotions as discursive practices and framing tools (Foucault 1966;)
3. Analytical Strategies for IEA
• Identifying emotional registers and rhetorical devices
• Coding semantic fields of emotions  ( metaphors, analogies,  hyperboles, etc.)
• Contextualizing emotions within policy narratives and institutional settings
4. Hands-On Exercise: Applying IEA to Policy Texts
• Group activity: analyzing policy documents, political speeches, or media coverage
• Discussion: integrating IEA into your research design
5. Tailoring IEA to your own research project
• Practical challenges and methodological limitations & Future research directions 

Pre-reading materials will be provided before the course. Participants are also encouraged to bring their own data materials for the hands-on exercise.

We are pleased to announce a half-day preconference course, focusing on critical and interpretive policy analysis. This course fosters a collaborative learning environment, pairing experienced researchers with less experienced colleagues to explore methodological challenges in policy research.

Following a “master-class” model, the course provides an interactive space where participants present methodological challenges as case studies for discussion. Sessions will explore discourse, framing, and narrative analysis, including connections to AI-based natural language processing, ethnography, expert interviewing, participatory action research, and policy design methodologies.

This year, we are pleased to welcome Frank Fischer, Henk Wagenaar, Koen Bartels, Regine Paul, Tamara Metze, Jennifer Dodge, and Severine van Bommel as facilitators.

Workshop Format

Thematic Clustering (10 min): Participants briefly state their methodological challenges (1-2 sentences) while adding them to a shared board. The facilitator clusters similar questions into 2-3 overarching themes.

Master-Class Discussion & Synthesis (50 min): The expert leads an interactive discussion using selected cases, encouraging all participants to engage.

Proposal Submission

To apply, submit a proposal (max 3 pages, 500-600 words, double-spaced) including:

Full name, institutional affiliation, and email

Research project title

Career stage (e.g., PhD year, postdoc, etc.)

Brief research project description, methodology, and key challenges for discussion

Submission Guidelines: File name: Last name.Methodology Workshop Proposal

We welcome researchers at all career stages and look forward to an engaging discussion on interpretive policy methodologies.

This workshop proposes to discuss and train participants in the art and craft of qualitative interviews of Policymakers. After discussing the qualitative interview's epistemological and methodological biases, the workshop proposes different practical exercises for participants to learn how to proceed. 

Ref. Becker Howard, Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You're Doing It, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998

Recently, the role of emotions in defining or influencing behaviour, including political behaviour, has been acknowledged, and research is increasingly addressing how affective processes shape our attitudes, actions, and decision-making. Policy studies have also started to analyse how emotions are reflected in policy discourses and how they influence policy change and support for policies. However, we lack solid empirical evidence as well as widely accepted theoretical models on the role of emotions in almost all aspects of politics. Conceptual and methodological problems abound, e.g., How to define, categorise and measure political emotions? How do we analyse the interplay of emotions with other political variables, like ideology, values and identity? What is the analytical model that best grasps the role of emotions in political action: should we consider them dependent, independent or mediating variables? The above questions are even more pressing in the field of policy studies and most of the empirical papers on the role of emotions in policy are seriously under-theorised. With some exceptions empirical studies don’t relate to the theories of the policy process. The course aims at presenting some conceptual as well as methodological challenges concerning the research on the role of emotions in the policy process, thus contributing to the research agenda of this emerging field. The course builds on the research being done in the framework of the EU Horizon project MORES – Moral emotions in politics: how they unite, how they divide, led by Zsolt Boda.

This course offers a comprehensive exploration of a critical approach to studying public policy and policy analysis, grounded in postpositivist foundation. Critical policy inquiry draws on Jürgen Habermas’s work on communicative action and deliberation, Michel Foucault’s writings on discourse, and the epistemics of social constructivism. The course advances deliberative policy argumentation and the logic of practical reason, exploring how this can be used as a framework for interpreting the interaction of normative and empirical arguments in policy politics. Participants will learn how to apply this approach to a diverse range of topics, including technocracy, policy expertise, deliberative democratic politics, interpretive policy analysis, post-truth, climate and Covid denialism, participatory governance, local and tacit knowledge, and the role of emotion in policy controversies. This course concludes with a look to transformative policy learning and the future of the field. Connecting social and political theory with empirical research and practical applications, it is beneficial for PhD students and scholars of public policy, politics, governance, public administration, and regulatory policy.

The aim of this lecture is to provide theoretical lenses on the role of collective actors in the policy process and methodological tools to empirically analyze them. Three main types of collective actors have been highlighted in the literature: institutional actors, organizational actors and informal actors. A key question is the understanding of how individuals belonging to institutions (especially administrations), to organizations (especially interest groups) or sharing policy orientations (like the “programmatic groups” structured around a policy change program) can form a group who participates to the policy process. The lecture starts with showing that this issue are often not directly adressed in the dominant policy processes theories, even when they stress the role of agency, especially in the advocacy coalition framework. Other theories, especially the multiple stream framework, focus more on individual actors than on collective actors.

The lecture will then present the contribution of sociological approaches, especially organizational sociology, constructivism and pragmatism, for the understanding of the construction (and the deconstruction) of collective actors in the policy process, in a dynamic perspective, taking the temporality strongly into account. It will also present some methodological tools for the empirical analysis of collective actors. 

Think tanks have become relevant participants in policy networks and policy making around the world. Broadly defined as organizations involved in policy related research and advisory efforts, think tanks are frequently presented as independent civil society actors committed to supply evidence-based knowledge, and as bridging organizations committed to speak "truth to power". The course will critically examine the history and theoretical understanding of think tanks, and introduce suitable methods to study think tanks and think tank networks. Drawing on modified approaches to the study of interest groups (Schmitter and Streeck), we will focus on top down “logics of influence” and bottom up “logics of constitutencies" (corporate, academic, civil society etc.) relevant to examine the interrelation of interests and ideas and the ways in which think tanks are embedded in the economic, political, social and cultural fabric of society. Drawing on discourse coalition theory (Hajer), we will examine some of the the ways in which think tanks have become critical agents for the creation, distribution and contestation of story lines and policy narratives. The workshop will look at the composition of think tank boards, at critical links between think tanks (interlocking board membership) and at relevant output patterns. Particular attention will be paid to the transnational dimension of think tank networks.