Frank Fischer (Humboldt University, Berlin)

Frank Fischer is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Politics and Global Affairs at Rutgers University in the USA. Currently, he is a research scholar at the Albrecht Daniel Thayer-Institute at Humboldt University in Berlin. He is an honorary co-editor of Critical Policy Studies journal and editor of the Handbook of Public Policy Series editor for Edward Elgar. In addition to widely lecturing around the world on environmental politics and policy analysis, he has published 17 books and numerous essays. These include Citizens, Experts and the Environment (Duke 2000), Reframing Public Policy:  Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices (Oxford 2003), Handbook of Public Policy Analysis:  Theory, Politics and Methods, co-edited with Mara Sidney and Gerald Miller (Taylor and Francis  2006), Democracy and Expertise: Reorienting Policy Inquiry (Oxford 2009), The Argumentative   Turn Revisited: Public Policy as Communicative Practice, co-edited with Herbert Gottweis (Duke 2012), the Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, co-edited with Douglas Torgerson, Anna Durnova and Michael Orsini ( Elgar 2015), Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect (Oxford 2017) and Truth and Post-Truth in Public Policy (2021). In addition to research in the United States and Germany, he has conducted field research in India,  Nepal and Thailand on citizen participation and local ecological knowledge. He has also received numerous awards, including the Harold Lasswell and Aaron Wildavsky Awards for contributions to the field.

Course: The Public Policy Process in Critical Perspective: Comparing Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

This course examines the theory of the public policy process, with an emphasis on political, conceptual and methodological issues. It begins with an exploration of the evolution of theory development in public policy studies, including an emphasis on the interplay among competing analytical criteria--efficiency, equity and legitimacy—in policy decision processes. The discussion then turns to an investigation of each phase of the policymaking process, from the politics of agenda setting (emphasizing interest group competition, parties, movements and the media), policy formulation (focused on policy advice, cost-benefit analysis and epistemic policy communities), policy decision-making and adoption (concerned with state imperatives and models of power), implementation (conerned with  program design, bureaucratic politics, and program recipients), and policy evaluation and learning (comparing technocratic versus constructivist approaches). Along the way, the role of the role the multiple streams model, the advocacy coalition framework, the institutional perspective, and the discourse-deliberative approach are considered. In the process, the course pays special attention to the kinds of knowledge and inquiry appropriate to each phase of the policy process. The methodological debates between quantitative and qualitative approaches that this gives rise to are also explored.