The Policy Analysis-Critical Theory Affair: Wildavsky and Habermas as Bedfellows?

Abstract

Policy analysis may benefit from specific conceptual contributions derived from Jurgen Habermas's critical social theory. In particular, Aaron Wildavsky's emphasis on the policy analyst's fostering of social and political ‘interactions’ can be given concrete empirical content derived from the critical theorist's account of social and communicative action. In addition, the critical theorist's distinction between action and ‘learning’ extends and sharpens Wildavsky's and Lindblom's account of policy outcomes. Once obstacles to social and political learning are distinguished from ordinary constraints upon citizens' action, policy analysis research (as formulated by Wildavsky and Lindblom) can be more concretely specified and then understood also and essentially to involve fundamental normative judgments of the legitimacy of policy-fostered ‘interactions’.