Policy Analysis in Multi-Actor Policy Settings / TRAIL thesis series / T 2003/3

Policy Analysis in Multi-Actor Policy Settings; Navigating Between Negotiated Nonsense and Superfluous Knowledge synthesizes the existing, divergent policy analysis insights on how to deal with today's complex public policy issues. The result is a guide for setting up an analysis in a multi-actor setting. Policy analysis is meant to facilitate the policymaking process by producing information that is useful for resolving problems in a specific political setting. It was originally designed for authoritative topdown planning. Yet this type of contextual environment is rare for policy analysis today. The resources needed to formulate and implement any policy are now often spread among multiple acton, each of whom has interests, values, and perceptions of the policy space that may differ from those of other actors. For years a lively debate has been ongoing regarding what constitutes a good policy analysis in a multi-actor setting. This book is meant to bridge the divergent views in that debate. It outlines an overarching theory of the requirements that a multi-actor policy setting puts on a policy analysis and the approaches that exist to deal with these requirements. The theory has been validated in three policy analysis studies carried out in the field of infrastructure. Odette van de Riet holds the positions of Researcher at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of the Delft University of Technology (www.tbm.tudelft.nl), and Research Leader at the not-for-profit policy analysis institute RAND Europe (www.rand.org).