ABSTRACT

Policy narratives are the arguments, scenarios, and other accounts about how policy and management have, can, and should proceed in ways that enable decision makers to take action, be they policy makers, their analysts, or others. More formally, policy narratives are scenarios (stories and arguments) that stabilize decision making for issues of high complexity, uncertainty, incompleteness, and conflict. Each narrative has a beginning, middle, and end (or premises and conclusions, if offered as an argument), and revolves around a sequence of events or positions in which something is said to happen or from which something is said to follow.