ABSTRACT
During the past two decades a growing number of policy scholars have focused on the role of argumentation in policy analysis, giving rise to what has been described as the “argumentative turn” (Fischer and Forester 1993) and the practice of “deliberative policy analysis (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003). The argumentative turn in policy analysis emerged to deal with the epistemological limitations of “neopositivist” or empiricist policy analysis and the technocratic decision making practices to which it gave rise. After examining the limits of technocratic policy analysis, in particular its diffi culties in supplying “usable knowledge” to policy decision makers, the essay takes up the argumentative turn and the processes of policy argumentation. It then offers a dialectical communications model of policy decision making and supplies it with an informal logic of practical reason, presented as an alternative to the formal logic of neopositivism. Practical reason, as an informal logic of evaluation, is delineated as four interrelated levels of policy discourse that systematically connect facts and values, empirical and normative inquiry in framework for policy deliberation. The ability of the methodological framework to organize policy discourse is briefl y illustrated with a particular policy issue.
