Narrative Policy Analysis for Decision Making

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Policy narratives are the rules of thumb, arguments, crisis scenarios, “war stories,” and other

accounts about how policy and management have, can, and should proceed in ways that enable

decision makers to take action, be they policymakers, managers, 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 begin-

ning, 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. A key question, then, is how to analyze and evaluate the narratives when their

truth-value cannot be determined or is disputed. Narrative policy analysis has been developed as an

approach to answering that question.