Action Research in Policy Analysis

Critical and Relational Approaches to Sustainability Transitions

Koen P.R. Bartels, Julia M. Wittmayer, Koen P.R. Bartels, Julia M. Wittmayer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351372633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Today's pressing political, social, economic, and environmental crises urgently ask for effective policy responses and fundamental transitions towards sustainability supported by a sound knowledge base and developed in collaboration between all stakeholders.

This book explores how action research forms a valuable methodology for producing such collaborative knowledge and action. It outlines the recent uptake of action research in policy analysis and transition research and develops a distinct and novel approach that is both critical and relational. By sharing action research experiences in a variety of settings, the book seeks to explicate ambitions, challenges, and practices involved with fostering policy changes and sustainability transitions. As such it provides crucial guidance and encouragement for future action research in policy analysis and transition research.

This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of policy analysis and transition research and more broadly to public administration and policy, urban and regional studies, political science, research and innovation, sustainability science, and science and technology studies. It will also speak to practitioners, policymakers and philanthropic funders aiming to engage in or fund action research.

1 Introduction

Action research in policy analysis and transition research

Koen PR Bartels and Julia M Wittmayer

It is our contention that action research … can come to be a significant methodological tool … in an emerging focus on public affairs. In fact, a public affairs perspective may prove to be the area of greatest utility for A/R, though such utility will not be realized without application and a great deal of effort.

(Keller and Heatwole, 1976: 193)

There is an emerging consensus that more than ever we are living in dangerous times (Hawking, 2016). Climate change, resource depletion, and large-scale agricultural production are rapidly amounting to an ecological tragedy threatening our very existence. The global meltdown of financial and economic systems and dismantling of welfare states have revealed the perversities and cracks of modern democratic capitalism and continue to generate spiralling regressive effects and inequalities. Increases in mass migration, mental health problems, and political demagoguery are mounting pressure on the solidarity and resilience of societies. In sum, we face a series of political, social, economic, and environmental crises that expose the bankruptcy of hegemonic systems and beg urgent action (Fischer and Gottweis, 2012; Gunnarsson et al., 2015; McKibben, 2015; Stout and Love, 2015; Monbiot, 2016; Raworth, 2017).

Developing effective and sustainable responses to these crises challenges us to reflect on the types and purposes of knowledge needed and, more fundamentally, on the modes of research for generating it. Such research and knowledge need to contribute to sustainability transitions – i.e. long-term processes of change towards more sustainable societies (Grin et al., 2010) – in ways that honour fundamental interdependencies between people and other living and non-living entities and acknowledge the associated knowledge uncertainty, value pluralism, and power inequalities. We therefore propose to adopt a mode of research that (1) generates actionable knowledge, (2) recognises, works with, and strengthens relationships, and (3) critically and constructively transforms hegemonic systems.

In the past, attention has been frequently called to the value of action research for addressing the increasing complexity of our societies, the structural inabilities of public organisations to effectively handle these, and the deterioration of underlying worldviews (Keller and Heatwole, 1976; Comfort, 1985; Reason, 1994; Reason and Bradbury, 2001). Action research involves researchers and other stakeholders (‘co-inquirers’) in critical and relational processes aimed at collaboratively producing scientifically and socially relevant knowledge and transformative action (Reason and Bradbury, 2001; Greenwood and Levin, 2007; Dick, 2015). Recently, action research has been hailed as a methodology for environmental governance (Van Buuren et al., 2014; Castellanet and Jordan, 2016; Hansen et al., 2016), territorial development (Karlsen and Larrea, 2014), democratic welfare governance (Gunnarsson et al., 2015), and public service reform (Orr and Bennett, 2012). It is also used in participative forms of evaluation (Guba and Lincoln, 1998; Abma, 2004; Edelenbos and Van Buuren, 2005) and in co-production with policy actors, communities and vulnerable groups (Goodson and Phillimore, 2012; Aldridge, 2015; Beebeejaun et al., 2015; Frantzeskaki and Kabisch, 2016; Richardson and Durose, 2016). Its principles can also be found in the surge of transdisciplinary research (Hadorn et al., 2008; Lang et al., 2012; Scholz and Steiner, 2015), Mode-2 knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny et al., 2003; Regeer and Bunders, 2009) and post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993) – all three focusing on increasing the policy-relevance of science.

While Keller and Heatwole claimed in 1976 (p. 193) “that action research … can come to be a significant methodological tool … in an emerging focus on public affairs”, to date it was hardly used in policy analysis and sustainability transition research. Calls for adopting it are growing (Fischer, 2004; Wagenaar, 2007; Audet and Guyonnaud, 2013; Bartels and Wittmayer, 2014; Geels et al., 2016) as both fields include a strong normative commitment to developing knowledge that helps to resolve complex societal issues. Policy analysis aspires “to normatively committed intervention in the world of action” (Goodin et al., 2006: 6) by critically interpreting processes of sense-making, argumentation, and negotiation through which policy actors address public problems (Fischer and Forester, 1993; Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003; Fischer and Gottweis, 2012). Sustainability transition research, in turn, aims to better understand sustainability transitions and increasingly sees an active role for researchers in accelerating sustainable development (Loorbach et al., 2017; Geels et al., 2016).

The aim of this book is to highlight this emerging use of action research in both fields and propel it in a specific direction. We explain what it has to offer and demonstrate how it can be engaged in productively by explicating the specific ambitions, challenges, and practices involved with doing action research to foster sustainability transitions through changes in the policy domain. Our core argument is that action research is both critical and relational and that, to productively address the current crises, we need to better engage with their dynamics while (1) negotiating ‘the starting point’ of the research process, (2) enacting ‘multiple roles and relationships’, (3) ‘addressing hegemonic structures, cultures, and practices’, and (4) evaluating ‘reflexivity, impact, and change’. Each chapter in this book both illustrates and develops this four-tier guiding framework through accounts of different approaches to ‘critical and relational’ action research in a variety of geographical and policy contexts.

Before we outline the guiding framework and introduce the chapters, we first highlight key developments in policy analysis and transition research towards action research and provide a brief overview of its critical and relational dynamics.

Developments in policy analysis and transition research

Policy analysis has a longstanding commitment to identifying the best ways of addressing complex public problems and advancing democratic values. Harold Lasswell (1970), one of the founders of the field, called for ‘knowledge of and in the policy process’ that is problem-oriented, contextual, multidisciplinary, and normatively committed to human dignity (Fischer, 2007). For long, policy analysis was nevertheless dominated by a ‘high modernist’ approach in which professional experts have the authority and tools to produce objective, technical knowledge of the most optimal decisions (Colebatch, 2006). But over the past decades, critical, deliberative, and interpretive approaches to policy analysis have increasingly drawn attention to the power-laden and argumentative processes through which policy actors strive to influence decisions and find mutually acceptable ways of implementing policies. Grounded in a normative desire to generate critical policy-relevant knowledge, these studies aim to facilitate processes of public deliberation, reflection, and change (e.g. Fischer and Forester, 1993; Hoppe, 1999; Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003; Goodin et al., 2006; Fischer and Gottweis, 2012). While more rationalistic approaches focused on generating objective knowledge and clarifying courses of action for policy actors are still mainstream, it is widely accepted that the “persuasive task of policy making and analysis alike lodges in these dynamics of deciding which puzzle to solve, what counts as a solution, and whose interests to serve” (Goodin et al., 2006, 28).

Despite widespread research-policy interactions (see e.g. Nutley et al., 2003; Hoppe, 2005; Gough and Boaz, 2011), policy analysts struggle to have a sustainable impact. Policy systems are highly complex because they include many interdependent individuals, organisations, communities, and groups, each with their own interests, values, and practices (Keller and Heatwole, 1976). Together, they need to share power and responsibilities, make goals, rules, and structures, and achieve mutual understanding, benefits, and respect (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003). This implies “a relational conception of knowledge (that is, knowledge understood as a product of an interaction among competing views), [in which] the policy analyst has no privileged position from which to define the issues” (Fischer, 2007: 103) and can only provide temporal, imperfect solutions to complex problems and changing policies. In this light, action research has been identified as an appropriate methodology for policy analysis and is increasingly taken up (Keller and Heatwole, 1976; Fischer, 2004; Wagenaar, 2007, 2011; Mischen and Sinclair, 2008; Bartels and Wittmayer, 2014).

A similar development can be observed in transition research. This emerging interdisciplinary field analyses the objects, dynamics and processes, multiple actors, and governance of long-term radical changes of socio-technical systems and broader societal systems over time periods of 25–50 years (Grin et al., 2010, Markard et al., 2012, Loorbach et al., 2017), particularly emphasising their co-evolution, complexity, and uncertainty (Geels and Schot, 2010; Rotmans and Loorbach, 2010). In terms of normative direction, sustainability has become recognised as an inherently political concept. Loorbach (2014: 53) called for replacing the initial “focus on sustainability in terms of making existing regimes less unsustainable … by a focus on strategies that facilitate the least disruptive and (economically and socially) costly pathways towards new dynamic equilibria”. What sustainability comes to mean, and how it can become meaningful, in a specific time and place, then, is shaped through processes of public negotiation and contestation. Transition research has therefore seen a surge in critical and interpretive approaches emphasising the power, politics, meaning-making, and agency involved in transitions, including attempts to influence change dynamics in specific directions (Hendriks, 2009; Meadowcroft, 2009; Hoffman, 2013; Avelino et al., 2016; Avelino, 2017).

While most transition research focuses on describing, explaining and interpreting transition processes, a focus on more action-oriented approaches has been emerging (e.g. Audet and Guyonnaud, 2013; Geels et al., 2016). Popular in this regard has been ‘transition management’ as an approach to support sustainability transitions (Loorbach, 2010; Loorbach et al., 2011; Markard et al., 2012). Belying its name, transition management is about organising “an interactive and selective participatory stakeholder searching process aimed at learning and experimenting” (Grin et al., 2010: 140). It aims to facilitate societal learning and innovation by creating spaces in which all actors can participate in exploring and building alternatives (including ideas, practices, and social relations) as well as in challenging and changing the status quo (Loorbach, 2010; Wittmayer et al., 2014). While links between action research and transition research are increasingly strengthened, a systematic understanding of the potential of action research for understanding and supporting sustainability transitions is still missing.

Critical and relational action research

In broadening the space for action research in our fields, we place ourselves on the shoulders of giants, especially those of Peter Reason and Hillary Bradbury (2001), Davydd Greenwood and Morten Levin (2007), and Sara Kindon, Rachel Pain, and Mike Kesby (2007), who have provided comprehensive and accessible overviews of the rich history, wide-ranging scope, and diverse approaches of action research. We define action research as critical and relational processes through which researchers and their co-inquirers aim to collaboratively produce scientifically and socially relevant knowledge and transformative action. Action research is not a single approach or methodology, but, as Dick (2015: 441) puts it, “a diverse family of related processes that draw on various methods and tools to achieve change” based on three shared elements – action, research, and participation (Reason and Bradbury, 2001; Brydon-Miller et al., 2003; Chandler and Torbert, 2003; Greenwood and Levin, 2007; Kindon et al., 2007; Burns, 2014; Dick, 2015; Greenwood, 2015) – and grounded in two underlying principles – criticality and relationality.

The first shared element, action, refers to researchers and co-inquirers doing something together; i.e. they undertake practical activities to change concrete situations. Actively engaging with mundane understandings and practices produces a ‘theory of action’ about what is going on, should be done, and will (not) work. For instance, Action Science (Argyris et al., 1985) constructs and tests theories of action by using the ‘ladder of inference’ to reveal differences between ‘espoused theories’ and ‘theories-in-use’. Instead, Appreciative Inquiry (see Dick, 2004, 426–427; Mischen and Sinclair, 2008, 159–160) harnesses the ‘power of positive thinking’ by going through the 4-D cycle (discovery, dream, design, and destiny). In yet another variety, Systemic Action Research (Burns, 2014; Romm, 2015) engages in ‘multiple parallel inquiries’ to uncover the web of interconnections between multiple actors and wider systems and outcomes.

Second, research implies an emerge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: action research in policy analysis and transition research
• PART I Sustainability crises and actionable knowledge and research
• PART II Critical-relational heuristics for action research
• PART III Approaches to critical-relational action research
• Index