Review article

POLICY NETWORKS AND PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH – ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Ana Petek orcid.org/0000-0002-9553-8334 ; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The use of policy networks in the research of public policies includes identifying policy actors (both state and non-state actors) and determining the type of their relations, with the purpose of description and analysis of the policy process. The basic assumption of the approach is that contemporary policy-making is characterised by sharing of responsibilities for policy-making among state and the non-state actors. The approach is faced with a critical charge that it doesn’t make a clear distinction between dependent and independent variables, and that it does not contain an implicit causal logic that could be falsified. Even though this criticism is partly justified, the policy networks approach should not be dismissed, albeit it should not be understood as a theory (in the sense of E. and V. Ostrom’s level of theoretical discourse). Furthermore, the criticism mostly affects the ‘interest intermediation school’, which understands policy networks as generic term for different forms of state-society relations. Thus, the ‘governance school’ is much more fruitful for the development of policy networks idea. The ‘Governance school’ of policy networks approach can be understood as a framework and/or a model. Firstly, the policy networks approach has most similarities with the cycle model of policy process and the two approaches are closely related frameworks of public policy research. The characteristics of contemporary policy-making calls for adding policy networks to the cycle model and, in this perspective, the policy networks approach becomes an analytical tool-box for organizing empirical material. Secondly, policy networks are conceived as a specific form of governance, which becomes dominant in the recent literature. Within this perspective, ideas about policy networks have bigger theoretical ambitions, but are still developed at a level of a model, and not theory.

Keywords

policy network; policy actors (state and non-state); governance; interest intermediation; policy network analysis; policy network approach

Hrčak ID:

29021

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/29021

Publication date:

18.11.2008.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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