In the dominant paradigm, found in academic texts and in official statements, policy is seen as official problem-solving: a problem is recognised by ‘the government’, and action is initiated to deal with it. But officials may say privately that there is rarely one clear problem; rather, there is an intersection of related concerns, reflecting the specialised agendas of the participants who become involved in the policy process, and much of the activity is concerned with developing a discourse in which all the participants can see their concerns included.

So policy practice is concerned with creating meaning, in situations where multiple meanings are in play: competing forms of expert knowledge, the practical knowledge of the street-level officials, the ‘lay knowledge’ of the public, and the judgments of political leaders. How do participants deal with this multiplicity of meanings ? Some accounts look for a resolution of the conflict, by authoritative decision, or by the emergence of a dominant ‘metanarrative’. Others see the development of shared knowledge, as practitioners develop ways of working in collaboration, and discourses which facilitate this. Other accounts focus on the avoidance of conflict through tacit acceptance of difference, ambiguity, ‘policy silences’, and ‘hypocrisy’.

The panel will explore ‘making sense together’ in policy work, both as a conceptual and analytic question, and through empirical cases which propose and test analytic approaches.

Those interested, please contact Hal Colebatch at hal@colebatch.com. An abstract of 1500 characters (about 250 words) is needed by 7 October,