Summary: Cpt-21806 Class Notes

Read the summary and the most important questions on CPT-21806 Class notes

• College 1: Policy as a communicative practice

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• What shouild good policy consist of?

  - not ignoring significant problems (world hunger)

  - not ignoring significant risks (financial markets)

  - not responding to phantom problems (meteors, gmos, immigrants, obesity?)

  - not investing in phantom solutions (novel food, border control?)

• What are the first order constructs of social reality? And second order constructs?

  When socail actors understand social reality through preselected and preinterpreted concepts.

  When social sciences can attempt to reconstruct the meaning of a phenomenom from the actor's perspective. Not through empathy but careful reconstruction of the social meaning.

• What is the empiricists understanding of policy?

  - good policy is based on facts

  - problems can be clearly identified, based on evidence.

  - good policy analysis can identify the the best course of action

  - experts ans politicians have to explain the selected policy to the public.

• What is the postempericists understanding of policy?

  - facts have meaning only in social contexts

  - what ounts as a policy problem depends on facts, values and perceptions.

  - means and ends are not independent

  - the role of the policy analyst is to 'help citizens to reflect on the conflicting frames inherent in policy controversies' - Fischer

• What is a discourse?

  A specific ensemble of ideas, consepts and categorizations that is produced, reproduced, and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities.

• Why are meanings and interpretations important for policy making?

  Policies are both substantive and symbolic

• How are social meanings about policy-making constructed? And what does this means for the academic understanding of policy-making?

  Constant processes of contested interpretation. From empiricist to post-empiricist apporach.

• How do meanings and interpretations influence policy?

  Through political language and symbols which invoke broader frames of discourses. In many ways, including ideological contestation, agenda-setting, construction of target groups.

• College 2: Governmental communication

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• What types of governmental communication are there?

  - Official government communication - administered by government institutions, government funded (government ads, press conferences..)

  - Non\semi- official communication - tv appearances by policticians, interviews, debates...

   

• What are the elements of Rhetoric (by Gottweis)?

  - Ethos - the trustworthy character of the speaker

  - Pathos - the emotional effect created by the discourse on the audience

  - Logos - the logic of the argument set out in the discourse

  (- scenography + narrative)