Democratizing science is an urgent, collective, and continuous project: expanding the boundaries of critical policy studies

Abstract

As contemporary politics and governance unfold around an ever more urgent ‘sense of crisis’, the notion of crisis itself has become a prominent conceptual starting point for critically minded producers of scientific knowledge in the field of policy studies. Indeed, a year ago, just after Russian President Vladimir Putin had given the order to invade Ukraine and start a war that has caused tremendous suffering on all sides, the editors of this journal felt that the emerging sense of ‘turmoil’ required a revived debate about the social relevance of Critical Policy Studies (see issue 16.2). This call was very much in line with debates long invigorated by CPS editors and authors, highlighting how the social sense of crisis can expose and disrupt dominant policy discourses, open spaces for the critique of normalized policy and governance, reinforcing our ethical implications, but also potentially prompt the emergence of new ideational and institutional arrangements. Encouraged by this normative call, we see Critical Policy Studies as an ongoing endeavor to identify and nourish common intellectual roots: it is through critically exploring the interdependencies between policy, sense-making, and crisis scenarios globally and locally that our community of authors has contributed to more democratic and socially just forms of governance. This seems as urgent as ever in a world where, on the one hand, global and local inequalities and injustices have increased rather than decreased; violent conflicts, including genocide, continue; as do structural and institutional forms of racism, sexism, and classism; and where, on the other hand, democratic regimes have slidden into authoritarianism and are restricted to an increasingly smaller part of the world. Indeed, the progressive political forces, stunned by the expansion of ultra-right governments, have realized that behind the ultranationalist and ultraconservative discourses there is a dangerous global political and economic articulation, which puts the very essence of democracy at stake. As democracy only has strength and meaning when it unfolds as a collective process of public discussion, sense-making, contestation, and deliberation, editors of this journal – past and present – continue to ask how a journal like ours, whose primary interest is knowledge and its production, can nourish a collective stance in its defense. A first potential path concerns a type of policy studies that wants to critically engage with the world around us and facilitate democratic change. This community should continue to build on the critical exploration of dominant crisis narratives in the policy world in their specific spatiotemporal context, paying close attention to the ways in which ‘crisis’ frames and modes of operation bear on policy practice on the ground across different sites, but also in locating venues for deliberation and contestation in ‘crisis’ settings that can work toward global social justice and democratic alternatives. CRITICAL POLICY STUDIES 2023, VOL. 17, NO. 1, 1–3 https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2023.2184707