8^th International Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference (IPA) 2013:

Societies in Conflict: Experts, Publics and Democracy

Interpretive research in the study of politics represents a leading challenge to positivism and scientism in the name of a methodological pluralism that is sensitive to meaning, historical and social context, and the importance of human subjectivity. Important revisions of policy analysis in its linguistic, argumentative or practice turns have promoted recent research in the field. These concepts and streams have shown to which extent politics and policy practices are governed and shaped by discourse.

The Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna together with the Life-Science-Governance Research Platform (LSG), the Austrian Political Science Association (ÖGPW), the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna and the Institute of Forest, Environmental, and Natural Resource Policy at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU) and with the generous support by the Department of City Administration 7, the Vienna Convention Bureau and the Faculty of Social Sciences hosts the 8^th International Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) conference under the title

"Societies in Conflict: Experts, Publics and Democracy".

The IPA conference is an annual meeting of researchers and practitioners from around the world. Its 8^th continuation gives a special focus to the intersection of policy analysis with Science and Technology Studies (STS) by highlighting the relation between publics and experts around one of the fundamental keywords of politics: “conflict”. How do we think of the study of conflicts through interpretive lenses? What are current societal challenges of politics and how do these challenges shape the general understanding of democracy, expertise and power? What implications can we derive for policy analysis, when investigating conflicts and controversies in environmental, urban, or health care policies? How are these implications handled in the field of science and technology studies, and what can policy analysis learn from this scholarly work?

The IPA plenary sessions and panels are aimed at rethinking and debating the theory and practice of different methods of interpretation and critical explanation in policy analysis, in particular the relation of policy expertise to publics and democratic governance.