Abstract
The inclusion of a post-positivist thinking to policy making is a response
to criticism raised against the limitations positivists impose on the policy
making process. Policy-making and analysis are mainly seen as activities
driven by empiricist ideals, quantitative facts, technocrats and experts while
citizens’ (deliberative) views are excluded or marginalised. Participatory
(or deliberative) public policy analysis is a supporting approach presented
by post-positivists to embrace democratic ideals through a better informed
public policy process that includes normative and valuative knowledge
through mainly qualitative processes. This approach supports the notion
of multiple methods of inquiry in the contexts of argumentation, judgment
and public debate.
In defining policy analysis, post-positivists have opened an opportunity
for deliberative approaches. This provides an opportunity specifically
to further enhance the policy process through participatory evaluation.
In this article a logical qualitative inquiry accompanied by a theoretical
analysis by way of a literature analysis was employed as the preferred
strategy to determine the questions that are most significant to the topic,
context and reliability of the research.