Anti-austerity protests in Southern Europe, the Occupy Movement in North America and Europe, to say nothing about the Vinegar Movement against the costs of hosting the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, are recent examples of spectacular contestations against government programmes which are paradoxically justified as being in the public interest. In a somewhat different vein, the widespread promotion of participatory democracy, at all levels of government, has spurred heated scholarly discussions regarding the 'democracy of the publics' (Manin, 1995). As such, the tenth IPA conference is devoted to studying public policies through their publics. The latter can best be understood as beneficiaries, recipients, and targets of public policies but also as stakeholders or participants in policy-making. In other words, publics are products as well as policy actors insofar as they inform public judgment (Dewey, 1927).

Presentation

The Lille Center for European Research on Administration, Politics and Society (CERAPS, CNRS/Université Lille 2), together with Lille 2 University, Science Po Lille and the European Social Sciences and Humanities Research Institute (MESHS) will host the 10th International Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) conference under the title "Policies and their publics: discourses, actors and power" (see text below) in Lille (France) from 8 July 2015 to 10 July 2015.

Argument

Anti-austerity protests in Southern Europe, the Occupy Movement in North America and Europe, to say nothing about the Vinegar Movement against the costs of hosting the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, are recent examples of spectacular contestations against government programmes which are paradoxically justified as being in the public interest. In a somewhat different vein, the widespread promotion of participatory democracy, at all levels of government, has spurred heated scholarly discussions regarding the 'democracy of the publics' (Manin, 1995). As such, the tenth IPA conference is devoted to studying public policies through their publics. The latter can best be understood as beneficiaries, recipients, and targets of public policies but also as stakeholders or participants in policy-making. In other words, publics are products as well as policy actors insofar as they inform public judgment (Dewey, 1927).
Therefore, policy-making, whether it is local, national or international has to be embedded in the diversity of its publics. Its analysis requires studying publics’ contribution to policy-making and, simultaneously, how publics are constructed in the process. Citizens, users, clientele, interest groups, experts, spin doctors, think tanks, media, political parties, top ranking civil servants, street level bureaucrats… all of these groups or entities can be understood as the publics of policies.

Analysing policies through their publics allows us to reflect on a) policy legitimisation; b) policy categories and identities; c) public participation in policy-making. In this respect, the discursive dimension – at the heart of the IPA’s agenda – is highly relevant.

a) How do politicians, officials and experts liaise with the public(s) at various stages of policy-making? How is the public being spoken for (for instance through opinion polls or statistics)? How is it given a voice?

b) How are publics constructed and bounded by policies? To what extent are groups and identities shaped in the policy-making process (problem definition, policy narratives, interaction with street-level bureaucrats and so on)?

c) To what extent do policies divide the public between supporters and dissenters? How are publics expressing themselves, whether they are invited to or not? How effective are these discourses? All in all, in order to reflect on the linkage between argumentation, decision and action whilst taking the status of speakers seriously, argumentative tools, devices and regimes as well as power struggles are to be taken into account.

Submission Guidelines

Panel proposals may be submitted on the conference’s website (http://ipa2015.sciencesconf.org/)

from the 5 September to the 31 October 2014. 

A panel may consist of 1 to 2 sessions and each session (with a duration of 2 hours each) can have up to 4 papers.

Panel proposers will be notified by the scientific committee about acceptance of their panels by the end of November 2014.

Panel proposals are encouraged to engage with the conference themes, but are equally invited to address other themes and issues in the realm of interpretive policy analysis and adjacent fields. Potential panel proposers are encouraged to deploy innovative formats of presentation and interaction beyond classical conference formats.
For instructions on submitting a panel proposal, please see our website http://ipa2015.sciencesconf.org/

Papers from the conference may be considered for a special issue of Critical Policy Studies: editors are Frank Fischer (Rutgers University, USA) and Richard Freeman (Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA); Forum editors are Navdeep Mathur (Indian Institute of Management, India) and Douglas Torgerson (Trent University, Canada). To reach the editorial team of Critical Policy Studies, please contact Helen Hancock at h.i.hancock@bham.ac.uk.
Panels from the conference may be considered for publications in the Springer series entitled “Logic, Reasoning and Argumentation. Interdisciplinary approaches from the Humanities and Social Sciences” developed in partnership with the MESHS (http://www.springer.com/series/11547). 

How to submit a panel

All panel proposals must be submitted via the online form. On the form, you will be asked to provide your first and last names, e-mail address, institutional affiliation; the title of your panel, an abstract of no more than 300 words and your biographic note. 
Panel titles, abstracts and biographic note will be submitted in English.
All panels will last two hours and will include a maximum of 3-4 contributions.
The list of accepted panels will be posted to the website at the end of November 2014. The contributors will be noticed by e-mail.
All accepted panels must be open to paper proposals through the website: panels should not be organised as closed sessions.

Scientific referees

• Thomas Alam,
• Isabelle Bruno,
• Jean-Gabriel Contamin,
• Anne-Cécile Douillet

CERAPS, Université Lille 2
ipa2015-scientific-committee@sciencesconf.org

Key dates

Panels submission deadlines:
- Beginning of the call for panels: 5 September 2014
- Deadline for panel proposals: 31 October 2014
- Notification of panel acceptance: 30 November 2014
Papers submission deadlines:
- Beginning of the call for papers: 1 December 2014
- Deadline for paper proposals: 31 January 2015
- Notification of paper acceptance: 28 February 2015
- Full papers online: 1 June 2015
Registration deadlines:
- Registration opening: 1 March 2015
- Deadline for Early Registration: 15 April 2015
- Deadline for Registration: 31 May 2015
Conference Welcome: 8 July 2015