Interpretive Approaches to Policy Analysis: Hermeneutics for our Times

This Brief provides researchers with an introduction to interpretive approaches for analyzing public policies. It introduces several real-world policy situations where the lack of an interpretive focus limits the analysis and precludes better policy responses. It takes an integrative point of view, with an openness to combining the insights from interpretive and positivist approaches in policy analysis, noting the ability of the interpretive approach to make sense of data while uncovering t...