The transition from traditional to postpositivist policy analysis: A role for Q-methodology

Abstract

This paper suggests that a gap exists between policy theorists who are formulating postpositivist models of analysis and the beliefs of practitioners whose labor is guided by the traditional hand of positivism. The tension between postpositivist theory and traditional practice has created a dialectic that contributes to both, but the postpositivist theory is not likely, for reasons discussed in the paper, to spark a revolution in practice. The paper maintains that members of the discipline's intellectual infrastructure can assist the evolution to a policy analysis paradigm that includes elements of postpositivism by introducing incremental changes in practice that reinforce it. For this purpose, one important incremental change is the introduction of Q-methodology as a common tool for policy analysis. The use of Q-methodology—a method for the study of subjectivity—would help subvert the assumptions of dominant objectivism that underlie the R-methods typically learned and used by traditional analysts and could influence analysts to adopt a postpositivist perspective of their work. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.