Anticipating the future in a violent field: an extension of Lasswell’s policy sciences

Abstract

ABSTRACT How does Lasswell’s vision of the policy sciences apply in a violent policy field? How does it interface with the social movements emerging in civil society to demand redress, many of which have much deeper roots in historical forms of oppression, and whose proponents are skeptical, sometimes deeply so, of the university and of policymakers as change agents? This article draws on theories of anticipation to extend Lasswell’s ideas in two ways. First, it argues that policy sciences should incorporate oppression as a topic of ‘context mapping,’ to make clear social, cultural and economic structures that create injustice. Second, given that a violent field can be unstable, unreliable and under-resourced, the policy sciences should incorporate contingency into the kind of reflexivity and creative fantasy that Lasswell proposes. Failing to do so in profoundly disruptive conditions can create policy ideas or ‘imagined futures’ that are illusory.