Policy ecology as concept and method

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article offers a policy ecology approach to assist with apprehending policy’s dispersed operations across matter, time, and space. I argue that policy is soaked into almost everything we care to analyze. Accordingly, policy analysis should not be confined to traditional artifacts and practices of governance and regulation. The primary reorientation comes with adopting an ecological approach to policy over normative understandings of what policy constitutes. To assist with containing analysis once policy becomes an unbounded object pulsing across scales, space and time, three additional prisms are offered: artefactual, ambient and hauntological modalities. Examples of how a policy ecology approach might be applied are provided, together with an account of what this framework potentially offers for those seeking to move beyond critique toward critically mindful action, in a world of rapidly compounding complexity and disruption.