Policy Analysis in High Inequalities in Asia Critical and Pragmatic Perspectives

1.     Introduction: Policy Analysis in the Asian Context

2.     High Inequalities and the Need for Context-sensitive Analytical Framework

3.     Narratives and Deliberative Spaces in Framing Policy Alternatives: What can we Learn from an Asian Policy Style?

4.     Policy Analysis and the Asian Contextual Backdrop: Youth in High Inequalities and Uncertain Crises

5.     Deliberative Spaces and Power Sensitivity in Policy Analysis: Responding to Vulnerabilities and Including Youth by a Policy Laboratory

6.     Harnessing Narrative Politics in Policy Analysis through Deliberative Design: Empowering Youth for the Future by a Policy Think Tank

7.     From Inclusive Prototyping to Steering Emancipatory Policy Alternatives: Towards a Critical Pragmatist Policy Laboratory

8.     Afterword: Critical and Pragmatic Reflections

Biography

Noe John Sacramento is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the University of the Philippines (UP), Cebu. He is also a nonresident Adjunct Faculty at the School of Public Policy, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. John has done research on deliberative policy analysis, the technical and participatory nexus in smart city planning, informality, dramaturgy and emotions in deliberation, and the critical pragmatist logic in policy analysis in high inequalities. He is also interested in the developments of critical policy studies in Asia, the interpretive and constructivist turn in public policy across the region, and how policy knowledge is contested and challenged in the face of power.

Piyapong Boossabong is Associate Professor and Acting Director at the School of Public Policy, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He also serves as an editor of the Critical Policy Studies journal. His research interests include deliberative approaches, interpretive policy analysis in practice, and inclusive policy processes in weak democratic systems. His work focuses particularly on the politics of empirical evidence, ideological commitments, contextual experiences (local or situated knowledge), normative assumptions, and emotional expressions in public policy and governance.

Pobsook Chamchong is Assistant professor and Acting Deputy Director at the School of Public Policy, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Her research focuses on urban governance, ecosystem approaches to policy innovation, collaborative governance, inclusive policy design, policy translation, and critical foresight for policy transformation.

"This book represents a welcome and much needed addition to the public policy literature. Distinguishing deliberative settings and apt responses, the authors extend interpretive, argumentative, and critical pragmatic approaches to policy analysis from epistemological critiques to imagine fresh process designs in institutional contexts of hierarchy and inequality."

-- John Forester, Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University

"This book is an important contribution to Public Policy in Asia. Sacramento, Boossabong, and Chamchong propose an 'epistemic emancipation' that integrates Asian context-sensitivity within highly unequal societies. By exploring how actors, narratives, and deliberative spaces shape policy, they offer a compelling reflection on critical pragmatism and the centrality of the pragmatic perspective in understanding the policy process in Asia."

-- Philippe Zittoun, Research Professor of Political Science, University of Lyon & General Secretary, International Public Policy Association

"This book makes an important intervention in the literature on policy studies in Asia. Adeptly employing a critical policy studies approach, it questions established norms of power and shows how deliberative policy designs can articulate the voices of newly empowered young people in Asian nations. For public policy scholars, this work is enlightening by elaborating how different cultural norms inform policy engagements outside the Western liberal-democratic mainstream."

-- Nick Turnbull, Professor of Rhetoric and Public Policy, University of Manchester

"This book offers an important contribution to critical policy studies by examining how policy-analytic practices operate under conditions of deep socio-economic, cultural, and epistemic inequalities. Drawing on Asian case studies of how youth policy issues are problematized in policy labs, the book illustrates how policy analysts, together with other participants like civil society stakeholder organizations and citizens, navigate power, institutional and cultural constraints, and uncertainty in practice. While grounded in global majority Asian contexts, its core contribution is in advancing a critical-pragmatic and deliberative approach to policy analysis, which clearly speaks to global minority Western debates. The volume will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in critical policy analysis, comparative governance, and Asian studies."

 -- Robert Hoppe, Professor Emeritus of Knowledge and Policy, University of Twente