Taking risks and breaking new frontiers: introduction to the Special Issue and the cardinal challenges for policy and politics scholarship

Abstract

This Special Issue makes a statement about the study of policy and politics, where it has been, how it is done, what it is, and where it is going. When addressing the question ‘who gets to speak for our discipline?’ we respond emphatically – many people, from many places, working in many ways. It comprises scholarship that has rarely been combined to explore some cardinal challenges about our scholarship: (1) How do we conceive of policy and political studies? (2) To what extent should our science be ‘normative’ or ‘objective’ or ‘positive’? (3) Who are our audiences, and how do we engage them? (4) Whose knowledge matters, and how does it accumulate? (5) How should we advance the study of policy and politics? We conclude charging the field to consider different ways of thinking about what we can discover and construct in the world and how we can conduct our science.