Political Action, Error and Failure: The Epistemological Limits of Complexity

Political Studies

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 3-19

  Little, Adrian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

Author keywords

Complexity; Epistemology; Error; Failure; Political action

Indexed keywords

EID: 84856782016     PISSN: 00323217     EISSN: 14679248     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00901.x     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Bevir, M. (1999) 'Foucault and Critique: Deploying Agency against Autonomy', Political Theory, 27 (1), 65-84.
2. Browne, A. and Wildavsky, A. (1984) 'What Should Evaluation Mean to Implementation?', in J. Pressman and A. Wildavsky (eds), Implementation, third edition. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, pp. 181-205.
3. Castells, M. (1997) The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
4. Cilliers, P. (1998) Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. London: Routledge.
5. Coveney, P. and Highfield, R. (1995) Frontiers of Complexity: The Search for Order in a Chaotic World. London: Faber and Faber.
6. Delaporte, F. (1998) 'Foucault, Epistemology and History', Economy and Society, 27 (2/3), 285-97.
7. DeLeon, P. (1999) 'The Stages Approach to the Policy Process: What has it Done? Where is it Going?', in P. Sabatier (ed.), Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder CO: Westview Press, pp. 19-34.
8. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001) Making Social Science Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Vintage.
10. Foucault, M. (1998) 'Life: Experience and Science', in Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology. New York: New Press, pp. 465-78.
11. Foucault, M. (2002 1966) The Order of Things. London: Routledge.
12. Freeden, M. (1996) Ideology and Political Theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
13. Freeden, M. (2005) 'What Should the "Political" in Political Theory Explore?', Journal of Political Philosophy, 13 (2), 113-34.
14. Freeden, M. (2009a) 'Failures of Political Thinking', Political Studies, 57 (1), 141-64.
15. Freeden, M. (2009b) 'What Fails in Ideologies?', Journal of Political Ideologies, 14 (1), 1-9.
16. Geuss, R. (2008) Philosophy and the Real World. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
17. Geyer, R. and Rihani, S. (2010) Complexity and Public Policy. London: Routledge.
18. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
19. Grant, W. (2009) 'Intractable Policy Failure: The Case of Bovine TB and Badgers', The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 11 (4), 557-73.
20. Greco, M. (2004) 'The Ambivalence of Error: "Scientific Ideology" in the History of the Life Sciences and Psychosomatic Medicine', Social Science & Medicine, 58 (4), 687-96.
21. Gutting, G. (1989) Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
22. Gutting, G. (2002) 'Foucault's Philosophy of Experience', Boundary 2, 29 (2), 69-85.
23. Gutting, G. (2005) Foucault: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
24. Harrison, N. (ed.) (2006) Complexity in World Politics. Albany NY: SUNY Press.
25. Hay, C. (2007) Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
26. Haynes, P. (2002) 'Political Science and Complexity', in A. Finlayson and J. Valentine (eds), Politics and Post-structuralism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 145-58.
27. Jervis, R. (1997) System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
28. Jessop, B. (1998) 'The Rise of Governance and the Risks of Failure: The Case of Economic Development', International Social Science Journal, 50 (155), 29-45.
29. Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1986) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, second edition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
30. Lindblom, C. (1959) 'The Science of "Muddling Through"', Public Administrative Review, 19 (2), 79-88.
31. Little, A. (2007) 'Between Disagreement and Consensus: Unravelling the Democratic Paradox', Australian Journal of Political Science, 42 (1), 143-59.
32. Little, A. (2008) Democratic Piety: Complexity, Conflict and Violence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
33. Little, A. (2010) 'Democratic Melancholy: On the Sacrosanct Place of Democracy in Radical Democratic Theory', Political Studies, 58 (5), 971-87.
34. Malpas, J. and Wickham, G. (1995) 'Governance and Failure: On the Limits of Sociology', The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 31 (3), 37-50.
35. May, P. (1992) 'Policy Learning and Failure', Journal of Public Policy, 12 (4), 331-54.
36. Medd, W. (2002) 'Complexity in the Wild: Action in Local Welfare', in A. Finlayson and J. Valentine (eds), Politics and Post-structuralism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 130-44.
37. Olssen, M. (2008) 'Foucault as Complexity Theorist: Overcoming the Problems of Classical Philosophical Analysis', Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40 (1), 96-117.
38. Popper, K. (2002) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Routledge.
39. Rancière, J. (1999) Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.
40. Rancière, J. (2010) Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum.
41. Richards, D. (ed.) (2002) Political Complexity. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.
42. Sanderson, I. (2009) 'Intelligent Policy Making for a Complex World: Pragmatism, Evidence and Learning', Political Studies, 57 (4), 699-719.
43. Sherratt, Y. (2006) Continental Philosophy of Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
44. Simon, H. (1947) Administrative Behavior. New York: Macmillan.
45. Simon, H. (1957) Models of Man. New York: Wiley.
46. Simon, H. (1982) Models of Bounded Rationality. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
47. Urry, J. (2003) Global Complexity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
48. Wagenaar, H. (2007) 'Governance, Complexity, and Democratic Participation: How Citizens and Public Officials Harness the Complexities of Neighbourhood Decline', American Review of Public Administration, 37 (1), 17-50.
49. Zolo, D. (1992) Democracy and Complexity. Cambridge: Polity Press.