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Comment on ‘The Narrative Policy Framework: child or monster?’

We should accept and very much welcome the intentions of this contribution. The authors address an issue that poses a problem for all social scientists, and especially for policy analysts: the gap, split or more often than not canyon, that exists between quantitative and qualitative empirical research. Although attitudes are slightly more relaxed today, it still matters whether one belongs to one party or the other, and one’s affiliation continues to define ones professional way of seeing the world, of discussing and arguing. The authors’ intent is to address this old schism between those relying on ‘facts plus figures’ and those referring to ‘ideas and meaning’. An almost endless list of similar types of dualism could be added. And the sad fact that this antagonism has not yet been resolved is no argument against the article. On the contrary, standing at one edge of the canyon, the authors try to build – or at least offer an idea for building – bridges between the separated camps. Unfortunately – yes – on the one hand, the contribution presented here remains almost superficial, as it delivers no details of how to work with Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), and particularly no examples to help the reader understand more about NPF. Referring mainly to Jones, Shanahan, and McBeth (2014), the authors take the contribution of NPF to be more or less given. Instead, they discuss six dimensions (ontology, epistemology, socio-theoretic choice, types of discipline, generalized style and normative standards) to demonstrate at the level of meta-theory the degree of kinship between – or, if you like, the common meta-theoretical bases of – NPF and policy research. Again, one can surely wonder whether this is just a quick and easy selling strategy. On the other hand – and in my serious opinion – the authors know about the divide between the disparate camps and acknowledge it. They therefore refer to six potentially helpful pillars that may support a bridge across the canyon (I hope not to overstretch the metaphor). So, the article is an intriguing and valuable attempt to engage our curiosity about the NPF – and should be widely read and used as an alternative, a new approach. Having said that, there is more to say about the facts vs. ideas divide, and here the contribution of Radaelli and Jones can also serve as a good starting point. The main question in the social sciences, and particularly in policy research – at least since Harold Lasswell – has been how to generate knowledge to solve current problems effectively by using democratic standards. So the triple jump involves (1) knowledge generation, (2) discursive methods and (3) problem-solving. This may sound slightly mechanistic today, but one should take themodel as a modest abstraction of reality: not as a ‘theory’ (with predictive powers) but as a heuristic to discover optimal solutions, to structure insights and to learn by analyzing such processes. So, problem-solving takes its place on the agenda. Facts plus figures serve as a basis, and as we take part in the process, ideas and meanings are created and lead to feasible – probably better or optimal, sometimes even new – solutions. The concepts that the architects of policy