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No Hiding Place: On the Discomforts of Researching the Contemporary Policy Process*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Christopher Pollitt ,
Stephen Harrison ,
David J. Hunter  and
Gordon Marnoch
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Abstract

It has never been easy to conduct research into currently sensitive policy issues, but there is now accumulating evidence to indicate that various forms of resistence to scholarly investigation are on the increase. Such a climate handicaps all social policy research, but may have the greatest impact on ethnographic projects. Yet, it is argued, ethnography is increasingly widely recognised among academics as having a particularly valuable contribution to make to the study of the policy process. Unfortunately, many policy practitioners (and occasionally some academic colleagues) perceive ethnographic research as being of questionable validity and low helpfulness. This behoves policy-oriented ethnographers to demonstrate that they do indeed have procedures for assuring validity, even if their style of investigation is never likely to be popular with government.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 1990 , pp. 169 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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