DEMOCRACY AND THE POLICY SCIENCES - ASPIRATIONS AND OPERATIONS

The policy sciences approach has recently come under sustained critici sm for being insensitive to the values and preferences of the ordinary citizen. This paper attempts to address these problems by outlining a post-positivist approach, drawing upon the works of Jurgen Habermas. The paper proposes a ''participatory policy analysis'' that utilizes a sampling of affected citizens to create a ''policy forum'' to inform the policymaker of citizens' positions on important policy issues.