Abstract

In this paper, we build on the focus of our edited collection to consider what the WPR approach brings to the analytic field, in contrast to other critical takes on policy analysis. How does its particular epistemological and methodological perspective illuminate policy and governance in a critical manner beyond somewhat narrower, descriptive interrogations? What are the potential extensions and elaborations of the approach? Our ambition is to discuss what we regard as the characteristics of the WPR approach in relation to other ways of doing critical policy studies - its affordances but also any drawbacks, as well as to consider the potential for the approach in the future. Our discussion is informed both by our shared feminist position and by our locations within post-structuralism, where Malin is a longstanding WPR researcher, while Rosalind is drawn more toward the end of the spectrum of post-structuralism that builds links with structuralism and constructivism.