This Element argues that relational policy analysis can provide deeper insights into the career of any policy and the dynamics of any policy situation. This task is all the more difficult as the relational often operates unseen in the backstages of a policy arena. Another issue is the potentially unbounded scope of a relational analysis. But these challenges should not dissuade policy scholars from beginning to address the theme of relationality in public policy. This Element sketches a conceptual framework for the study of relationality and illustrates some of the promise of relational analysis using an extended case study. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
