Beleidseffectmeting en legitimiteit: een studie over reflectie, objectviteit, betrekkelijkheid en de provinciale beleidspraktijk

This book examines the relationship between policy effectiveness and policy legitimacy from two perspectives. The first perspective concerns the scientific ¿standard-story¿. It assumes that the world can be recognized objectively and described on the basis of universal principles. These universal principles are based on reasoning and experimentation, the results of which we accept as objective. Through reasoning and experimentation, we steadily gain a better insight as to what the world looks like. Through this knowledge, we can explain and understand reality in theory. The second perspective is not about objectivity but subjectivity. This perspective, lying close to hermeneutics, is not concerned with explaining but with understanding. It assumes that reality is demonstrated to us in a specific way which we summarize in a story. This story is an interpretation of reality produced from a combination of the context that we experience, our observations, our memories, and our prejudices. We can interpret this story as a personal ¿definition of the situation¿. Through stories that we exchange with each other, through conversation, we get a ¿collective definition of the situation¿. In this interpretation knowledge in the form of a ¿good discussion¿ is developed.