Abstract
In contrast to traditional pluralist or functionalist analyses, the last thirty years has seen the emergence of what is now referred to as a critical policy analysis. While much of the early work in this tradition took its impetus from radical versions of sociology, in the last decade a growing number have utilised the works of the French post-structuralist writer Michel Foucault. My own work in policy analysis, as well as my recent book with John Codd and Anne Marie O’Neill (Olssen, et al., 2004, Sage) presents the outlines of a Foucauldian to the analysis of educational policy and the politics of education. Although there are some aspects of Foucault’s work that are not accepted. – his neutralism over ends and values - there is within Foucault’s work the basis for a broad commitment to a democratic and ethical vision of a new welfare community. Rather than employ him in a one-sided negative way that can be found in some readings of his work, Education Policy seeks to utilise Foucault as an ally, sometimes going beyond the literal canon of his texts, but keeping within his general conception of critique in order to re-articulate and re-theorise a new understanding of a social-democratic polity.