The Analysis of Public Policies and Communication: Between Realities and Utopias

The analytical tradition of public policies in modernity was basically centered on the investigation of instrumental ends-means actions and systemic strategy. Today, without leaving these aside, researchers are trying to find a point of convergence between these types of action and communication as a paradigm linked to polyarchic decision making, new actors and the full incorporation of discursivity as an element that contributes, from symbolic media, to the ends of developing the social fabric (integration, socialization). In this context, some theoretical-methodological guidelines are proposed regarding rationality and communicative action as emerging paths that facilitate the analysis of public policies (APP). The method is abductive or that of the "going back and forth" between theoretical proposals and the reality of discursive practices in public policies. Conclusions are that: 1. Public policies function in themselves as systems of communicative action in which the "act of language that serves as a means for expressing the link between reason and policy is substantial as a component of the action and not as a simple attribute." 2. The integrated semantic-pragmatic approach is the most effective tool not only for understanding the connections (connectivity) registered interactively among the phases of formulation, implementation and assessment of a PP, but also for identifying the communicational probabilities and improbabilities attributable to the success or failure of the same. 3. The emerging reality of APP is the application of dual models that permit complementarity among different types of rationality. 4. The formulation of strategies for the performance of public policies is an ex-post activity for the communication process that the actors should perform.