The Role of Rationality in Public Policy Theories with Emphasis on Habermas's Communicative Rationality

Abstract

Governments are witnessing many challenges, issues and needs around them every day, and they are expected to give appropriate answers to all of them. These answers are defined as "public policy" in academic literature. Public policy is trying to formulate the criteria of a good and desirable policy by adopting an objective and action-oriented view and thus guarantee the survival and efficiency of the government. Among a wide range of concepts and core principles of social sciences, "rationality" has a special place. Review of existing research literature of public policy shows that rationality has a high position as a central value in these theories. This article has tried to analyze the concept and types of rationality, using the meta-study method, to analyze the rationality used in public policy theories. The research hypothesis was that there are three non-rational approaches, instrumental rationality and Communicative rationality in policymaking theories. To verify the above hypothesis, a relatively extensive study was conducted in public policy theories. This research has been done with the aim of answering this question to determine whether public policy theories have benefited from a rational approach. If yes, what kind of rationality did he use? For this purpose, due to the multiplicity of public policy-making theories, we tried to study and examine most of these theories. The research result shows that the theories of public policy started and developed with the approach of instrumental rationality, and in recent years, it has moved away from it and shifted its direction towards the approach of communicative rationality. The meaning of the communication rationality approach is that in an assumed society, belief, value, and behavior that results from public agreement in a free, equal and free from domination, has communication rationality.