Innovations in Critical Policy Analysis : What?s the Problem Represented to Be?

Public policy is often framed as a response to social problems rather than the cause of them. Carol Bacchi’s influential ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) approach – first published in her 2009 book, Analysing Policy – addresses this contrast and has become an essential methodology for post-structural analysis of public policy.

This edited volume brings together leading international scholars to rethink, extend and reflect on the WPR approach in novel ways, demonstrating its applicability beyond policy documents and across diverse social science disciplines. It presents innovative perspectives on a radical methodology, making it a must-read for research methods scholars and critical policy analysts.

Engaging with multiple theories, concepts and purposes, this book provides cutting-edge insights and real-world applications that make it an essential tool for interrogating policy and power in practice.

Pamela Ugwudike is Professor of Criminology at the University of Southampton, UK. She has international expertise in the ethics and governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, with a focus on the data-driven technologies informing criminal justice policy and practice. Professor Ugwudike has led interdisciplinary projects on the ethics of advanced predictive tools (2019-2021) and online social networking algorithms (2021-2025), with funding from the Alan Turing Institute (the UK's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence) and the Economic and Social Research Council respectively. Her forthcoming books include “The Globalisation of Pre-Crime AI in Justice Systems: Logics, Challenges, and Governance” (Publisher: Bristol University Press 2026), and a “Handbook of Digital Technologies in Criminal Justice” to be published by Oxford University Press (2026). Professor Ugwudike is also co-Editor-in-Chief of Criminology and Criminal Justice Journal (the flagship Journal of the British Society of Criminology)

Hanne Marlene Dahl is a professor at the Department of Social Science and Business at Roskilde University. She works with the state and the governance of care in a context of the Nordic welfare state and care regimes from a feminist perspective.

Rosalind Edwards is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton, where she is also Social Sciences Director of Research and a Co-Director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods.