From Discourse to Rules in Environmental Policy: Merging Habermas Model of Deliberative Democracy with the Policy Arrangement Approach

This paper aims to develop a framework for an integrated empirical and normative policy analysis practicable for evaluating environmental and forest sub-policies regarding their contribution to democratic policy-making. For this reason Habermas meta-model on deliberative democracy is translated to the policy level by merging it with the Policy Arrangement Approach (PAA) of Arts and Van Tatenhove. The empirical applicable PAA integrates discursive and institutional approaches to policy processes allowing focusing on the intimate link between discourse, law and democracy. The applicability of the deliberative PAA framework is exemplified in two cases of forest sub-policies in Sweden.