European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016

European Policy Analysis - Volume 2, Number 1 - Spring 2016 Knowing the Future: Theories of Time in Policy Analysis Holger StrassheimA The article gives a comparative and critical overview on theories of time in policy analysis. It is based on two central assumptions: First, the various ways time is conceptualized in policy analysis are closely related to underlying understandings of politics and political action. Theories of time are also always political theories. Debating time is thus not only of analytic value. It also has large implications on how power, rationality, and collectivity are related to each other. Secondly, theories of time as political theories can be highly influential in practice. When they find their way into policymaking, they may realign the time horizons and temporal orders of political action. Keywords: policy analysis, time, temporal order, rationality, evidence-based policy 1. Introduction or to prevent them, however, he remains “an impotent onlooker of the future” (71). ow can we know the future? In Like many prophets he is hesitant about his seminal article “Tiresias, or sharing his wisdom and cryptic when our knowledge of future events” finally revealing it. In advising Odysseus Schütz (1959) introduces us to the that his journey would be successful if, intricacies of this question. Tiresias, the and only if, he and his men refrained from blind prophet of Thebes, is able to predict eating the cattle of Helios on Thrinacia, the things to come with great certainty. Tiresias remains silent about the final Being unable to either make them happen outcome of events.1 Schütz wonders H A Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University Berlin Forced to stay on the island by unfavorably winds, Odysseus’ men slaughter the cattle and are subsequently all killed by a thunderstorm sent by Zeus. Odysseus himself is punished when Calypso on Ogygia keeps him from returning to Ithaca for seven more years. 1 doi: 10.18278/epa.2.1.9 150

European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 150