Policies, Children, and Road Safety: contributions from the WPR approach to policy analysis

Abstract We consider public attention to child safety in traffic from the Foucault-inspired approach What’s The Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) by Carol Bacchi, whose premise lies in using policy texts and policy proposals to access problematizations through which we are governed. It highlights a potential to rethink conventional emphases in agenda setting and in policy-making processes. The WPR approach suggests that in the internalization of children’s safety discourse, the ‘problem’ of traffic is not given a priori, but is also produced discursively in the context of policies and policy proposals with practical effects on the daily lives of children in urban areas.

摘要 本文采用卡罗尔·巴奇（Carol Bacchi）基于福柯理论提出的"何为被表征的问题？"（What’s The Problem Represented to Be?，简称WPR）分析框架，探讨公众对道路交通安全中儿童安全的关注情况。该框架的核心预设为：借助政策文本与政策提案，挖掘型塑我们治理实践的问题化过程。本研究指出，该框架为重新审视议程设置与政策制定流程中的传统关注重点提供了潜在可能。WPR框架提出，在儿童安全话语的内化进程中，交通安全这一"问题"并非先验存在，而是在政策与政策提案的语境中通过话语建构而成，且此类话语会对城市地区儿童的日常生活产生实际影响。