Hay, Colin. "Interpreting Interpretivism Interpreting Interpretations: The New Hermeneutics of Public Administration". Public Administration, Vol.89, No.1 (2011): 167–182.

Hay, Colin. "Interpreting Interpretivism Interpreting Interpretations: The New Hermeneutics of Public Administration". Public Administration, Vol.89, No.1 (2011): 167–182.

• Studies of public policy and public administration have undergone an 'interpretivist turn' in the past decade, largely due to the work of Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes (167).
• Interpretivism as a theory focuses on different actors' interpretations of events, with the understand that these different interpretations affect political behavior and action. Interpretivists understand that the beliefs that actors hold determine how they act (168).
• The main ontological claim of interpretivism is that, just like political actors are influence and limited by the political beliefs they hold, those same political beliefs affect and limit the research produced by academics on politics. This means that scholarship on politics is interpretations of interpretations (168).
•  Interpretivism is a unique approach to politics that is distinct from institutionalism and post-structuralism (169).
• One of the major ontological and epistemological differences between interpretivism and post-structuralism is that, whereas post-structuralists seem all knowledge as being divided into different viewpoints, interpretivist say these perspectives draw on common themes and beliefs that can be understand as consistent traditions of thought (171).
• Interpretivists also seek to explain political events to a much greater degree than post-structuralists. Whereas the latter really just critique claims to absolute truth, interpretivists see the main benefit on understanding narratives as being able to explain why actors behaved different ways based on what they believed (171).
• The confusion between post-structuralists and interpretivists is the source of much of the criticism of interpretivism as being epistemologically relativist. On the contrary, interpretivism believes that explanatory claims can be made and that some claims are better than others, they just think that these claims have to be specific and very well backed up with ethnographic evidence (173-174).
• Useful diagram on page 169 clearly lists the different ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions of interpretivism:

Ontology	Epistemology	Methodology
Meaning and beliefs guide political action Beliefs and practices inform each other; belief cannot be reduced to political situations, and political action cannot be considered without regard to political situations Social and political realities are encountered through our own interpretations of events Actors draw from a well of pre-existing ideological traditions that structure their thoughts Ideological traditions evolve through human action, and the times when they evolve are affected by political situations and challenges	Knowledge depends on perspective and is incomplete Claims to knowledge are socially constructed and subjective Understanding different beliefs, perspectives, and viewpoints is essential to understanding political phenomenon Academics interpret interpretations of events, being themselves subjective The value of different interpretations of events can only be judged on the basis of practicality; since no objective truth exists, different interpretations are only 'better' in the sense that they are more useful	The goal of political scholarship is to understanding the motivation of different actors and the meaning of their actions in a social context Methodology must be ethnographic and involve direct contact with narratives of individuals involved in politics, including through primary sources Although all knowledge is subjective, knowledge produced from these ethnographic methods is more accurate and has more of a basis in fact than distant research Quantitative methods still serve a purpose in interpretivism, although qualitative methods are necessary

• Interpretivists still believe that events can be explained with reference to facts, but that these explanations must be able to individual cases based on thorough research and that they cannot be generalized or developed into general laws of social science (172).
• This is a unique epistemological position in political science, since most non-postivists think that explanation is impossible due to researcher subjectivity, and no positivists are willing to restrict explanatory claims to specific cases based on in-depth research; they want general theories (173).
• Interpretivism does not imply any specific methodology, it simply demands that interpretation of data look at how arguments and understands influence the behavior of actors. Knowledge of those beliefs can be gathered in a number of ways (174).
• The main disagreements between interpretivism and critical realism are that critical realism thinks interpretivism focuses too much on agency and ideas and too little on structure and material factors. This makes it harder to find the specific material causes of ideological changes that critical realism prioritizes (174).
• These critiques are essentially about different theoretical ontologies. Interpretivism is different because it thinks that actors can affect structures through ideas, not just through material factors; this constitutes the main different between the theories (175-177). Moreover, ideological structures are the main factors determining ideas; material factors have affect those ideological structures, but the effects are indirect (176).
• Although not a necessary feature of interpretivism as an ideology, interpretivist scholarship has often placed too much of a focus on uncovering ideological traditions; this perspective downplays the ability of actors to influence these traditions or act independently of them (177).
• The two common critiques of interpretivism are that it is too static and that it does not provide enough explanation of how traditions structure thought. The true belief is that most actors draw on pre-existing traditions of thought to create policies and narratives, so that traditions structure action, and that these traditions change as actors shape these traditions by having original thoughts in response to pressing contemporary political pressures and crises (177-179).
• Outside and non-political events, like natural disasters or the 2008 financial crisis, can provide shocks and crises for political establishments, prompting the creation of new ideas and responses that affect and change ideological traditions (180).