Now that the teaching methodologies have been discussed on a more ab-stract level, the next part will deal with more pragmatic approaches towards political education by presenting widely established means of analysis of politic-al processes. The two anpolitic-alyticpolitic-al tools chosen are the fundamentpolitic-al trichotomy polity, politics and policy and the policy cycle. Both are instruments used by political scientists to analyse political processes, measures and structures, but they are also advocated by many political educators to be used in schools. In Kerstin Pohl's book containing interviews with eminent political educators,93 the vast majority of them (amongst others Gagel, Mickel, Giesecke, Ackermann and Massing) suggests that the trichotomy should be used as a template for the analysis of political problems and conflicts. Massing argues that they both help to structure and analyse political issues in a systematic manner, which he names as the minimum requirements for political education.94 Breit also puts forward a similar argument when saying that the three dimensions and the policy cycle are very well suited to systematically develop didactic perspect-ives.95 Furthermore, Lühmann proclaims that it can also be a useful instrument to analyse the 'political' dimension of a topic which students are interested in and which is seemingly 'unpolitical'.96 These two tools will now be presented in a concise manner:
93 Pohl, Kerstin (ed.) (2007). Positionen der politischen Bildung 1. Ein Interviewbuch zur Politikdidaktik (2. Auflage), Wochenschauverlag Schwalbach/Ts.
94 cf. Massing, Peter in: Ibid.,163
95 cf. Breit, Gerhard in: Ibid., 110
96 cf. Lühmann, Lother (1990). Kriterien für die Beurteilung von Unterrichtsmaterial am Beispiel eines Heftes der „Zeitlupe“, in: Cremer, Will (ed.): Zur Theorie und Praxis der politischen Bildung, Bundes-zentrale für politische Bildung Bonn, 383
Table 1: Three Dimensions of Politics
Source: C. Böhret et al. 1988, 7 in: Von Alemann, Ulrich (1999). Politikbegriffe, in:
Mickel, Wolfgang W. (1999) (ed.): Handbuch zur politischen Bildung, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Bonn, 80. Original in German, translated by M.S.
Polity depicts the form of government, i.e. the formal dimension of politics. In German-speaking countries it is also known under 'institutional order'. It com-prises of all governmental and public institutions such as parliament, schools etc. and its organisational principles are down to the country's constitution and laws. Polity can also be influenced by the prevailing political culture in a re-spective country, e.g. in Austria the cooperative institution, the so-called 'Sozial-partnerschaft' is an informal but also very influential political institution. Polity sets the frame for the dimension of politics and policy.
Politics deals with political processes and describes the active, mostly con-flict-orientated process in politics, especially in coalitions and political negoti-ations, where different, opposing, neutral or coinciding interests of parties, to-gether with their demands and goals, are discussed and considered.
The content and material dimensions of politics are referred to as policy.
Policy deals with the tasks and goals of political programmes and to what ex-tent individual and collective interests are reflected in these. Policies are usually divided up into different policy fields such as foreign policy, health policy, educa-tion policy etc.
The policy cycle generally consists of four basic stages, namely agenda set-ting, policy formulation, policy implementation and policy review. The starting point is always a problem which exists and needs to be solved by politics. This is then discussed and different solutions are suggested and evaluated. These policies are then implemented, monitored and evaluated again. Massing
de-picts two forms of the policy cycle as a model for analysis which are depicted beneath.97 Here, not only the key stages are presented, but also the key terms and questions that are connected to them are outlined. They play a pivotal role in the didactic approaches to political education in classrooms:
97 Figure 1 and figure 2: Massing, Peter in: Pohl, Kerstin (ed.) (2007). Positionen der politischen Bildung 1. Ein Interviewbuch zur Politikdidaktik (2. Auflage), Wochenschauverlag Schwalbach/Ts., 164-165
Figure 1: Policy Cycle
The policy cycle can be both used as an indicator for key problems and terms for political education and also as a means of analysis. It can be used to analyse political processes on a local, national and global level. It shows the process character of politics as well as the interdependencies with other parts of society and conflicts of interest. According to Massing, the policy cycle opens up pivotal didactic structures, namely problem-orientated, conflict-orientated and decision-orientated perspectives. In addition, Massing argues that it helps build up a so-called 'cognitive map' in students' minds, which helps them to cat-egorically and structurally analyse any political problem.98 It is also important to note that this analysis is not confined to the state, its institutions and stakehold-ers. It can also be used to take the societal and historical basics of politics and law as a precondition and the results of politics into consideration.
In addition, it has to be mentioned that quite a few problems within society do not necessarily result in a policy implementation. This does not mean that they are excluded from a policy cycle analysis. On the contrary, they can be used to
98 cf. Massing, Peter (1995). Wege zum Politischen, in: Massing, Peter/ Weißeno, Georg (eds.): Politik als Kern der Politischen Bildung. Wege zur Überwindung unpolitischen Politikunterrichts, Leske + Bu-drich Opladen, 82-83
Figure 2: Extended Policy Cycle
demonstrate which problems are not tackled by politics because of reasons such as the influence and power of certain interest groups.
The policy cycle can be used to both reflect a descriptive-analytical as well as a normative understanding of politics and democracy depending on its us-age and the problems looked at. As a result it can also be used as an instru-ment of analysis in a critical political education.