Herbert Gottweis remembered by colleagues

How Noninstitutionalized Policy Innovation Is Justified: A Rhetorical Perspective

“…At the outset of their new volume ( The Argumentative Turn Revisited ), Fischer and Gottweis () make it even clearer. They contend that “rhetoric is an essential and unavoidable aspect of argumentation,” where “the arguer attempts to persuade the audience to see and understand something—an event, relationship, process, and the like—one way as opposed to another.” Taking rhetoric seriously within this theoretical approach has been exemplified by a series of studies by Herbert Gottweis (), who is recognized as “an instrumental figure in the revival of rhetoric in policy studies and political science more generally” (Durnová et al, , p. 492). In a chapter included in The Argumentative Turn Revisited , Gottweis () uses the emotionalized controversy around human embryonic stem cell research in the United States as a revelatory case, to highlight multiple strategies of persuasion involved in influencing the outcome of the policy debate.…”