Talking policy: the construction of Belgian forensic mental health policy

This communication suggests that Belgian forensic mental health policy is created every time individuals gather to talk about it.  It argues that looking closely at micro-level interactions is essential to understanding how policy takes shape.  Based on ethnographic descriptions of strategic committee meetings, this article first shows that the meeting frame involves a succession of formal and informal kinds of talk, including pre-meeting and coffee break discussions.  Second, and consequently, the meeting enables new connections between previously separated events taking place in multiple arenas.  Third, documents supporting the meeting mediate the various relationships (i) between participants, by providing them with a common reference, and (ii) between the meeting frame and its environment, by invoking parts of this environment in the meeting room and conversely.  In this way, talk in meeting gives meaning to the policy by affording the development of new socio-material relationships.  'Talking policy' is, in turn, the very way in which policy makers and experts reveal and interpret its content.