The malign system in policy studies: strategies of structural and agential political exclusion

The disciplinary development of policy studies has long been shaped by scholars working within liberal democratic traditions. In consequence, a long-held assumption that policy-making is, prima facie, motivated exclusively by the pursuit of the public interest has gone unchallenged, even while intersecting critical traditions - particularly in political science - have opened up research agendas on institutional and agential harms. This article critiques the latent assumptions of benevolence in policy studies. The article employs political exclusion as a methodological means to surface deviations from liberal democracy's precepts of legitimacy. It applies this approach to analysing malignity in policymaking to the case of asylum seeker policy in Australia. In doing so, the article posits a conceptual binary of malignity in policy studies with respect to: 1) structural exclusion from participation in policy and politics; 2) agential exclusion from the sphere of political participation.