As Carol Bacchi makes clear, the ‘What's the Problem Represented to be?’ (‘WPR’) approach offers ‘both a novel way of thinking and a new way of analysing policy’ (Bacchi 2009: xvi). The ‘WPR’ approach aims to serve two purposes. Firstly, as a mode of thinking, the approach shifts the focus of analysis from policy as a ‘problem solving’ exercise, a technical, neutral and responsive process, to a mode of thinking that sees policy as an act which is constructive of ‘problems’, political and contingent. This enables us to call into question the ‘problems’ inherent in specific policy proposals and dig deeply into the meaning-making that they are both reflective and constitutive of. Secondly, as a form of analysis, the ‘WPR’ approach provides a clear methodology, based around a set of six guiding questions, to enable application of its way of thinking across boundaries of policy context and content.

Much of the development and application of the ‘WPR’ approach to date has been in relation to domestic public policy, often, though by no means exclusively, Australian. This chapter explores what it can mean to embrace the approach's mode of thinking and apply its form of analysis to new contexts and forms of policy by reflecting on its application within my ongoing PhD research.