Table 1 Overview of the questions and final step covered by the WPR-approach. Adapted from: Bacchi and Goodwin [5]

Question 1: What’s the problem (e.g. of “gender inequality”, “drug use/abuse”, “economic development”, “global warming”, “childhood obesity”, “irregular migration”, etc.) represented to be in a specific policy or policies?

Question 2: What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions (conceptual logics) underlie this representation of the “problem” (problem representation)?

Question 3: How has this representation of the “problem” come about?

Question 4: What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the “problem” be conceptualized differently?

Question 5: What effects (discursive, subjectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the “problem”?

Question 6: How and where has this representation of the “problem” been produced, disseminated and defended? How has it been and/or how can it be disrupted and replaced?

Step 7: Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations