Policymaking is a subjective, cultural, and intellectually complex activity in a democracy and should be researched with the multidisciplinary approach. This paper focuses on theoretical implications of the multidisciplinary approach and on its opposing position, the structural-functional approach, in educational policy research. The paper briefly considers theoretical applications in New Zealand and in higher education. Educational policy is a contested cultural artifact of organization, and its analysis should therefore involve a range of disciplines. Education is a major electoral issue in New Zealand, which has called public attention to policy formation. The claims to truth behind such systemic terms as "a policy" and "the structure" comprise the current administrative elite's conceptual strategy. The traditional structural-functional explanatory approach to administrative phenomena justifies foundational ways of bureaucratic organization and culturally excludes individual subjective experience. Policy researchers should first understand the varying interpretations of the nature of organized social reality and should then explore education functioning as a means of policy implementation. The overdue research agendas have substantial implications for higher education as well. Educational policy research will function to identify ideologies evident in policy practices and outcomes. Over 40 references are appended. (CJH)