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Research Symposium: Discourse Analysis & Political Science |
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Discourse Analysis and the Study of Policy Making
Since the late 1980s, Discourse Analysis has become an increasingly important force within the policy sciences. The core concern of policy studies has been captured as 'understanding the world and trying to change it at the same time' (Nelson, 1996). Rooted in the work of Harold D. Lasswell, who called for a 'policy orientation' in social science research, policy studies has constantly sought to develop knowledge in order to facilitate policy interventions, and thus to help resolve pressing social problems (Lasswell, 1951). Yet Lasswell’s 'policy science of democracy' – in which academics were to fulfil an independent role as public intellectuals addressing public problems, not necessarily in alignment with the state – has been far less influential than the more instrumental sorts of policy analysis aiming to facilitate efficient and effective state action. The growing dissatisfaction with the limitations of the rationalist mainstream of instrumental policy analysis led several authors to appreciate the central importance of language for policy analysis. Ironically it was Giandomenico Majone, a Bayesian statistician turned policy analyst, who most eloquently pointed to the role of rhetoric and argumentation in the policy process. 'As politicians know only too well but social scientists too often forget, public policy is made of language' was the opening line of his Evidence, Argument and Persuasion in the Policy Process (Majone, 1989: 1). For the policy community this implied not merely a new way of looking at the world, but a change in acting upon that world. In an article in Philosophy and Public Affairs Laurence Tribe, a scholar from the Harvard Law School, presented a biting critique of the 'objectivism' of policy analysis itself. He argued that it had used its 'antiseptic terminology' to reinforce an image of neutrality and so had deadened moral sensibility: 'To facilitate detached thought and impersonal deliberation, what more plausible path could there be than to employ a bloodless idiom, one as drained as possible of all emotion?' (Tribe, 1972: 97-8). A new generation of scholars more or less made their careers pointing out the role of values in public policy (Rein, 1976; Fischer, 1980; Fischer and Forester, 1987), and illuminating the implicit meanings in policy practices (e.g. Dryzek, 1982). In the early 1990s the (re)discovery of language allowed for a further development of this critical literature. Authors such as Frank Fischer and John Forester (1993), Deborah Stone (1997) and Emery Roe (1994) drew attention to the role of language or 'narrative stories' in explaining policy situations, while Donald Schön and Martin Rein (1994) explored similar themes drawing on the concept of 'frame'. This body of work, well known as the 'post-positivist' position in policy studies, was in many respects the conceptual development of the critique that Tribe had pioneered in the 1970s. The 'linguistic turn' provided the policy researcher with useful tools for analysing how certain relations of dominance are structured and reproduced. Determining the way a phenomenon is linguistically represented has repercussions for politically essential questions such as, 'Who is responsible?' 'What can be done?' 'What should be done?' The study of discourse thus opened up new possibilities for studying the political process as the mobilisation of bias. In the meantime several different strands of research have emerged, ranging from those inspired by literary criticism (Yanow, 1996), rhetoric (Throgmorton, 1991), meaning (Roe, 1994), and poststructuralism (Gottweis 1998), to those exploring the interlinkages between political discourse and democratic theory (Dryzek, 1989; 2000). Discourse Analysis has changed the way that policy-making is studied. The stories that people tell are no longer seen as the 'raw' data that need to be precisely coded in order to get to the 'pattern'. For many researchers, what people say becomes much more the core matter for analysis: for example, the way in which low level bureaucrats struggle with unexpected moral dilemmas while implementing new policy measures; the way in which people respond to what others say and how they then create new political facts through interaction. It is the stories themselves that deserve interpretation, not the 'data' that can be inferred by 'coding' the stories. Other discourse analysts have shown how the stories are in fact a political mechanism in themselves: without stories no consensus; without narration no cognitive shifts. Although there is a range of approaches that all develop their own priorities and orientations, it is fair to say that 'argumentative discourse analysis' (ADA) has a large following. The study by Majone (1989), the classic volume The Argumentative Turn in Policy and Planning (Fischer and Forester, 1993) and monographs such as The Politics of Environmental Discourse (Hajer, 1995) fall into this category. The phrase argumentative discourse analysis is derived from the suggestion that it is better to speak of an argumentative turn than a linguistic turn. The social psychologist Michael Billig (1987: 91) put this well: [T]o understand the meaning of a sentence or whole discourse in an argumentative context, one should not examine merely the words within that discourse or the images in the speaker's mind at the moment of utterance. One should also consider the positions which are being criticised, or against which a justification is being mounted. Without knowing these counter-positions, the argumentative meaning will be lost. Hence ADA requires analysis to go beyond the investigation of different interpretations of (technical) facts alone. The real challenge for ADA is to find ways of combining analysis of the discursive production of reality with analysis of the socio-political practices from which social constructs emerge and in which actors are engaged. ADA is based on three interrelated elements: discourse, practices and meaning. The allocation of meaning in a given context is thus analysed in terms of particular forms of discourse within the context of the particular practices in which the discourse is produced. Hence ADA is not simply about analysing arguments -- it is much more about analysing politics as a play of 'positioning' at particular 'sites' of discursive production. Taking seriously the idea of a social construction of reality, ADA holds that it is not so much individuals that are subject to in-depth analysis as the practices in which they engage. So an emphasis on the argumentative dimension refers not so much to our analysis of the 'arguments' as to the verb 'to argue'. Whereas the analysis of arguments could perfectly well have been done within the confines of more traditional approaches, in ADA Discourse Analysis tracks the way that people position one another through language use or the way that they are positioned through widely employed discourses. Of course, people can also quite literally be framed by discourse, but the post-structuralist orientation of discourse analysis here comes out in the presumption that this always happens through the (re)creation of particular relationships. A feature of ADA is that it has a strong empirical focus and seeks to illuminate the variety of mechanisms at play that produce particular political realities. In my own work in the ADA tradition I have developed several conceptual tools that facilitate empirical research: discourse, story line, emblem, discourse-coalition, discourse-structuration, discourse-institutionalisation, and discursive affinity (see e.g. Hajer, 1995). All are meant to overcome static divisions between individuals and institutions and so aim at understanding how interrelationships are constantly produced, reproduced, challenged and transformed. In the study of environmental discourse I have tried to show how one could step away from a 'realist' understanding of 'pollution' and see it as a particular discursive construct instead. In the latter case the discourse of 'pollution' would be drawn upon to make sense of particular phenomena. The underlying idea was that whether or not a situation is perceived as a political problem depends on the narrative in which it is discussed. To be sure, large groups of dead trees as such are not a social construct. The point is how one makes sense of dead trees. In this respect there are many possible realities. One may see dead trees as the product of natural stress caused by drought, cold or wind, or one may see them as victims of pollution. Pollution can thus be seen as a way of interpreting a given phenomenon. The acid rain narrative labels the dead trees as victims of pollution, and thus 'dead trees' change from a 'natural' phenomenon into a political problem. Here discourse is defined as an ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to phenomena. Meaning is thus produced and reproduced through an identifiable set of practices. So in the case of acid rain, discourse refers to a particular tradition in dealing with environmental problems, to particular ideas about the role of inspection, and to particular concepts about what industries should do in response to pollution. It is important to point out that discourse, thus understood, is not synonymous with discussion. Discourse refers to a set of concepts that structure the contributions of a group of participants to a discussion. For example, ADA might illuminate a particular discursive structure in the discussion on immigration policy in the European Union, constructed around particular 'emblematic' themes (i.e. particular problems that are seen as being representative of a much larger, and much more complex reality). Here ADA brings out the particular ideas, concepts and categories in terms of which immigration is generally discussed. In addition, it tries to identify the practices through which this discourse is reproduced and how what can be said authoritatively changes over time. Over the last few years it has been helpful to see the contribution of ADA to policy analysis in terms of three interrelated concepts: discussion, discourse and deliberation. It is easy to conflate these terms, and, to make things more complicated, different western countries all seem to have their own particular ways of doing so. Put very simply, in ADA 'discussions' are the empirical object of analysis (including the 'sites' at which the discussion takes place). 'Discourse' is then a particular pattern to be found in a discussion, and hence a term reserved for something the analyst finds. 'Deliberation' thus refers to a particular quality in a discussion process, the way in which a debate is conducted. It can be elaborated using terms like openness, reciprocity and accountability, all referring to a particular normative frame with which one may judge the quality of an exchange (cf. e.g. Gutmann and Thompson, 1996; Fung and Wright, 2001). It is here that many also see the biggest challenge for policy analysis in the years to come. It is interesting to note that the Lasswellian idea of a policy science of democracy has always remained a source of inspiration for scholars within policy studies (Dryzek, 1989; de Leon, 1992; 1997; Torgerson, 2002). Harking back to Lasswell’s emphasis on context, the whole tradition of policy analysis now seems in need of serious reconsideration. Although participatory-oriented, it remains strongly state-centered. However, it is becoming difficult to sustain this perspective as, more than before, solutions to pressing problems transgress the sovereignty of specific polities. Furthermore, the role of knowledge changes as the relationship between science and society changes, so scientific expertise is now negotiated rather than accepted. And, with the weakening of the state, it is far less obvious that the government is the sole actor to intervene in policy-making. Taken together this calls for a reconsideration of the analysis of policy-making and politics in the light of the changing context in politics and political science (cf. Hajer, forthcoming 2003). It is also the case that the relationship between discussion, discourse and deliberation has become crucial for ADA. As Dryzek has argued, deliberation might facilitate solutions to public problems where the state is no longer a sovereign actor (Dryzek, 2001). Based on this analysis of a changing world, scholars within policy studies have now reconsidered their own position and self-understanding. The network of scholars who thought of themselves as 'post-positivists' (thus implicitly defining themselves as involved in an epistemological and methodological battle with the positivist mainstream) now argue in favour of a 'deliberative policy analysis' (cf. Hajer and Wagenaar, forthcoming 2002). In many respects this renewed contextualism is a revitalisation of Lasswell's commitment to a policy science of democracy. Maarten Hajer References Billig, M. (1987), Arguing and Thinking: a rhetorical approach to
social psychology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. |
