Policy, Discourse Models

Discourse analysis draws on central insights from post-Marxism, poststructuralism, and radical versions of interpretative analysis and pragmatist philosophy. Discourse analysis aims to transcend the objectivist, reductionist, and rationalist bias in mainstream social science theory by emphasizing the role of discourse in shaping social, political, and economic relations. Discourse is commonly defined as a more or less stable and well-defined system of rules, norms, and significant differences that is produced in and through political struggles and provides a contingent horizon for the construction of any meaningful subject, object, or action. Many discourse theorists have been preoccupied with developing a sophisticated theoretical framework, but a growing number of discourse analysts have become interested in applying the concepts and arguments of discourse theory in problem-driven empirical analysis, and the study of policy and policy making is at the top of the agenda.

A discourse approach to policy analysis can help us better understand the discursive conditions of possibility for formulating particular policies, and it draws our attention to the role of identity construction and the negotiation of meaning in policy implementation. In contrast to mainstream policy analysis, discourse analysis highlights the semantic, performative, and rhetorical aspects of public policy making. Moreover, it insists that policy problems, policy solutions, and governmental rationalities are discursively constructed and therefore contingent. Finally, it aims to uncover the power struggles and political conflicts that shape the discursive conditions for the formulation and implementation of public policy. Whereas [Page 1882]discourse models inspired by the works of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas tend to focus on the role of public deliberation and tend to see power and conflict as a source of distorted communication, discourse models inspired by the French philosopher Michel Foucault tend to view power and conflicts as constitutive of policy discourse.

Traditional approaches to policy analysis hold that interests and institutional constraints provide the key to understanding the formulation and implementation of policy. As such, it is often assumed that policy can be explained in terms of the interests of rational and resourceful actors and the institutional rules, norms, and procedures that constrain the choice of rational actors. Discourse models of policy take a different approach in arguing that interests are incomplete, ambiguous, and shaped by the contingent discourses in which they are embedded. Likewise, discourse models tend to define institutions not only as a recursively validated system of regulative and normative constraints but also as a broad set of values, symbols, rituals, forms of knowledge, codes, and vocabularies that facilitate and guide action. This means that interests cannot be taken for granted and that institutions are not only staging the choice and interaction of the relevant policy actors but also seem to be scripting their actions.

There are several important precursors to the development of a constructivist discourse approach to policy analysis. Some rational choice theorists have relaxed the classical assumptions about full information and unlimited cognitive capacities and have elaborated the traditional model of individual choice subject to institutional constraints. Douglas North, for example, has introduced the notion of “mental models” to explain the choice and action of the entrepreneurs who are responsible for constructing and changing institutions. The feasible options and their payoffs are determined not only by institutional rules and norms but also by the subjective perceptions (mental models) of the institutional entrepreneurs. Mental models are acquired through processes of socialization and learning, and they help rational actors interpret and explain their changing environment. However, the relation between the objective interest of rational actors and their subjective perceptions remains unclear, and if the latter is constitutive of the former, it becomes difficult to maintain the basic assumption that choice is derived from interests. Moreover, if the mental models are shaped by collective ideas and ideologies, the methodological individualism at the heart of rational choice institutionalism is undermined.

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