Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy, and the Public Sphere

by Korkut, Umut; Cox, Robert Henry; Bucken-Knapp, Gregg; Mahendran, Kesi

• ISBN13: 9781137495778
• ISBN10: 1137495774
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-09-10
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Discursive governance refers to implicit mechanisms of governance such as narratives, leitmotifs, and strategic metaphors in political language. It examines how the framing of policies affects political and social representations in accordance with the wishes of political authorities. Ad hoc discourses generate a space where politicians configure, transmit, and initiate politics ideationally, rather than vouchsafing substantial policy change with respect to governance. This book studies the dynamics of political discourse in governance processes. It demonstrates the process in which political discourses become normative mechanisms, first marking socially constructed realities in politics, second playing a role in delineating the subsequent policy frames, and third influencing the public sphere. The key contribution of this volume is tracing the discursive relationships among actors, namely governments and political parties, policy participants and societal actors, and the public in European nation states, intergovernmental organizations, subnational or regional entities, and geographies beyond Europe where European norms trigger ideational processes of change. The book extends earlier work in the field by exploring how policy and politics create social knowledge, make some ideas publicly salient, and bring together coalitions of actors that find certain policy alternatives attractive and eventually generate political and policy change.

Author Biography

Umut Korkut is a Reader in Politics at Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. In addition to two other books with Palgrave, he has published in Political Geography, Europe-Asia Studies, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Social Politics, Parliamentary Affairs, Nationalities Papers, Economic and Industrial Democracy, and East European Quarterly, among others.
 
Kesi Mahendran is Enactments Programme Director within the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance and the Open University, UK. She is a social psychologist who is published on dialogical approaches to mobility, non-mobility, integration and citizenship.
 
Gregg Bucken-Knapp is Associate Professor in Political Science in the School of Public Administration at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His articles have appeared in Journal of European Public Policy, Comparative Public Policy and Human Rights Review and his books have been published by Palgrave Macmillan, State University of New York Press and Lexington Books, among others.

Robert Henry Cox is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Walker Institute for International and Area Studies, University of South Carolina, USA. His research focuses on public policy issues in European countries. 

Table of Contents

Preface; Robert Henry Cox
Introduction: Discursive Governance: Operationalization And Applications; Umut Korkut, Kesi Mahendran, Gregg Bucken-Knapp, And Robert Henry Cox
PART I: POLITICAL PARTIES. HOW DO THE POLITICAL PARTIES USE/GENERATE DISCOURSES AND REPRESENTATIONS?
1. Racialized Violence Against Migrants In Greece; Lena Karamanidou
2. Investing In Our Future? The Influence Of Social Investment Ideas On Family Policy Discourses In Finland, Germany And The UK; Mikael Nygård, Mikkokuisma, Nicole Krüger And Verity Campbell-Barr
3. Successful Transplants, Reform Governments, And Health Care Policy Reform In Slovakia And Hungary; Umut Korkut And Aron Buzogány
4. It's Got To Be A She: The Media Portrayal Of Selecting The First Female Social Democratic Party Leaders In Sweden And Finland; Mari Niemi
PART II: IMPLEMENTING POLICY: DISCURSIVE INTERPRETATION OF POLICY BY POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ACTORS
5. Doing More With Less? Financial Engineering Instruments For Urban Development In EU Cohesion Policy; Marcin Dabrowski
6. 'Externalization Of The EU Asylum Policy Under The Light Of The Arab Spring: How Did South-European Countries Recalibrate After The Uprisings'; Alexandra Bousiou And Antonios Kontis
7. Implementing Gender Budgeting In Scotland And Spain: A Comparative Feminist Analysis; Angela O'Hagan
8. The Eye Of The Beholder: Narrating Crisis In The Ongoing Swedish Labor Migration Policy Debate; Gregg Bucken-Knapp, Andrea Spehar And Jonas Hinnfors
PART III: PUBLIC SPHERE: THE RESONANCE AND RESISTANCE OF DISCOURSES AND REPRESENTATIONS
9. Public Narratives Of European Citizenship – The Dialogical Citizen In The European Public Sphere; Kesi Mahendran, Ima Jackson And Anubhuti Kapoor
10. European Integration And Mainstreaming Of Stateless Nationalist And Regionalist Parties: The Scottish National Party And Frisian National Party; Arno Van Der Zwet
11. Equal But Separate? LGBTI Rights In Contemporary South Africa; Hande Eslen-Ziya, Aidan Mcgarry, Cheryl Potgieter, And Finn CG Reygan