Discourses of Legitimation across Policy-making Arenas

Panel Chairs:

Jeremy Hunsinger, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, jhuns@vt.edu

 Abstract:

This panel investigates the discourses of legitimation that policymakers use to legitimize and justify their policy. It investigates the roles and positions of practices and artifacts in those discourses of legitimation. Our panelists, using interpretive methods, find certain discourses that aim to legitimize certain policies related to knowledge and cultural policy in our society.  The papers describe these discourses so that in the panel discussion we can present them and discuss the similarities and differences.

The central theme of this panel is to question what are the discourses of legitimation in various policy arenas, how do those discourses of legitimation operate, for whom, and to what ends, especially if there are unforseen ends. Following Habermas, Lyotard, Boltanski and Thévenot, amongst others, the questions of legitimation and justification cross policy arenas, providing ways of rethinking the modes of analysis of policy and opening up interpretive avenues.
This panel accepts a wide variety of interpretive analyses of discourses of legitimation in policy discourses in order to find ways of discussing and clarifying the issues surrounding discourses of legitimation.  Cutting across a broad series of case studies, the authors argue that the discourses of legitimation vary according the models used to analyze them, but tend to demonstrate knowable similarities across case studies.  These knowable similarities are similar to the metanarratives of Lyotard on the one hand, but also follow models of justification found in Boltanski and Thevenot's On Justification.  By highlighting the similarities across cases, we hope to provide a basis for discussion of discourses of legitimation in policy arenas that is demonstrably applicable to other case studies.