David Laws & Nanke Verloo (University of Amsterdam)

In this paper we propose to explore conflict as a context for studying policy practice. Conflict has some clear virtues in this regard. In situations of conflict, the self-evident flow of action is disrupted, whether through the efforts of other actors or through turns of events, rendering the tacit structure of practice more observable.  Analytic leverage is created in the counternarratives of protagonists, which provide a kaleidoscope of juxtapositions against which the accounts of policy-practitioners can be read. It also provided by the liminal spaces that open when conventional practices break down and the unfolding logic of the situation still requires a response.  Practitioners' improvisations in these unsettled moments provide a view onto the way they read the demands that are posed and reason about what sort of action is appropriate and possible.

 The paper will reflect on these and other features of conflict as a domain for research on practice through a review of experience in two cases from urban neighborhoods in the Netherlands. Through a combination of ethnographic fieldwork, extended interviews, and narrative analysis, we reconstruct 'stories' of policy practice as it is performed and experienced in episodes of conflict in these neighbourhoods. The cases provide a view on how policy-makers negotiate meaning, space, and practice in these critical moments and develop the relationships on which their practice depends. In one case, the death of a young man triggered a crisis marked by divergent interpretations in which policy-makers had to negotiate proposals for action while the meaning of events remained open and was being shaped by their own response. In the other case, policy-makers in a new town development in The Hague found themselves in a controversy in which the tactics and strategies of a group of residents disrupted and persistently contested their efforts to create a sphere of local community from within limits posed by their commitment to administrative rationality.

 In addition to reflecting on conflict as a context for research on practice, we will present a preliminary account of 'what policy makers do' based on our analysis of these, and other, episodes.  This account emphasizes the significance of conflicts as 'critical moments' in policy-practice and the mismatch between the action repertoire provided by conventional practice and the demands that emerge in these critical moments.  The significance of the critical moments can be accounted for in the way three networks-an action network, a semantic network, and a physical network of objects and spaces-are related and, momentarily it seems, become open to change.  Experience in these settings also highlights the limits of the conventional repertoire, particularly the limited use of interactive practices (dialogue, debate, bargaining, and negotiation) that might respond to the interdependence dramatized in these episodes.  Here our analysis confirms and extends prior accounts of the force of convention, but also points to a way out. 

Frank Nullmeier & Tanja Pritzlaff (University of Bremen)

How do practitioners interact with each other in the practice of policy-making? Are there typical sequences of interaction that can be identified at the micro-level of politicians' day-to-day activities? How can a com-prehensive typology of political practices be developed?  

 The aim of the paper is to present a range of typical forms of political interaction, i.e. of political practices, that can be discovered using video-based ethnography. These typical forms of interaction may serve as a starting point for a comprehensive typology of political practices. Video-based ethnography, also referred to as microethnography (Curtis D. LeBaron; Jürgen Streeck; Charles Goodwin), offers a chance to understand what policy-makers do and how they make sense of what they do. The systematic, video-based analysis of both practitioners' talk and their nonverbal, embodied behaviour opens up new possibilities to identify, isolate and categorize typical sequences of interaction.

 Focussing on audiovisual data from actual committee meetings at different levels of the political system, the paper presents examples of four different types of political practices:

 1. Practices of translation can be identified as sequences in which participants in political face-to-face inter-actions, like for example committee meetings, try to integrate their different background assumptions and webs of meaning into a unified and harmonized use of concepts - a practice referred to in German as "of-fizielle Sprachregelung" ('official version').

 2. Practices of repair can be identified as micro-interventions during sequences of conflict, misunderstanding or disagreement. These practices have the function to put the respective meeting on the right track again. The self-image of the respective participants as political decision-makers becomes particularly apparent in the course of these kinds of repair-sequences.

 3. Practices of renarration are typical practices in the context of joint decision-making. By renarrating a pro-posal that has already been made - by telling a slightly different version of the story from their own perspec-tive - agents seem to be able to integrate the proposed decision into their own, differing background assump-tions and evaluative standards. In addition, the multiple - although revised - repetitions of the suggested solution seem to add substance to the idea of a joint solution that the agents as a group can adopt as their decision. Through their nonverbal behaviour, participants signalize the growing coherence of the group, their increasing approval of the story that is told again and again in slight variations.

 4. Practices of self-authorization are sequences in which participants reassure each other of their authority as decision-makers, i.e. in which they define and reinforce their position to legitimately make the actual deci-sion at hand.

 These four typical sequences of interaction serve as introductory examples and as a starting point for a com-prehensive typology of political practices, i.e. of practices through which practitioners reinforce their self-image as policy-makers.

Steve Connelly (University of Sheffield)

An important aspect of the development of and prognosis for new forms of governance is their legitimacy: for authority to be successfully devolved and diffused to new institutions and actors not previously engaged in policy- and decision-making it must, by definition, become legitimate.   Yet it is widely recognised that the traditional certainties of legitimacy conferred by the ballot box on decision makers, and by technical expertise on their advisers, (to a contested extent) break down in 'the new governance', raising the questions of how and why new forms of governance actually take root and become acceptable and accepted. 

 To some extent this process becomes visible in explicit 'legitimacy discourse', through which actors explicitly set out, justify and often contest processes in terms which draw from political, and other, theoretical positions (e.g. norms of inclusivity, representativeness, effectiveness and so etc.)   Empirical research has also used interviews to engage practitioners in reconstructing similar arguments through reflections on their practice.   However, this approach plausibly leads to an over-theorisation, biasing analysis towards an understanding of legitimacy as arising from contests between defined theoretical positions. 

 In contrast, this paper explores the possibilities opened by two other bodies of theoretical work.  On the one hand, theories of practice and practices suggest that legitimacy arises through the doing of governance (conceived as an interactive, skilled, and situated activity) rather than in arguments about legitimacy.  On the other, social and psychological theories have explored how innovative practices and their associated power relationships become legitimate in contexts such as management innovations within commercial organisations i.e. setting which are not 'political' in the classic sense of being engaged in the authoritative allocation of value in the public sphere.  

 Illustrated by drawing on observations made by the author in various participant/observer roles and governance settings, this paper explores how these two perspectives allow an analysis of how new governance processes become legitimate, both through being practiced in legitimate ways and through shaping new norms of legitimacy.  However, it also seems important not to lose the normative evaluatory power of political theory - pre-eminently to enable us to make judgements about the democratic qualities of governance.  The paper thus concludes by suggesting how political and social theories of legitimacy can be reconciled in the analysis of governance practice. 

Merlijn van Hulst, Laurens de Graaf & Gabriël van den Brink (Tilburg University)

In order to understand the way so-called 'exemplary practitioners' (van Hulst, de Graaf and van den Brink 2009) work in changing urban environments, we are studying a group of approximately 50 practitioners, civil servants, professionals and active citizens. Five Dutch cities are involved in the project: Amsterdam (12 actors), The Hague (12 actors), Leeuwarden (7 actors), Utrecht (12 actors), Zwolle (7 actors). We use a set of methods and techniques that resembles ethnographic fieldwork in local governance (Van Hulst 2008) and policy making more general, but gives it a twist.

 In this paper we do two things.

 First, we describe the way we have done our investigation. We have used scouting to find the actors we want to study. That is, we have sent someone (a non-academic) into the field to talk to people and make a list of exemplary practitioners. As a next step we have followed the 50 actors for one day. Finally, we have interviewed these people, focusing on a specific topic they propose themselves, guided by John Forester's approach to making practitioners profiles. We thus both watch practitioners in action and hear them and people around them talk about it.  

 Second, we describe how and what our investigation tells us about the way these practitioners work. The practitioners we study are selected not for being ordinary or even good policy makers. They are selected because they stand out, because they do things differently. We would suggest that they make a difference because they do things differently (hence the title, referring to Gregory Bateson's dictum). We want to know how they try to make a difference, what activities - verbal and non-verbal - they engage in, in order to cope with problems. Focusing on these actors and their agency in the context of their work gives us specific, grounded insights about their everyday, exemplary practice. It teaches us about the elements of their practice and helps us to further develop and critically examine the concepts and ideas that are part of the interpretive, practice-oriented vocabulary-in-use (e.g., local knowledge/knowing, practice stories). This second part of our paper builds on previous work on practitioners and practice, including that of Schön (1983), Forester (1999), Wagenaar (2004) and Yanow (2004).

Christian Bueger (Institute for Development and Peace)

Why do some novel policy ideas in global governing achieve a wide audience and are institutionalized while others are not? Why are policy ideas such as 'Human Security','Peacebuilding' or the 'Responsibility to Protect' so successful?

 Answers to these questions remain incomplete. To explain the success of policy ideas, International Relations (IR) scholars have pointed to the importance of policy entrepreneurs or advocacy communities and have identified the structural condition of uncertainty as a necessary condition. This paper complements these claims. In arguing that ideas should be understood as fashion, I advance three additional arguments: 1) the success of an idea depends on the practices of producing it; 2) for an idea to be successful an object or artifact needs to be manufactured which allows the idea to travel; 3) the better the idea is flexible enough to be adaptable to local needs the wider it will spread. To make these three interrelated arguments this paper draws on the Sociology of Translations and uses the Responsibility to Protect as an illustrative case.

 The Sociology of Translations, also known as Actor-Network Theory, argues against a logic of diffusion and for a logic of translation. Diffusion posits that an idea remains stable while it travels. Translation suggests that the spread of policy ideas is a paradoxical process in which ideas are stable and flexible the same time. They are capable to accommodate a global as well as a local meaning. Moreover, translation commits to the core ideas of the 'logic of practicality' (Pouliot), that is, knowledge cannot be understood independently from practice. In this sense, translation picks up the core idea of the logic of practicality and develops it further to understand the spread of policy ideas and, in extension, policy change.

 Section two introduces the logic of translation in clarifying how it takes the logic of practicality further and interrogates the similarities and differences to a logic of diffusion. Section three elaborates the three core arguments of this paper in drawing on the case of the Responsibility to Protect. The Responsibility to Protect, meanwhile abbreviated by the acronym R2P, is a policy idea which reframes the problem of humanitarian intervention. Developed in 2001 by an international commission composed of elder statesmen and academic experts it has spread widely, is debated in global governance discourses worldwide and has even been formally adopted by all heads of nation states at the 2005 UN World Summit. As will be shown the sociology of translations puts us in a favorable position to understand why the idea was so successful on the one side, but why it remains controversial on the other.

 In summary, the paper advances the current debate on a logic of practicality and provides a better understanding of why and how global governance ideas travel.

Ellen Wiemer (Wageningen University)

This paper departs from the stance that far-reaching public sector reforms are not only driven by the rationale of transformation, but also, and foremost, by the belief, identity and social context of the individuals who have to put the reform into practice. This study will analyse how individual civil servants make sense of such a public sector reform that formally introduces new working modes and relations with other public institutions.

 The public sector reform that is central to this analysis is the Investment Fund for Rural Areas (ILG) through which the Dutch national government delegated the implementation of national rural spatial policies to the twelve provinces. This decentralisation entails a shift of duties and responsibilities towards the provinces. Hence, a formally new relation was introduced between the national government - particularly the ministry of agriculture - and the provinces.

 The new formal arrangement is put in practice by individual civil servants. They have to make sense of the formal arrangements and integrate them into a highly complex, dynamic and ambiguous context. This paper will tackle the question of how this sensemaking process passes off. Special attention will be paid to the newly to develop relations between the individual national and provincial actors involved.

 First findings disclose that in finding this new role, provincial and national civil servants balance between two extremes: trust in the goodwill of the other party on the one hand, and insisting on formally stipulating details on the other hand. The latter could be interpreted as a manifestation of scepticism in the goodwill or capability of the other party - and some respondents say so. Exploring this ostensible contradiction, and to understand the sensemaking process in a broader sense, implies to first have a close look on what individual civil servants do, the meaning they give to what they are doing, before assigning interpretations to it in scientific terms.

 Since a substantial part of civil servants' daily routines consists of attending meetings and writing documents, I expect that a substantial part of the sensemaking process evolves in discursive practices. Discursive practices are not only what civil servants do; in them they also give arguments and account for doing what they are doing, or plan to do, in a social setting. For that reason, the empirical data for this study are collected through overt observations of meetings both at the ministry level, as well as on provincial level concerning the ILG, ethnographic interviewing of individuals participating in these meetings and studying of relevant policy documents.

 Even though some studies have paid attention on how individual civil servants make sense of formal arrangements in their daily routines, none of them has put special attention on changing relations in it. Therefore, the paper will enhance the understanding of the sensemaking process of individual civil servants in translating formal arrangements into a practical context and changing relations it.

Martin B. Carstensen (Aalborg University)

An argument that has done much to secure the status of  ideational explanations in political science is that the institutionalisation of ideas has significant effect on actors' identification of their interests as well as the interests of their political adversaries. Despite its strength in arguing for the importance of ideas, the focus on institutionalisation of ideas has had as an unfortunate consequence that actors implicitly are argued to internalise ideas, in effect

making it difficult to understand how actors are able to change the ideas and institutions they themselves uphold. Drawing on cultural sociology and sociological institutionalism, the paper introduces the 'bricoleur' as an alternative vision of agency. It is argued, first, that actors cannot cognitively internalize highly structured symbolic systems, and ideas are thus outside the minds of actors. Second, using the cognitive schemas at their disposal, actors construct strategies of action based on the pre-constructed ideational and political institutions. Third, actors have to work actively and creatively with the ideas and institutions they use, because the cultural structure that the actor is part of does not determine the actors' response to problems or new circumstances. Fourth, as a vast number of ideational studies have witnessed to, actors face a complex array of challenges in getting their idea to the top of the policy agenda, which makes it all the more important to act pragmatically, putting ideas together that may not be logically compatible but rather answers to a political and cultural logic. In sum, agency often takes the form of bricolage, where bits and pieces of the existing ideational and institutional legacy is put together in new forms leading to significant political transformation.

Neil Hutton (Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and University of Strathclyde)

Between 1993 and 2003, a multi-disciplinary research team (IT, Law, Political Science and Sociology)  worked with senior judges in Scotland to design, build and eventually implement a Sentencing Information System. The aim of the system was to enable judges, when deciding sentence in a particular case, to search the database for similar cases and thereby pursue the goal of greater consistency in sentencing while retaining their discretion. The challenge for the designers was to find a way of representing seriousness to allow cases to be compared in a way that was acceptable to judges. Scotland is a common law jurisdiction without a codified legal system so classifications of offences which are used by prosecutors are broad and complex and of little use for comparing seriousness

The aim of the project might also be described as an attempt to change the object of sentencing. The paper  describes how the translation from an intuitive model of sentencing to one based on evidence was performed and how the eventual "definition" of seriousness was enacted through the negotiations of the judges, researchers, court clerks, court managers, government research funders and other agencies and objects.  The SIS does not display the methods of its production. This paper shows  the complexities, uncertainties and resistances which were worked through. This is  also a  story of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which power was exercised (and not exercised) in a process which was continuously contested. The author of this paper was the sociologist member of the research team.

Michelle Brady (University of Alberta)

The aim of my research project Interrogating Capacity Building is to grasp the spaces of freedom and constraint that the Australian government's capacity building programs for single mothers open up and close down. It seeks to throw new light on the contemporary problem of capacity building programs (such as welfare to work programs), to understand the current limits of thinking about these programs, and to loosen the grip of ways of thinking that have become sedimented. In doing so it aims to highlight concrete ways of thinking and acting differently. It does this through a combination of historical, textual and ethnographic methods that takes inspiration from, and extends, Foucault's later works (on governmentalities and technologies of the self) and the governmentality debate in Anglo Saxon political science and sociology (Lemke: 2003). The historical (genealogical) methods developed by Foucault and the governmentality literature provided many of the tools needed to achieve the aims of this project. Importantly, they enabled a focus on the concrete practices of governance as well as the language and forms of thought through which the problem of capacities arose and solutions to this problem were developed and implemented. They provided tools for illuminating how in the present certain forms of thought, practices, and subjectivities are seen as natural and necessary, and for opening up a critical space around these. Through historical contrasts between how problems of capacities are understood now and how they have been understood differently in the past, these genealogical tools enabled me to provide readers with a critical relation by making "those things [in] our present experience" that are given to us "as if they were timeless, natural, unquestionable" seem strange and not inevitable (Rose 1999).

But these genealogical and historical tools of analysis were insufficient on their own to enable an understanding of the current limits of thought and practice in relation to capacity building programs.  These tools have been developed to focus on 'mentalities of governance', or ways of thinking about governance laid down in official plans for governing, such as those written by Australian Government bureaucrats. But they have not been developed to enable a focus on the 'witches' brew' of actual practices of capacity building programs.  When employed by Anglo-Saxon governmentality researchers, these tools are used to identify the most recent ways in which the issue of capacities has become a problem for the state and the solutions the state has devised. These problems and solutions devised by the state are identified as the current limit of thought and practice. Such an approach ignores the point that new plans and schemes for capacity building programs come into being within a complex social fabric that includes a heterogeneous mix of pre-existing political discourses, including historically specific national discourses (Larner, 2000). New policy solutions do not completely dis-embed existing practices and forms of thought but instead they mix together with them. Thus current capacity building programs combine practices and forms of thought from many different times. Given this mixing, the spaces of freedom and constraint within actual practice may be rather different to the spaces of freedom and constraint that are apparent in plans and programs for governing. In this paper I illustrate how I used ethnographic methods together with historical and textual methods to understand the spaces of freedom and constraint that current Australian government capacity building social policies have opened up, and closed down, and to highlight concrete ways of thinking and acting differently.

Vincent Druliolle (University of Essex)

The paper is a set of critical reflections about how a period of fieldwork was crucial in (re-)shaping and (re-)defining a research project about commemorative practices and the construction of democracy in post-authoritarian Argentina. The emphasis is put on what Schatz (2009) calls 'ethnographic sensibility', and the argument is that it highlights the shortcomings of the analysis of the "politics of memory" by drawing attention to the fundamental idea that 'there is an active political struggle not only over the meaning of what took place in the past but over the meaning of memory itself' (Jelin, 2003: xviii). This interpretive insight is also a challenge for the researcher seeking to apply discourse theory as a set of ontological categories and theoretical concepts insofar as it raises the question of how the self-interpretations of the relevant actors may be combined or articulated with, rather than reduced to the former - or, what it means to apply a theoretical framework and concepts and construct an explanatory account of the phenomenon investigated in the first place. The paper outlines how discourse theory has been and may be used to analyse commemorative practices in post-dictatorship Argentina, and highlights some general limitations of discourse theory as it has been used for empirical research. It makes the case for taking the interpretive insights derived from ethnographic immersion seriously, in particular by 'seeing and understanding printed words [and discourses] as lived experiences' (Schatzberg, 2008: 23). It is what I refer to as shifting from discourse theory as political research to discourse theory and political research. I contend that rather than using discourse theory selectively or reducing it to a kind of "discourse theory light", it enriches our understanding of what is political about these commemorative practices which are too often reduced to the realm of (non-political) "symbolic reparations", as field immersion challenges the binary (and too sharp) oppositions politics/the political on the one hand, and domination/resistance on the other hand. As a conclusion, the paper outlines some implications for discourse theory and those researchers who may want to use it, or apply it, for empirical research.

Leonidas Karakatsanis (University of Essex)

This paper focuses on questions of interdisciplinary exchange on methods for collecting research material. I suggest that interdisciplinary work, a direction which is generally accepted as a safe guideline for selecting research methodologies in the broader terrain of discourse studies, can/should be something more than a mere borrowing of methods or tools between disciplinary fields. The specific focus of the paper will be directed towards ethnography or ethnographic sensibility as a potential new research tool in discourse theory. I will argue that instead of conceptualizing 'ethnography' in a soft and 'liberal way', or treating it as a module which can 'fit in' all kinds of social science research (i.e. from positivist to interpretivist accounts), it should be seen as a sensitive tool that needs to be specifically moulded to adjust to different disciplinary environments. Thus, in order to do this, one has to answer three emerging questions: What kind of ethnography, Why is it needed in discourse theory, and how one should proceed performing its 'adoption'. The concept of articulation, which holds a core role in discourse theory's theoretical presuppositions will appear as an indispensable tool in this interdisciplinary endeavour.

Christos Pallas (University of Essex)

The aim of this paper is to reflect upon the temporal and spatial dimensions of 'fieldwork' in my research project on hospitality and racism in contemporary Greece, and, more broadly, in so-called 'problem-driven' approaches in social and political inquiry. On the one hand, in an attempt to overcome the discontents of 'theory-driven' research, political scientists have turned to methods associated with ethnography, that is, interviews, participant observation etc. On the other hand, recent debates in social anthropology seem to displace 'the mythos of fieldwork' (Marcus 2009:27) by way of pluralizing the meaning of ethnography. Drawing on such ambiguity regarding the place and time of 'fieldwork', I reflect on a plurality of encounters which have made possible my own 'fieldwork' in particular sites - detention centers and asylum offices/agencies. Such encounters, however, can themselves produce knowledge to inform one's project, just as 'being there' in the field does. This opens up the possibility of   conceiving ethnographically all experience related to research in terms of what has been called 'multi-sited research imaginary' (Marcus 1998).  Further, I engage in a discussion about the kinds of theoretical constructions and preoccupations  which have oriented my research into this particular field and defined certain problematics which, unavoidably, I bring along in the 'fieldwork'. The last part of the paper attempts to render commensurable the Foucauldian strategy of problematization and that of 'multi-sited' ethnography, by emphasizing the role that their key aspects - social relevance and self-reflexivity - have played in the design of my research project.

Esther Keymolen & Dennis Broeders (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Western governments increasingly turn to technological solutions when dealing with social problems. Public safety requires CCTV, immigration policies require biometric databases, the fight against terrorism requires massive data mining, and improving healthcare has also taken a digital turn. In the Netherlands the digitalization of youth care, in the form of the introduction of a 'National Reference Index High-Risk Youngsters' (Verwijsindex Risicojongeren, VIR), provides a very poignant case. Not because of digitalization itself, but because of the manner in which the undisputed goal of protecting and caring for innocent youth contrasts with the practical implementation of the system in terms of technology and functions. The VIR is the result of public outcry about a number of well publicized cases in which the tragic deaths of very small children were (at least) partially connected with a failing youth-care system. Youth- (health)care organizations failed to protect children from seriously damaging home situations, even when the family problems could or should have been known. Lack of co-operation between youth-care professionals has been put forward as one of the reasons for insufficient vigilance and care in these cases. Under the rallying cry 'never again a Maas-girl' - one of the toddlers was found in the river Maas - public and political sentiments aligned in a call for a solution to prevent professional miscommunication and lack of cooperation. In line with Snow et al. (1986) we can speak of value amplification. The innocence of a child must be protected and cared for. Once such sentiment is validated and diffused, mobilization of actors and reorganizations can start up without too much resistance. The narrative of the lost innocence of children created a frame of resolve and action that led to the national installment of the VIR. This Reference Index is an information system that collects risk reports (e.g., contacts with the police, drug or alcohol addiction, child abuse) about children and adolescents provided by different youth-care professionals within and across municipalities. The Reference Index mutually informs these professionals on their involvement with these children and enables information exchange and collaboration. All in all, the national debate resulted in a call for a rather basic and straightforward system that requires professionals to get into contact when the system indicates they have a 'joint' case. Increased information should lead to increased vigilance and surveillance which, in turn, should prevent new tragedies.

 The practical and technical implementation of the Reference Index has been entrusted to the municipalities. This has significantly broadened the actor field and has led to a great diversification of local systems which are often much broader in set up than is needed to meet the requirements of the National Reference Index. This diversification of systems has also translated into a diversification of functions. The original basic approach formulated at the national level was predominantly rooted in the notion of (youth) care. With the translation of the national idea into local practices and systems, new power relations and interests have entered the digital arena of youth care, which in turn altered the meaning of the Reference index. We argue that in the translation from the national to the local level two additional relations are made possible by the system that focus more on control than on care. In addition to the function of increasing the care of the healthcare professionals for high-risk youth the system enables a control relation among professionals themselves (a 'surveillance of peers') and a (automated) control relation between the system itself and the professionals. In this third surveillance relation some discretionary power is delegated (comp. Latour 1992) to the local Reference Index itself through automatic decision trees, automatic reminders and notifications to supervising actors. The translation between the national and the local level will be built on the case of the system the city of Rotterdam has introduced. These additional functions are the result of a broadening of the original nationally formulated aim of the system and the interaction between local youth care and the much wider municipal agenda. In this sense the basic idea of the Reference index lost some of its innocence too.   

Céline Mavrot (Université de Lausanne & KPM-Université de Berne)

The current research is a case study on harm reduction policies in matter of drug addiction in two Swiss cantons. We aim to find out why the formulation of such policies is a matter of professional specialists in Geneva, whereas the question is highly politicized in the canton of Vaud. Actually in Vaud, a decisional system including very few actors was replaced by a confrontation between two large policy networks contending with each other in various policy formulation arenas. The conflict between professionals was first redoubled by an administrative dispute, and finally came to a long term communal and cantonal parliamentary controversy. We thus analyze why the struggle in Vaud progressively led the two networks to reconfigure themselves along a right/left political opposition. We will also show how this controversy between the proponents and the adversaries of harm reduction policies was characterised by the confusion between drug prevention's and AIDS prevention's discursive registers.

 Three dimensions have been investigated in order to understand to what factors we can infer the two politico-professional coalitions' stabilization in Vaud. First, the associative and professional institutionalization of both drug addiction's and aids prevention's fields is reconstituted. This permits to comprehend the conflict opposing the professionals as well as their differentiated chances of access to the public authorities. From the study of this fields' professionalization, we secondly turn to the analysis of the alliances made between these professionals and the local political parties. We show why these professional fields' structuring dynamic led the harm reduction militants to operate a politicization of the question in order to make it exist. The analysis thirdly retraces the progressive fragmentation of the arenas that sheltered the debate. We see here how the alliance/concurrence process between the groups and their cognitive framing activity were influenced by their insertion in a plurality of action and enunciation scenes, each of these scenes being governed by partly autonomous dynamics.

 We will explain the structure of preference's genesis of these two groups of actors and their actualisation during their inclusion/exclusion of the different spheres of policy formulation. The theoretical posture thus adopted is definitely processualist. The main focus will be on the continual dynamic between actor's stances and activities, as well as on the discursive constraints that structure idea formulation in each arena. The analyse recount the articulation between the specialist's claims, the ties that link them to administration and to the policy mediators, and finally the debate among political parties. The finality is to seize the successive "ideas in action" adjustments in the long range. Thereby, we retrace each step of the extension of the chaîne de traduction between the diverse arenas, as well as of the diversification process of the decisional system. We will show that far from being a zero-sum game, the progressive implementation of these policies nourished the oppositional process between the two groupings. We will outline that the two sets of "big ideas" in conflict for this policy formulation don't have a per se existence, but rather befall in the course of action.

Frédéric Schoenaers & David Delvaux (University of Liège)

When "interessement" doesn't necessarily involve enrolment! The case of the introduction of the management paradigm in the Belgian Judicial system

Since the 90's, the totality of the judicial sphere (police and justice) has been widely criticized by the political world and by the public opinion because of its "disorganization" and slow. A new kind of pressure appeared in order that justice improves its performances in terms of efficacy, quality and efficiency. In other words, new expectations were addressed to the jurisdictions and their actors. They should strengthens the profile of public service of justice by being more opened towards the outside world (development of partnership, better consideration of the users, better accessibility and intelligibility) but also by agreeing to enter in a logic of reporting.

These new requirements were accompanied with a series of reform's plans ("Octopus plan", "Themis plan", reform of the judiciary map, development of workload measurement devices, total quality management, etc.) all supposed to contribute to an improvement of the functioning of the judiciary. If we analyse the hyperactivity of the governments and their succeeding initiatives, one can say that justice lives a deep mutation: the management paradigm has gained this "protected" sphere. At least, all the involved stakeholders (within or outside) the jurisdictions seems to be "interested" by the management. More specifically, the discourses around performances and quality make common sense among public prosecutors or judges. At the same time, we can also testify, following our own field observations, that none of all the initiatives cited above have been concretely completed! In other words, if magistrates seem to be "interested" by management, they are, since 15 years, not yet really "enrolled".

This contribution will firstly try to briefly retrace the emergence of the management paradigm in the Belgian judiciary. Secondly we will emphasise on one specific project started 10 years ago and which is still not effective: the measure of the workload for the bench's judges. In this second part, we will show in what all the judges are sharing a common view about the principle of workload measurement but also why they are blocking the innovation process.

Christophe Dubois (University of Liège)

 From restorative justice to restorative detention: intermediary artefacts and actors in a policy making process.

« Although it is recognized as being inhuman by some people and inefficient by others, prison only seldomly serves as a gathering political objective ». The ministerial circular of 4 October 2000, which is implementing « restorative justice » in Belgian prisons, seems however to be an outstanding case in this matter as it includes prison in the political program. The circular, that creates a new role of « restorative justice consultant » and plans to assign one in each prison, is indeed a first step towards a gradual reconsideration of Belgian penitentiary policies. It is also the result of a policy making process involving several elements such as, among others, militancy, religious thoughts, political voluntarism, new professional practices, scientific strategies, and so on. Many of these elements are incorporated in various intermediary artefacts such as documents, white papers, scientific reports, Internet websites, folders, books, drafts, memoranda, submissions, minutes of meeting, letters of guidance or press releases.

Through the dynamic of their writing, reading and diffusion, these artefacts can be understood as carriers or vehicles of messages and ideas, norms and representations. Behind such dynamics, some intermediary actors are producing and carrying these artefacts and their messages from one social world -such as associations, militancy, criminology and politics- to one another. Focusing on intermediary artefacts -documents- and actors -brokers-, we will depict the genetic process through which some ideas (such as peace building, mediation, victims and prisoners' rights, culture of respect and so on) have been translated, feeding a policy making process that institutionalizes the criminological concept of restorative justice in a prison policy and litigation.  To report this policy making process, we will use an analytical scheme inspired by the sociology of translation. This translation concept is about « cognitive activities, their transformations, the loans and reinterpretations they rely on. But it also stresses the importance of material elements (written documents, statistics) and real interactions between people involved » in the analyzed process. This theoretical scheme is really appropriate « when the relationship or mixing of distinctive social worlds need to be analyzed » and when « the issues hybridization and their management coordination by public administration appear to be critical ».

Arno Simons (Technische Universität Berlin)

The idea of using carbon trading as a policy instrument to mitigate anthropogenic climate change has spread from the US, where it originated from the idea of tradable permits since the 1970s, around the globe and lead to the development of carbon markets in various countries. With the parallel emergence of specialized regulatory agencies, consultancies, certifiers and verifiers, brokering firms and think tanks, carbon trading has become a professional business - the so called carbon economy.

How are we to understand this transformation of carbon trading as an idea of economic theory into enacted policy practice? Building on an emerging sociology of policy instrumentation, this paper rejects the idea that the success of carbon trading can be explained in terms of economic efficiency, or rational choice of policy instruments. Rather it argues that the development of markets for carbon trading can best be understood as contingent processes of innovation in governance. These processes are only partly intended or deliberatively designed and ultimately the result of continual negotiation and mutual translation. Also contrary to what a functionalist 'tool box' perspective suggests, carbon trading is not a passive and neutral tool that is simply 'at the disposal' of policy makers. Instead it shows, to some extent, characteristics of a collective actor that actively promotes solutions and seeks to create political demand.

This paper explores dynamics of the European carbon market (ECM) by suggesting and probing a constructivist network building approach. Evolving carbon market institutions shall be understood as outcomes of translations within the innovation network. EU and member state governments, energy companies, think tanks, consultancy firms, research institutes, financial service providers, traders etc. are all involved in the construction of the market while they each pursue different goals and follow their own agendas. Different actors take on different roles (e.g. designers, users, sponsors, evaluators etc.) and show different degrees of market shaping abilities. A particular focus will be on the formation of reflexive interests among actors for whom emissions trading has become an end in itself.

By comparing and evaluating different (social) network approaches for the study of innovation in governance this paper sketches an approach to map actor constellations and trace interactions and movements of actors in the construction of carbon markets.

Sarah Armstrong (University of Glasgow)

This paper reports on emergent themes from an 'ethnography of penal policy' I am currently conducting. In this larger research project, I have been following, and sometimes participating in, a major reform of imprisonment in Scotland. An ethnography of policy, as opposed to one of policy makers, treats policy as the agent which brings social actors to life and into relationships with each other. Policies also activate settings in which particular spaces, knowledges and materials are available for guiding action. For all actors in this policy process the recognised policy objects are prisons (how to reduce the populations they contain) and prisoners (how to stop them getting into prisons). Like boundary objects, the meaning imbued in these entities varies across settings as policy actors work in tandem (Lee Star). But differences may be more fundamental, for not only does meaning vary depending on one's perspective but the resources available in each setting to recognise the basic existence of these objects suggests that the object itself changes. A prison is: an experience of institutionalisation (for prisoners), an employer (for staff), a neighbour (for communities), a budget item (for governments), a customer (for toilet paper makers), a research subject (for me) and a fiefdom (for penal governors). 

 The paper identifies three distinct social settings in the current penal policy reform and considers for each of them how their particular knowledges, materials and spaces affect not just what prison (or the prisoner) means, but what it is. In understanding the policy object as changeable according to setting, it raises a problem of translation for a policy process which depends for its implementation on consensus. The aim of the paper is twofold: to give a substantive (though preliminary) account of how different actors conceive of prisons and prisoners differently in the debate about reform, and to consider what methods are best (i.e. credibly, robustly and legitimately) able to work in such a reflexive, constructionist environment.

Amanda Williams (University of Calgary)

Metaphors as tools of translation: A case study juxtaposition of policy planner and community understandings of the Alberta SuperNet

 Drawing on the contributions of actor-network theory (Akrich & Latour,1992; Callon, 1986; Law, 2002; Mol, 2003) and insights from both pragmatic (i.e. Hellsten, 2002; Maasen & Weingart, 2000) and cognitive approaches to metaphor analysis (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), this paper's fundamental premise is that metaphors ought to be taken seriously as actors in the policy world since they can reveal a great deal about translation dynamics. It begins first by reviewing the key concepts within actor-network theory and then illustrates how some of the current critiques associated with this theory-method (such as Maclean & Hassard, 2004; Whittle & Spicer, 2008; Winner, 1993) might be overcome by introducing metaphor as a central actor in the formation of emerging policy spaces. This investigation then elaborates on these ideas by conducting a conceptual metaphor analysis surrounding a "real world" initiative (the Alberta SuperNet).

The Alberta SuperNet is a recently established "big idea" technology project that draws on a wide range of metaphorical conceptualizations. This over half a billion dollar government initiative involved the building of a high speed, high capacity broadband network which links 429 communities across the province of Alberta, Canada. Since 2002, policymakers, users (mostly in rural communities) and researchers, have all actively engaged in the process of understanding and experiencing this initiative via metaphor, making it an ideal site of investigation. 

This paper juxtaposes the view of policy planners, gleaned through 10 semi-structured interviews, against those of rural citizens (gathered in six focus groups and during eight town hall meetings) with a view of answering two key questions: (1) how were metaphors used by policy planners to circumscribe which behaviours count, and what counts as behaviour, for both human and non-human actors, and (2) how did citizens respond to how this initiative was problematized, the assigned solution, and their roles as potential users?

In the final assessment, it is contended that metaphors play a core role in structuring the persuasive efforts of policy planners and in doing so metaphors become tools of translation. It is also demonstrated that while citizens often accepted the metaphors provided to them by policy planners, they used the same metaphors in quite different ways to challenge this particular policy space.  Overall, it is argued that metaphor can be quite useful for identifying the following within an actor-network: the simultaneous presence of coherence and difference (also known as multiplicity), potential sources of instability, and the success or failure of a particular translation effort.

Rosalind Cavaghan (University of Edinburgh)

This paper lays out a new way to consider gender mainstreaming, a potentially radical gender equality policy which has now enjoyed over ten years of implementation in the EU.  In short, the policy requires all policy makers in all areas to evaluate the gendered effects of their policies and to alter them, so as to contribute to increased gender equality. 

 In practice, multiple interpretations of 'gender mainstreaming', endowed with highly variable degrees of coherence and efficacy, have emerged in implementation. The research agenda for gender policy analysts therefore centres on two issues 1) How do local varieties of gender mainstreaming come about and 2) Given that some results have been 'disappointing', what really happens when 'gender mainstreaming' is implemented, whether successful or not?

 This paper draws on ANT and the concept of (gender) knowledge to examine  gender mainstreaming as an instance of 'translation'.  Using material from recent fieldwork this paper provides an overview of the sociological processes of change and power which the translation approach renders visible. 

 Firstly the paper shows how action emanating from DG Research's gender unit produced materials, inscriptions and durable associations which have endowed gender mainstreaming in EU science and research policy with a reasonable degree of instutionalisation.  Secondly, I will argue that these actions have in some instances successfully translated gender mainstreaming into DG Research staff's practice.

 Lastly the paper will explore instances within DG Research, where gender mainstreaming remains an inactive policy.  I argue that a crucial difference in the construction of 'gender' is visible between staff who are active or inactive with regard to gender mainstreaming.  Whereas staff actively involved in gender mainstreaming construct their understanding of the gender issue in terms of practice, inactive staff construct their understanding using anecdotal or personal knowledge.

Marta de Sousa (SOCIUS – ISEG/UTL, Portugal)

«Deserted» communities, «Old» Forest Services and «historical» Forested commons -

The «sensitive» case of commons in the «triangular» arrangement of communities, state

experts and territories...(A Case-Study of Baldios in Northern Portugal)

In Portugal, there is still a considerable area under a common property regime, with a strong

presence of state administration, since it has been, from the 1930s onwards, object of forceful

forestation. These commons were once considered the grazing hills, the mining fields, the

timber resources, the recollection lands, and the possible plots for the most dispossessed of

the villagers. Their use was rather individualistic, even when there were some of the cattle

owners had a «vezeira» of goats, taking turns to graze them around. The hills were also not

rigidly bounded, since grazing laws allowed anyone to crossover, having, only, to come back at dawn. There were some mining partnerships among villagers, of different parishes. These were not open access commons, since the commons were lived, dwelled upon and known by all from a single or a group of villages/hamlets. Their hills that commoners thought no longer

valuable, apart from timber, are now subject of wind farms companies' interests. Human and

land desertification gave way to a forested landscape, that is both an important carbon sink,

an environmental «necessity» as it is a "highly fuelled risk". It is in this historical context, of

desertification, that the ethnographic material of the conflict around a village forested

commons, in northern Portugal, shows clearly how history is re-lived, now, by the new state

professionals and experts, by the neighbours and by local political «chiefs». And how the

changing policies of the state, starting from a greater ability to embrace the commons and

communities realities in 1974 (the Revolution period) is increasingly trying to capture a multilayeredlandscape into something similar to the private property legal regime. Also, the

historical process, as it will be portrayed, is a showcase of attempts from the State to control,

organize and manage the «wild» commons and communities. In fact, there are three peaks in

the history and policies regarding common land. The first, from 1940 to 1974, is the process ofconsolidation of the State, assessing, measuring, and building an army of experts and

technicians in the rural mountain areas; from 1974 to 1978, it is the revolutionary period, in

which movements and political parties raised the flag for these territories, changing their legal

frameworks and "freeing" them from the usurper (the State). And, from 1979 to the present,

the ongoing process of bureaucratization, and europeanisation, along with the environmental

principles integration in the political discourses. Nevertheless, the state administration is still

the same, some of them come as far back as 1970s; its experts - again, some of them -

migrated to the local councils, and became political actors, others remained and gained power

in the bureaucratic system. Others joined the movement of regaining back the commons. But

true is that real implementation of policies seemed to be more the by-product of alliances or

compromises between local state experts and local community leaders, than the

implementation of principles drafted at the central level. Nevertheless, each year, it seems,

dwellers dwindle, disappearing silently, leaving behind a landscape bereft of human prints...

albeit ecologically sound, natural and pure, and under state administration...

Gerda R. Wekerle (York University, Canada)

In peri-urban areas of major North American cities, there are pitched battles over land use change between proponents of urban development and environmentalists and rural movements intent on preserving countryside and threatened natural areas. State policy makers at the provincial and municipal levels are called upon to mediate and rsolve these conflicts both discursively and in policy practice. Recent developments in the Toronto region exemplify the complexity of discourses and their formation among diverse actors of the state, market and civil society sectors when continued and inexorable growth is challenged. Social movement actors, the state, land owners and developers have engaged in discursive contestations over a decade that culminated in the passage of recent provincial legislation- a Greenbelt Plan and a Growth Plan. Utilizing local newspaper coverage from 1998-2009, policy reports and forty personal interviews, this paper examines the convergent and divergent uses of planning and environmental frameworks through the construction of three prevailing discourses: growth in the region, good planning and nature preservation. The paper analyzes the storylines that brought together  discourse coalitions. It addresses the role of the mainstream print media in supporting and shaping dominant storylines. By analyzing the legislation that resulted, the paper highlights the discursive strategies that shaped the form and content of the legislation, the ways that discourses of elite groups impacted the formulation and implementation of policy and the institutionalization of policy stories that attempted to blend competing frameworks. 

Carsten Mann (Berlin Institute of Technology) & James Asher (US Forest Service)

Conserving natural and cultural lands have become increasingly important for societal well-being in many western countries. Continuous urbanization, detachment from nature and demographic changes are among the main reasons fostering political discussions about strengthening the social and cultural dimension for sustainable and multifunctional land use. However, planning schemes differ in their ability to sustainably cope with the complexities and subtleties of incorporating (new) conservation objectives, like recreation and nature tourism into existing governmental and societal contexts, particularly on the regional/local level. In this paper, institutional problems that have arisen in conservation areas are explored and an emerging paradigm suggested that might deal with them.

One trend in conserved area planning is to incorporate decision-making that is closer to its point of application and emphasize partnerships, strategic alliances and broader consultation with those who are likely to be responsible for, or experience impacts from, policy decisions. Participative approaches offer flexibility to resource management through adaptive governance, and may provide a dynamic, tailored result that is specific to place and institutional context (cf. Borrini-Feyerabend, 2003; Folke et al., 2005). However, conserved areas are often characterized by large-scale diverse ecosystems, multiple levels of policy implementation, different perceptions of problems, policy objectives, and different preferences for strategies and instruments what makes management difficult.

Two case studies illustrate these problems for outdoor recreation and present governance solutions that integrate user demands and management solutions into their institutional contexts. One case study is from the Black Forest Nature Park, Germany and the other from a national forest in California, USA. In the Black Forest recreation management principles were developed jointly, suggesting shifts in conflict management objectives, participative planning approaches, communication strategies and the assessment of institutional fit of policy decisions. In California recreational uses are addressed as one resource issues within a broad forest plan. People are engaged through public comment on, and reactions to, proposed directions prepared by forest staff. Specific recreation conflict potentials are left to emerge in later, specific programmatic plans. The examples illustrate how the suggested governance principles for conservation areas are addressed in practice and how they might contribute to a better understanding of the social functions of nature.

Permanent communication platforms established by local authorities serve to create partnerships between individuals and between individuals and authorities, allowing local actors interested in the quality of the living environment to participate in a common visioning and consensus building in their region with shared interests (cf. Masschelein & Quaghebeur, 2006). Knowing more about use preferences and conflict perceptions, together with the provision of a platform for mutual exchange and participatory decision making, helps to facilitate the design and management of sustainable future conservation areas (Sievänen et al., 2008). The two case studies suggest a sociologically robust paradigm that balances between a bottom-up approach for conservation areas that must be weighed against the values achieved from the more traditional top-down planning and management systems.

Maryudi Ahmad, Rosan Raj Devkota, and Max Krott (Georg-August-University, Germany)

Numerous countries have recently embarked on policy shifts toward the more participatory approach on forest management by creating legal and policy frameworks for transferring some degree of authorities, from the forest property rights to responsibilities in forest management, to institutions of local people. The arguments for the policy shifts were centered on the knowledge of local people can best fitted to the management of the resources and the involvement of local actors can promote forest sustainability.

However, the devolution policy has in large instance reflected the constructs and the interests of the state, who still insist on maintaining control over the policy designs, decisions and activities, of the forests. The forest authorities employ a variety of power strategies to limit the local institutions from the genuine involvement in the forest management and from meaningfully benefiting from the resources. They create primarily, but not necessarily, indirect strategies such as the requirement on formal management contracts, formation of alliances, manipulation of local organizations and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation in a timely and efficient manner to their values.

This paper aims to describe the key factors which drive the political process of forest devolution by analyzing forestry actors and their power.  The cases from Indonesia and Nepal clearly reveal the devolution policy on community forestry is to pseudo the state's motives to regain controls over the valuable forest resource and the forest territory that have effectively lost prior to the implementation of the program. In addition, the program is implemented as a means to extend its reach in forest villages, rather than devolving authority to the institutions of local communities which is rhetorically promised in community forestry. State's reluctance to genuinely devolve authority over the forest resources stems from the desire of the forestry authorities to protect the forests and to monopolize the economic gains from the valuable resource. As a result, the local institutions, while assuming more responsibilities to protect and nurture the forests, they continue to enjoy limited benefits from the forest resources.

Severine van Bommel & Marielle van der Zouwen (Wageningen University)

Jan-Peter Voß (Berlin Institute of Technology)

The paper explores shifting practices of policy-making in connection with the institutionalisation of policy knowledge, especially theoretical knowledge about how to govern society devised by professional policy designers.

I wish to probe a diagnosis of ongoing developments in policy practice since about WWII as the emergence of range of differentiated technologies of governing: While the development of policy knowledge is undergoing professionalization, policy-making becomes less a matter of ad-hoc programme design, and more a matter of choosing from a set of universally available design. This introduces a division of labour between local policy networks where choices are made and global designs are fitted to and translated with local contexts, and global design networks where policy instruments are developed, maintained, and evaluated. A constitutive feature of this emerging constellation is the objectification of policy knowledge in form of tools, instruments or modes of governance. While policy expertise is increasingly "sourced out" to private consultants and service providers, policy instruments gather a transnational constituency of expert designers, service providers and evaluators which may become further institutionalised in form of specialised service industries catering for a particular policy instrument (e.g. emissions trading, consensus conferences, new public management, regulation of infrastructures, public-private partnerships, cross-border leasing, e-government). This means that policy instruments take on a social life of their own and introduce a distinct force to the dynamics of governance change. Against this background transnational policy change (e.g. privatisation and liberalisation, new public management, participatory governance) can be reinterpreted as partly driven by emerging technologies of governing and their dynamics.

The paper develops concept and diagnosis with close attendance to emissions trading and citizens' juries as two exemplary cases.

In conclusion I discuss new insights into the dynamics of policy change and the ambivalences of technologisation in policy-making as regards governing capacities and their democratic control.

Tim Tenbensel (University of Auckland)

This paper addresses the fact that policy workers are frequently subject to conflicting criteria for evaluating policy processes, based on different ideas of what constitutes relevant policy knowledge, and conflicting ideas of accountability. Academic debates about policy process, knowledge and accountability are frequently mirrored in dilemmas of policy practice. This paper outlines a practical, heuristic metaphor, based on principles of 'requisite variety' that can assist policy workers to juggle the competing understandings of 'good policy process'

Arata Yamamoto (University College London)

Over the last three decades or so, the language of public participation, be it deliberative, communicative or collaborative, has become prevalent in both the theory and practice of policy making and planning. Yet, planners themselves continue to express scepticism towards public participation, often quoting the threat of NYMBY-ism and the need to have regard to just planning outcomes as well as procedures. Nevertheless, given this prevalence, the present paper argues that discourses and storylines of public participation themselves should be regarded as significant categories of political analysis. Accordingly from Hajarian discourse analytic perspective, this paper firstly argues that the attitudes, motivations and actions of planners towards public participation are shaped within constantly shifting institutional context, or changing communicative relations between planning stakeholders. Subsequently, this paper further argues that forcing planners to accept unwanted participatory practices will only be de-legitimised by their manipulation of the existing institutional context. This argument is then examined using qualitative empirical data gathered from interviews and published materials on the participatory processes established for the first London Plan making process at the Greater London Authority between 2000 and 2004. This paper concludes by claiming that stakeholders in pursuit of more deliberative processes need to accommodate unequal communicative relations between planning stakeholders in their political strategy and to consider whether their planning goals and interests might be better served by expressing them using ideas, concepts and discursive categories that are unrelated to the prevailing perception of public participation.

Hal Colebatch (University of New South Wales)

The emergence of 'policy analysis' as a skilled occupation in the governmental process raised questions about the significance of this work for democratic control in government, and the relationship between the discourses of elected leadership, expert policy analysis, and public norms and understandings, in the construction of policy.  The questions are even more acute in the 'transitional polities' of Eastern Europe, where the norms of democratic accountability are less well established, but the rules of the game are 'under reconstruction'.  This paper reviews the way the themes of professionalism and participation relate to policy work in transitional polities, the tensions that policy workers face, and the way that the diverse discourses available are mobilized in the discursive construction of policy and policy work.

Lim Sang Hun

This research is on the interpretations of a pharmaceutical regulation in South Korea, the separation of prescribing and dispensing (SPD), and the resulted formulation of policy in the policy-making process in the period between 1981 and 2000. By examining this case, this research aims at exploring how a healthcare policy can be interpreted as a policy alternative of different policy issues by different policy actors, and how changes in policy-making process alter the contestation of these interpretations and formulation of policy.

Korea traditionally had a one-stop system, where doctors were allowed to distribute drugs and pharmacists to dispense any drug without doctor's prescription. The SPD was a regulation which delimits roles of doctors and pharmacists so that doctors only prescribe drugs and pharmacists dispense drugs only by prescription. This research examines (1) how this policy has been interpreted by different policy actors - healthcare providers such as doctors and pharmacists, consumers' groups represented by NGOs, and the government; and (2) how democratisation, which changed the relationship between the government and society, as well as policy-making process, has affected on the formulation of the SPD policy through contestation of interpretations in the policy-making process.

With this aim in view, this research analyses such documents as reports, announcements, pamphlets and newspapers published by the government and interest groups involved in the policy-making process. In addition, interviews were conducted with policy actors - politicians, government officials and interest group leaders.

Yasmine Debarge (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan)

This presentation will describe the conditions which eased the enactment of laws institutionalizing Child Access Services in Hungary during the late 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st.These services are places where the custodial parent can leave the child so that the noncustodial parent can practice its visitation rights. The visitation can be supervised by a third person not related to the couple. Parents sometimes come in from their own initiative but more often judges send them in. These services concentrate on the noncustodial parent who are most of the time biological fathers who recognized the child at birth. The first child access service has been created by children care professionals in the late eighties: in 1992, they funded a non profit organization which gave them an administrative protection and a ground for the promotion of their activities. In the mid-nineties, they received a training in mediation from a foundation which imported the practice from the United States. Child access services then became a tool for the recognition of family mediation as a professional activity and the group lobbied for its mention in the law: they had professional support, experience to back up their ideas and access to the law makers through their network. At the same time, a convergence of public discourses around childhood and family set the proper context for their view to be heard. After the ratification of the Children Rights Convention in 1990, child protection institutions were reformed. A child protection law was voted in 1997 and modified in 2005: it made it an obligation for local authorities to provide child access services. It argues that children have a right to access both of their parents, in any circumstances as long as danger is prevented. In 1999, the non profit organization started a training course with a diploma recognized by the Ministry of justice which saw mediation as a tool to relieve courts of some of their burden: most of the professionals who are taking care of child access services throughout Hungary underwent this training. In some aspects, child access services are reminders of social services as they were practiced by guardianship authorities during the sixties, when Hungary was under soviet influence. With a view on the historical background of social work, this presentation will focus on the discursive and political contexts and how they favored the ascension of a professional group through a peculiar service. Influences of the administrative heritage, opportunities given by the creation of the civil society during the transition from a communist regime to a democratic one, EU orientations in terms of equality between parents and use of alternative conflict resolution: the combination these elements allowed a professional network to argue that their specific service was a necessary part of the child protection and family policies.

Martin Nekola (Charles University)

This paper reports findings of empirical research on the policy workers of Czech drug policy and their perspectives. Main objective is better understanding of the opinions, attitudes, and values that different actors have concerning these issues and to reveal and present different viewpoints and perceptions in a systematical and structured way. In particular, the paper (1) identifies policy workers' perspectives on illicit drug use, drug-related problems and policy measures with focus on controversial topics of Czech drug policy, (2) outline areas of conflict and consensus, and (3) analyze relationship between different levels of policy beliefs (Sabatier's policy core and secondary aspects).

Methodology: For that purpose, empirical survey based on Q methodology was carried out to systematically elicit individual and shared perspectives. At the beginning, initial set of statements (concourse) extracted from both public and professional discourse (i.e. mass media, research and government reports and professional journals). After pilot survey, 38 statements were selected to be used in the Q study. On the basis of literature review, initial set of actors was identified and approached. During field work, snowball sampling was used to ensure that no relevant actor was omitted. In total, 24 participants completed Q sorts.

Preliminary results: The study revealed three distinct perspectives on drug policy - (1) Pragmatic professionals, (2) Repressionists and (3) Maintainers of the status quo.

Sonja van der Arend (Delft University of Technology) & Jelle Behagel (Wageningen University)

Academics and governmental officials tend to share an institutional focus on the participation of stakeholders, NGOs and/or citizens in policy

making: they usually describe public participation in terms of institutional design, the rule-based role of participants, project/process management, and the location of authority. Hence, they usually understand and describe public participation as something to organize and manage within policy projects. On a different level, participation is also understood as a practice, as the dynamic, real-life activities of non-governmental actors. Their prime concern is more practical: how can we participate effectively? We adopt this last understanding in our approach of public participation as practice. Therefore, we move away from an institutionally inspired problem definition and draw on ethnography-inspired research methods. In particular, we follow participants' activities rather than institutions or policies, and we are critical towards official accounts of public participation. In this paper, we apply our practice-oriented approach in a study of the activities and experiences of non-governmental actors that have actively engaged in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the Netherlands.

In the WFD, the idea of public participation is predominantly elaborated as a principle for institutional design, in line with the White paper on EU Governance and the Aarhus convention. Dutch government made several efforts to organize public participation in the WFD implementation process, mainly in a top-down fashion: through the institution of sounding boards, information meetings and workshops. In contrast, the participatory practices of NGOs we observed took on diverging dynamics and occurred on unplanned venues as well as planned venues. Moreover, we found that the impetus for public participation - be it organized or not - principally lay with non-governmental actors. In addition, participants appear to place their most strategic participatory activities outside of the formally organized venues, thus creating informal participatory places themselves. Such informal places of participation are not part of an official institutional design or any managerial intervention from above. Yet, they are shaped by many existing institutions and professional strategies. Finally, the participatory practices of the NGOs were found to be situated within larger, ongoing, and cross-cutting water policy networks, rather than being limited to the WFD implementation process.

We conclude by discussing the limited efficacy of institutional design, organization and management on participatory practices. Although we found occasions where these practices were harnessed in formal venues, we also found participation to take place in informal and other unexpected ways and places. Sometimes these informal practices complemented efforts to organize public participation, at other times they collided. These results underline the importance of an integrative understanding of public participation. For academics, our findings imply that an institutional design perspective in the study of participation should at least be complemented by a practice perspective.

Sophie Allain (French National Institute for Agricultural Research)

In postempiricist policy analysis, participatory inquiry has been designed as an innovative methodology aiming to facilitate citizen involvement in public deliberation and the shaping of interpretative communities gathering experts and citizens, therefore taking up Harold Lasswell's vision of policy sciences devoted to democracy. In such approaches, the policy analyst, portrayed as a "Deliberative Policy Analyst", serves as a "facilitator of public learning and political empowerment" (Fischer, 2003, p.221). Basic to this orientation are an emphasis on the medium of language, which is considered as profoundly shaping our views, interests and concerns, a conception of the politics as a discursive struggle to create and control systems of shared social meanings, and a normative idea of policy-making relying on a renewal of the processes of will formation through communicative interaction conducted by ethical rules (Fischer and Forester, 1993; Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003). Methodological considerations are then intrinsically linked to theoretical and normative considerations.

I will argue that such a position misses to cope with the problem of collective action, by focusing on deliberative sequences and then leaving the decision-making in the shadow, and by assuming, explicitly or implicitly, that communication is sufficient to turn struggle into collaboration. I will therefore suggest that a postempiricist endeavour to cope with the problem of collective action brings to frame the Policy Analyst as a Mediator, which implies new methodological, theoretical and normative considerations. Such a perspective has been suggested by Forester and Law (2007), but I wish here show that mediation is not a mere technique, as it is presented in the Handbook of Public Policy Analysis edited by Fischer and alii (2007). More specifically, I will show that a mediation-based conception of policy analysis relies on an idea of politics as a negotiation, where negotiation must not be restricted to interest-based bargaining and integrates possibilities of learning.

Judy Brown (Victoria University of Wellington)

In recent years, academics in a wide range of disciplinary contexts have re-examined concepts of 

expertise and understandings of the relations between corporate decision-makers, public policymakers, experts and citizens. Various strands of the "science and society" literature have challenged technocratic and apolitical understandings of science-society relations and sought to foster more open, pluralistic and power-sensitive approaches to knowledge and expertise.  Academics in economics, management, public policy and other social science disciplines - increasingly conscious of the value-laden nature of their disciplines - have similarly sought to re-theorize concepts of professional expertise rooted in positivist models of knowledge production and dissemination.  Based on such developments, this paper argues that it is time for a significant re-think of what accounting expertise does or might mean in the context of increasingly pluralist and complex societies.  Over the years, researchers have problematized different aspects of what it means to be a "good" accounting professional in a plural and power-laden society; most recently in the context of calls for more "dialogic" approaches to accounting.  This paper seeks to elaborate on existing critiques of "technocratic" accounting, relate them to wider disciplinary debates, and offer a framework for developing more (critically) pluralistic approaches. 

Tara Ney (University of Victoria)

Provisions in the Crime Victim Assistance Act in British Columbia and the accompanying Regulations, support counseling services for victims who have been psychologically injured by particular crimes. Literature suggests that trauma from many crimes can be significantly reduced when the victim requests and is given an opportunity to meet with the offender. Of concern to this paper is that a critical policy document (Crime Victim Assistance Program Counseling Guidelines, 2003) that is intended to support the adjudication of the Act and Regulations, explicitly excludes the "offender" (the person who has caused the harm) as part of the counseling process. This exclusion in effect denies victims access to restorative processes aimed at healing the injury caused by the crime.

 
In short, this policy act governs and limits the kind of psychological intervention victims may access. In so doing, it obstructs some victims' ability to heal from a crime, and thus, is not in keeping with, and perhaps contrary to the Act's intent. This policy form of governance is problematic in three ways. First, it does not take into account the mounting research that shows restorative approaches are an effective response to psychological trauma. Second, it interferes with a collaborative decision-making process that would otherwise be reserved between the counseling therapist and victim of crime. And, third, it tampers with an opportunity for restorative practices to be more legitimized and integrated into the victim services delivery system.
 
Using a discursive methodology, this research will interrogate this "policy site", showing how the denial of a legitimate and effective form of counseling to victims of crime is a political decision, disguised and held in place by bureaucratized rhetoric. By discursively interrogating the tensions between conflicting discourses (criminal justice, feminist, and economic), we conclude that the intent of the victim assistance legislation is undermined by a policy that reflects a profound disconnect with evidence-based research on psychological recovery from crime-induced trauma. As result, some victims of crime are being denied access to psychological services that would otherwise support them to heal from the crime.

Khairil Ahmad (University of Essex)

This paper aims to deploy Romand Coles' conception of 'moving democracy' to the study of identity/difference, particularly to the issue of religion in public life within the British context. The question of where the analyst stands within his/her research is becoming increasingly pressing in recent times, given the rise of research methods and techniques that work beyond the essentialist boundaries of positivist and behaviourist methodologies, such as interpretive policy analysis and post-structuralist discourse theory. What is pertinent -besides giving the subjects under scrutiny the capacity for agency - is for one to table his/her case and/or normative expectations in pursuing a particular research in order to avoid resembling the disengaged position that one's positivist/behaviourist counterparts take. In this paper I propose that in our capacity as analyst, we should operate immanently, i.e. as a participant amongst the constituencies that are being studied within the theme of the research itself, and undertake the task of being 'in between' the constituencies that we work with within the research, and moving from one site to another - from reading relevant texts, to engaging with diverse and opposing theoretical concepts, to analysing policy papers and reports, to engaging with people who are affected by the research problem - in search for new possibilities of how democratic engagements between a multitude of political identities can be (re)imagined. I will demonstrate how the concept of moving democracy can be deployed with an exploration of the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams' thoughts about the position and potential roles that religious communities could play in the public sphere. Williams' position, which he claims speaks for the certain demands by religious communities that are not adequately captured by secular thinking and governance, serves as the point of entry for me to problematise the discourse of secular liberalism, represented in my paper by Rawls' political liberalism. Williams' position also serves as the case in point for me to engage with policy practices in Britain, as far as the issue of social cohesion is concerned. Here my analysis includes policy papers and legislations towards issues concerning community cohesion, multiculturalism and local and neighbourhood councils, as well as commissioned reports along similar lines. Finally I argue that to probe issues and concerns that linger in the research one also needs to engage with local and grassroots groups, which in my case would be inter-faith groups around the UK in order to verify the status of Williams' articulation of his political position, in order to make sure that his claims are in line with grassroots demands. Facilitated by the concept of moving democracy, all these can be carried out with the analyst him/herself maintaining his/her own normative expectations towards the issue that is being studied. It also opens up the possibility - through one's encounter with the various contending political positions in the research - to critically reflect on one's own political commitments, to explore the possibilities of potential collaborations with one's constituents, and to facilitate in drawing up blueprints for policy and action that would reconnect the present state of policy practices to grassroots realities.

Giulio Moini (University of Rome «Sapienza»)

Recent transformations in public policy seem to be showing the need for greater public participation in the process of decision making. Consequently many participative practices are being tested in different fields of public action. Usually the spread of such practices is explained using principally political arguments (crisis of representative democracy and party systems; increasing complexity of policy problems; affirmation of a differentiated polity; political downscaling; influence of trans-national cognitive and normative frameworks; need to increase the legitimacy of public decisions, etc. ). These are useful explanations, but cannot explain an interesting paradox: in the context of Western democracy, the increasing interest of policy makers in participative practices has met with a weak response in terms of their impact on the processes, outputs and outcomes of policy making. We can find the main reason for this widespread paradox in the relationship between participation and the hegemony of neoliberalism.

The shift from Keynesian Welfare National States to Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes has very high social and economics costs that imply potential processes that delegitimize policy makers who, in turn, have to find forms and means of redress. The inclusion of social actors in policy making could be considered one of these forms of redress. New forms of public participation are spreading in western democracies not for their "transformative potential" but for their "conservative potential" for the neoliberalist paradigm. Several empirical research projects, both in Europe and the USA, show that participative and/or deliberative practices are used to marginalize critical discourse and dissenting voices and to dis-empower political opposition. These studies highlight an instrumental use of participation through micro-analysis focused on the participative setting and on the social and organizational relationship between social actors, stakeholders and institutional actors. Theoretical approaches that start from a historical reconstruction of the spread of new forms of public participation and then try to focus on the relationship of such forms with the spread of neoliberalism seem less developed.

In the proposed paper, participation is considered as a référentiel that contributes to the legitimization of neoliberalist policy. The contemporary rhetoric of participation represents a new type of hegemonic "référentiel" and participation is seen as a means of stabilizing contemporary neoliberalism. In other words, "story lines" of participation appear as a central component of neoliberalisation and the technicalities of participation as a means of de-politicizing conflicts and policy issues, and of institutionalizing the normative and cognitive frameworks of neoliberalism, which are often assumed as taken for granted in participative practices.

The main results of recent empirical research into public participation will be analysed, with particular reference to experiences of urban revitalisation, community development and area-based initiatives. The paper will propose an "ideal-type" of the participation référentiel that will be tentatively tested using the empirical results from the analyzed research in order to verify if such a référentiel has produced - in the words of Mathur (2006) - "argumentative structures normalised within institutions and practices", that is to say, a discursive power.

Stéphane Boisseaux (University of Lausanne and Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration)

This contribution aims at showing that the "Référentiel Approach" (RA) is still likely to provide stimulating explanations of the way in which power is constructed in public policies, even in situations of governance. The demonstration is based on evidence coming from three case studies of public policy devices in the Swiss context.

RA and the Governance Approach (GA) present two different conceptions of the way in which power is constructed in public policies. RA, on the one hand, is based on a sectorial approach. Its main hypothesis lies in the fact that public policies can only work through the "cutting of a piece" of social reality. Building a public policy implies a collective agreement on that "piece," i.e. on the definition of a delimited social problem, the ways in which it has to be dealt with, and the actors in charge of it. This is an enactment of ideas, for actors' behaviors are anchored in ideas and also give a concrete expression of them. According to RA, power originates from the ability of some actors to make themselves legitimate for treating the problem inside the clear borders of the corresponding sector. It is mainly a "power over" (hegemony, leadership) implying secondarily a "power of" (action capacities).

GA, on the other hand, provides alternative insights on public policies. Although it is not a unified approach, it can be said that it focuses on "the process of defining collective goals, making political priorities, and bringing together resources from a large number of different actors necessary to attain those objectives". From that perspective, there is no prerequisite of borders building prior to or during policy-building. Consequently, it is necessary to fully take into account situations in which powers and resources are scattered among actors that have to congregate in a limited, pluralist way. Thus, power is mainly built through connections of actors across sectorial or territorial borders. It is "power of" rather than "power over."

At first glance, the articulation of GA and RA seems to be theoretically uncertain. Namely, the question of whether GA is a "case of art imitating life", i.e., revealing new trends in policy-building, or is just a new interpretation framework remains unclear. This is the reason that we intend to check empirically the relevance of the RA on policy devices that can be considered typical of governance. We assume that five dimensions are to be taken into account, corresponding to five of the main notions of RA: rapport global-sectoriel, sector, référentiel, médiateurs, and hegemony. Our empirical corpus comprises three case studies of emerging policy devices in Switzerland: the PDO-PGIs device, an ecologization device of the Swiss agricultural policy, and cross-border policy devices in the Swiss-French metropolitan area of Geneva. They can all be considered typical cases of governance.

Referring to our three case studies, we consider the RA to be a framework that provides stimulating insights over governance processes and situations. Its overall dynamics remain valid under the condition of being reasserted in more general terms. We discuss this whilst taking GA into account.

Julie Gobert (Institut d'Urbanisme de Paris)

Environmental justice is a masterframe in the United States. It's impossible to study a project (facility siting, urban renewal operation...) without taking into account the potential disproportionate and harmful impacts upon minority groups or poor households.

The agenda setting in the 90's into a Presidential Act and in the regulations of the federal agencies partly reduced acute criticism that the movement addressed to the urban system and the political underlying processes. Activists and researchers strive to find another way to promote their conceptions of social justice, which is not a procedural and distributional issue, but also a systemic challenge of urban citizenship. They try to propose "new" tools (local compensations...) different from those employed for the Environmental Policy Integration.

The "environmental justice" discourse has circulated through the Western world and has been differently used according to the countries. Nevertheless the term "environmental justice" was often considered as inappropriate due to its American historical origins.

While in Great Britain, after being objectivized by some academic and grass-root studies, environmental inequities have been introduced in main public policies, they are always a "subject of researchers" in France. They don't find an echo in the political world (or only in the margins).

Why so different interpretations of 'environmental justice'?

Could this variety be elucidated by the hazards of the transfer of a model which has been progressively deformed?

The contrasting perceptions of the Environmental justice paradigm may be explained by institutional reasons, as well as by the cognitive understanding of spatial and social inequalities. In fact the environmental justice concerns seem to tackle how the various forms of Welfare State can accommodate the environmental question, and more specially the increasing demand of environmental protection and rights.

Åsa Knaggård (Lund University)

The article uses the concept of framing in order to analyse in what way scientific uncertainty affects policy-making, and specifically the legitimation of policy alternatives. The roles played by policy-makers and scientists are in focus, as well as their framings of policy problems as more or less uncertain. Framing can be used by these actors as a tool to justify policies, but also as a means to lay the responsibility for a course of action on certain actors. In doing so, the boundary between politics and science is reconstructed and the traditional roles of scientists, as neutral truth-seekers, and politicians, as arbitrators of value conflicts, are reinforced. By placing focus on the roles that these actors play, it is possible also to analyse the transcendence of the boundary and what impact those actors have that chose to play multiple roles. That issues are framed as scientific or political and as certain or uncertain further have ramifications for where issues are discussed and for the possibility of citizens to be able to partake in the discussion about policy alternatives.

The article is based on empirical material from my dissertation on the case of Swedish climate change policy-making. The material shows that policy-makers are not as sensitive to scientific uncertainty as some believe. On the contrary, even when issues are framed as scientific and highly uncertain, policy-makers have managed to formulate policy proposals. In these cases, they have not used science as legitimation, but rather political assessments of the situation. When possible though, policy-makers have used scientific knowledge to justify their proposals. In some instances, they even have used scientific knowledge as justification, despite that scientists, in their framings of an issue, have not given any ground for such a legitimation. The scientists on their side can claim that an issue is one of value and thereby refer it to policy-makers or frame the issue as scientific and claim ownership over it. Depending on the boundary work done by both scientists and policy-makers some aspects of climate change are discussed as scientific issues, whereas others have come to be seen as political in nature. Whether scientific or political arguments are used to justify a course of action, is thus dependent on work from both sides of the boundary. The study shows that scientists that chose to work on both sides of that boundary have a considerable influence over policy formulation, as they can claim scientific as well as political legitimacy.

Emmanuelle Cheyns (UMR Moisa, CIRAD-ES)

Les standards volontaires durables dans les initiatives multi-stakeholders. Limites du paradigme d'inclusion dans la composition du commun à plusieurs

A la suite des dispositifs de certification forestières mis en place au début des années 1990, différentes initiatives d'élaboration de « standards volontaires durables » touchant les secteurs de commodités agricoles (café, cacao, palmier à huile, soja, biocarburants, canne à sucre, coton, etc.) se sont développées à travers un processus de « tables rondes ». Celles-ci visent à prendre en charge un bien environnemental et s'élaborent à travers des dispositifs « ouverts » de participation/négociation dits « multi-stakeholders » réunissant des opérateurs économiques des filières agroalimentaires concernées (producteurs, acheteurs, grossistes, distributeurs, nationaux et multinationaux) mais aussi des ONGs dites « sociales » et « environnementales », internationales et locales, à une échelle mondiale.

Présentées comme « privées » et volontaires, ces initiatives s'appuient sur un argumentaire autour de la « défaillance des Etats », notamment dans les pays du Sud, à prendre en charge les biens environnementaux. Elles construisent leur légitimité sur leur capacité à faire participer (et représenter) « toutes les catégories d'acteurs », de façon « équilibrée » au sein de processus « participatifs » et « inclusifs », par le « dialogue » et la recherche du « consensus » (défini par l'absence d'opposition soutenue).

Pourtant la participation de certains acteurs « locaux » telles que les communautés villageoises et les producteurs familiaux n'est pas évidente et pose des questions d'expression et de considération de leurs voix.

Notre contribution visera à caractériser le contexte dans lequel ces dispositifs émergent et l'équipement politique qu'ils proposent comme modalité de construction de l'accord. A partir du cas particulier de deux tables rondes (RSPO : Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil et RTRS : Roundtable on Responsable Soy), nous analyserons en particulier les effets de ces dispositifs sur les formes de construction du « bien commun » et les tensions relatives aux formes de participation. Nous nous appuierons sur des travaux en sociologie pragmatique, mobilisant les catégories des « régimes d'engagements » et « formats de participation » qui permettent de caractériser différentes constructions du « commun » à plusieurs. 

Nous montrerons que la menace d'éclatement et le stress autour de la gestion des différences sont écartés non seulement par des arbitrages politiques, mais aussi par la mise en œuvre d'une rationalité technique qui conduit à une dépolitisation de l'action. Le traitement du pluralisme des valeurs laisse place à des arbitrages autour d'un accord construit par la coalition « ONG internationales-Industrie » dont nous présentons les ressorts, et à une procéduralisation fondée sur l'action stratégique.

En conclusion, nous mettrons en discussion ce modèle « Mulsti-stakeholder », qui s'inscrit dans un modèle politique libéral plus large de la « coalition et de l'équilibre des groupes d'intérêts et de pouvoir » et qui s'est construit contre le risque exprimé d'une « tyrannie de la majorité ». Bien que parlant pour un nombre très large de voix et s'appuyant sur un principe d'inclusion, ces dispositifs peinent à reconnaître l'expression du pluralisme des principes de justice dans la définition du « bien commun ». Ils peinent aussi à prendre en compte les attachements personnels, permettant d'accueillir jusqu'aux personnes « affectées » dans leurs vies réelles.

Thomas Saretzki (Leuphana University Lueneburg)

 TBA

Peter H. Feindt (University of Cardiff)

System, life world and environmental policy - Habermasian perspectives on ecological modernisation, system transition management and ecological democracy

Daniela Kleinschmidt (SLU)

 TBA

Sabine Weiland (Catholic University Louvain)

 TBA

Enza Lissandrello (Universiteit van Amsterdam)

Alexandra Sauer & Stefan Schmidt (Universität Basel)

Yannick Rumpala (ERMES, Nice)

Search for pathways to "sustainable development" and institutional reflexivity. Comments on the claims to the management of a general transition

Kathleen McNutt & Jeremy Rayner (University of Regina)

Ingrid Schneider (University of Hamburg) & Egil Kallerud

Jan-Peter Voß, Nina Amelung, Carsten Mann & Arno Simon (Technische Universität Berlin)

 TBA

Ola Svenonius (Södertörn University)

Surveillance is a tension-ridden field of activity. In light of the European political past, surveillance activities have been considered highly controversial and therefore subject of much debate and regulation. Nevertheless surveillance as a technique is used pervasively in most European countries. One area where especially camera surveillance has been widely applied is the public transport sector, where this type of social control is applied almost by proxy, and it is in the technical forefront regarding techniques such as face recognition.
However, due to the controversial nature if surveillance such practices are not necessarily self- evident and the need to justify the use of cameras has been high. This legitimation of surveillance, justifying a practice that runs at the core of the relationship between citizens and the state, has been dealt with in quite different ways in different countries. This paper focuses on the discursive devices used by transport providers and -authorities to legitimate surveillance in Berlin and Stockholm. The paper is part of a larger study on camera surveillance in Poland, Germany, and Sweden, and the paper presents preliminary findings in interview and public document data from two of the cases. The results point toward distinct ways of justifying surveillance - with reference to the specific of the practice itself - and of opposing surveillance - with reference to the general discourse on statehood and citizenship in each context. Thus, the paper highlights not only the problematic of justification but also those of resistance.

J. A. Dawson (East Carolina University)

Harvey argues that society is moving from Fordism principles of mass production to flexible accumulation in a global economy [2008]. Fairclough defines this transition as a neoliberal economic discourse largely built on flexibility—flexibility of production, workforce, and finance [2008]. Whereas the Henry Ford model was based on mass production, the just-in-time model represents the new flexible model. Employees are now used to telecommuting, working part-time, for short-term assignments, and participating in temporary or job-sharing arrangements. A new focus is also placed on employee re-skilling and re-training. Even the circulation of finance has been more flexible as noted by the financial crisis that affected every world economy recently.

Given the economy, layoffs are happening everywhere, and organizations have different strategies for communicating and announcing the layoffs to employees. I analyze several layoff memos that were sent to employees via email by the CEOs of Yahoo, Time, and Microsoft. With a socio-political stance and theoretical framework of flexible accumulation, using Fairclough’s approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, I found instances of the use of ‘we’ and ‘our’ juxtapositioned against ‘you’ and ‘your’ creating hegemonic and legitimized ideologies that affect not only the dislocated workers but the public policy that governs the process of layoffs as well.

Peter Skilling (University of Auckland)

In 2001, a Government-appointed Royal Commission facilitated a national debate on the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in New Zealand. Its conclusions, while predictably ambivalent, were used by the incumbent Labour Party-led Government as the basis and justification for its eventual policy decisions. In this paper I analyse the major discourses that were deployed in these debates, identifying their various models of justification and showing how they referred themselves to broader discourses. I pay particular attention to the ways in which these divergent discourses simultaneously invoked and instantiated certain visions of national identity.

In broad terms, GMO advocates in New Zealand appealed to market rationalities (a hybrid mix of the market and the industrial worlds, to use the terms of Boltanski and Thevenot (2006)) and drew on tropes of efficiency, pragmatism and utilitarianism that run deep in New Zealand's settler society. Opponents appealed to civic, common-good rationalities but also, quite strongly, to an idea of the inspired world as they made arguments based on inherent rather than instrumental value. Indigenous, environmental and religious groups, for example, based their arguments on the inviolability of created life, while also referring to the place of a mythically pristine environment within local identity narratives. The major discourses on either side of the debate, then, carried significant resonance with widely accepted elements of New Zealand identity. In this paper I examine the ways in which these justifications themselves depended on active attempts to naturalise a certain vision of national identity.

The New Zealand Labour Party, in 2002, continued to derive political mileage from its association with the country's iconic anti-nuclear legislation, enacted in 1985. It refused, however, a call to extend a moratorium on the release of GMOs on the basis of what Prime Minister Helen Clark presented as the more urgent priority of economic viability in an increasingly competitive global context. In this paper I analyse how the Government offered several different justifications for its decision to concur with the Royal Commission's advice that it "proceed with caution" with respect to GMOs. In particular I trace the connections that were drawn between the attitudes and behaviours deemed necessary for economic success (on the one hand) and (on the other) Labour's vision of a modern, relevant national identity. Referring to the 'anthropology of policy' approach developed by Shore and Wright (1997) this paper explores how an idea of national identity can be constructed and used as the grounds for policy claims. While it is hardly news that political actors commonly articulate their preferences with a vision of national identity, there is considerable normative interest in exploring how that identity is constructed, who it includes and who it excludes.

Jeremy Hunsinger (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

This paper analyzes the modes of justification and discourses of legitimation in the Internet Engineering Task Force decision making process.   Traditionally, the IETF has been focussed on developing technologies, some of which have distinctive policy implications.  This paper analyzes their attempts to apply the modes of justification and discourses of legitimation centering on those policy appliances as they are transformed to deal with the IETF's own policy in regards to intellectual property.  The modes of justification based on the functionality of operating code and its ability to meet the standards of best engineering judgement was a particularly poor fit for the problems of intellectual property, as the discourses of legitimation transformed from the techno-rationalist engineering discourse to the juridico-discursive mode of legalistic and biopolitical discourse.

Delphine Deschaux-Beaume (PACTE- Sciences Po Grenoble)

Is the EU a discursive substitute in international affairs ?An analysis of the legitimating strategies of ESDP in France and Germany

My proposal originates from my doctoral dissertation and deals with the discursive dimension of ESDP. This European Defence Policy goes today through a striking tension between the intentions claimed at the European level (reactivity to crisis, coordination in security and defence matters, integrated approach according to the ESS...) and the national representations of ESDP. This tension is particularly visible when the political representatives of the member states take over the Presidency of the EU.
My paper will aim at analyzing this tension from the comparison between French and German legitimating discourses around this specific security policy both in national and European arenas. My aim is to demonstrate that ESDP fulfils latent functions, which are at least as important as its proclaimed manifest functions (reactivity to crisis). The European Defence Policy can be analyzed as a discursive and political substitute for the EU in its aim to become a real global player: wanting the EU to be an international actor in defence and security matters starts with claiming that it is such an actor. Thus my paper will analyze the tension between the European discourse produced by the national and European political actors (as Solana's team or the European think tanks) and the current practices of these legitimization discourses which are still much nationally oriented, as the comparison between French and German political actors shows.
 This tension will be analyzed on three levels in my paper. First I'll analyze the gap between these European legitimating discourses and the diverging national representations of ESDP in France and Germany. These diverging representations are also part of a global divergence in the vision of the European political project in both countries. Second I'll focus on the gap between the officially claimed effectivity of ESDP and its rather limited effectiveness. Last but not least, I'll focus on the legitimating strategies of the French, German and European actors for advertising ESDP before the national Parliaments and public opinions as crucial arenas for this policy.  These elements enable me to justify my analysis of ESDP as a policy at least as discursive as related to security.

Reges Schwaab (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul)

Abstract: The text discusses journalism's actuation when facing contemporary environmental policy problems. It develops the hypothesis that journalism, among other social fields, seeks to legitimate to itself a position of place of knowledge about the subject as an actor in the policy field. From the discourse reading of some cases in Brazilian journalism, the article points out that journalism's actuation happens especially in an intermediate space in policy conflicts on ecology: between the disputes engaged by scientific and environmental knowledge. Journalistic discourse is, thus, a privileged surface for the legitimization of an environmental rationality to face contemporary reality.

Jana Vargovcikova (Charles University Prague)

What do the discourses that policymakers use to legitimize introducing lobbying regulations tell us about what discourses structure the field of possible private actors' entrance into the public policy-making process? And also, what do they tell us about what reasons motivate policymakers to change the rules of the policy-making process?
The nature of the practice of lobbying is nowadays paradoxical: while context-specific informal practices of influence on the decision-making processes by private actors have been in place for ages, the current shape and place of the practice of lobbying seems to reflect the globalized character of the practice.  In the Czech Republic and in France, the debates on lobbying regulation have taken place simultaneously and despite context-related differences, policymakers draw on similar discourses to justify the introduction of regulation. Significantly enough, legitimizing lobbying regulations intersects with legitimizing lobbying as such. According to my analysis, major discourses performing this are the following: the "everyday practice" discourse (lobbying is normal, it is part of everyday reality) that shows how powerful unofficial and ambiguous practices are in shaping the normative discourses, secondly, the "civic participation discourse" and the "efficient information" discourse.
When it comes to legitimizing the regulation of public-private interactions concerning the decision-making itself, and not legitimizing lobbying as such, the following discourses come together and mutually influence each other's delimitations:  it is the "preventing risky drifts" discourse, the "fighting corruption" discourse and, most importantly, the "transparency" discourse together with the "regaining civic confidence in public institutions" discourse.
It is my conclusion that in the interplay of these discourses two significant equivalences are drawn that partially answer the questions asked at the beginning and show how the mutual supply of information is viewed as the condition of a working relationship between the public agents and the citizens: information supply from the public agents to the citizens is supposed to produce greater confidence and loyalty of the former in the latter (that is, information supply and not a change of behaviour or a reform of the decision-making process), and secondly, supply of useful and efficient information from the citizens to the public agents provides the basis for the legitimate participation in the decision-making process (and thus reshapes the possibilities of civic participation). Normative implications of both of these need to be critically evaluated.

Liz Brewster (University of Sheffield)

This paper utilises an Actor Network Theory (ANT) approach to examine how the use of books to help people with mental health problems was translated from an informal practice in secondary care psychiatry, into a national primary care scheme in Wales, under the banner of Book Prescription Wales (BPW).  It focuses on a legitimising discourse typically utilised to guide healthcare policy; evidence-based medicine. The paper demonstrates that this legitimising discourse has been disregarded and reinterpreted by actors in the network, yet can still be utilised to reinforce the network.

To study this translation of informal practice into a national healthcare policy inscribed in the Welsh mental health strategy Raising the Standard, requires an engagement with discourses of social care, cultural and healthcare policy, as well as with the discourses formulating the construction of mental health problems in society.  The translation process forming BPW was a two-stage one; firstly the need for a solution to access to psychological therapies had to be translated into a local book prescription scheme; then the local book prescription scheme had to be re-conceptualised as a national scheme.

The paper examines the role of the focal actor, in what Callon (1986) refers to as the problematisation, interessement and enrolment processes. It interprets the network to demonstrate that there are still many actors who could destabilise the network forming BPW, including the new developments in the Increasing Access To Psychological Therapies (IAPT) program.  The paper concludes that while the focal actor presents a discourse of evidence-based medicine to the network, this is supplemented by a number of needs-based agendas, which actually legitimise and enforce the decision to support the construction of the network.

Emma Blomkamp ( University of Auckland)

This paper examines the dominant discourses employed to justify offering public finance to New Zealand filmmakers.  Through a historical narrative, it focuses on the discourses surrounding, and emanating from, the New Zealand Film Commission.  By tracing the emergence and subsequent institutionalisation of cultural nationalism as a policy frame, this analysis attempts to understand how the New Zealand government came to fund, and justify its support of, the production of fictional films.  While this frame has continued to legitimise New Zealand film funding policy, it has had to make room for the discourse of economic rationalism, which became influential following the rise of neoliberal policy and the associated state sector reforms of the 1980s. 

Arts and cultural policies have since been reframed according to the principles of economic rationalism.  This change in discursive emphasis, accompanied by a reduced budget, appears to have caused the New Zealand Film Commission to refocus its activity in the 1990s.  Aligning itself with the dominant discourse, and in response to requirements to integrate principles of New Public Management, the Film Commission concentrated on supporting film productions that would attract international finance.  The state-funded agency was consequently criticised by members of the film community and academia for abandoning its core values.  The Commission's use of an economic rationalist discourse to legitimise film funding was seen to threaten its ability to pursue and demonstrate intangible reasons for supporting cinema, such as its contribution to the cultural public sphere.  

These situated discourses in film policy are thus explored in this paper.  While focusing on political debates and developments in New Zealand, international concepts and perspectives from cultural policy studies are also explored and applied to this case study.  The dichotomies employed in film funding debates are found to oversimplify complex arguments, yet nevertheless help us to identify the competing and complementary frames that serve to legitimise state-funded cinema.

Ondřej Slačálek (Institute of International Relations & Charles University Prague)

Anticommunism as a Discourse of Legitimization and Delegitimization:
Czech Cases about the Institute for Study of Totalitarian Regimes and The Electoral Campaign 2010

How can a discourse about the past influence our contemporary political disputes? Have discourses of exclusion their own dynamics? Could these discourses contribute to delegitimization of some actors, or can they contribute to legitimization of others and by which means?

In my paper, I analyze contemporary Czech anticommunism in two parts. I call the first one, which had its hegemonic position in 1990s, "anticommunism of distance". I identify the second one, which launched to profile after the election of Václav Klaus as president of the Czech Republic in 2003 (with the communist support of his election) and which attempted to restore unsettled hegemony, as "anticommunism of exclusion". I aim to show that both forms of anticommunism aim (1) to exclude some actors from the political participation and (2) they do that by demarcating the field of delegitimization.

 The field of delegitimzation appears to be determined by the demand to ban the Czech communist party. But the analysis will expose that this kind of delegitimization can expand. I argue that delegitimization is the exclusion and clear condemnation of the communist past with certain political ideas (the list of them could be broadened). Thus, the anticommunist discourse broadened the field of delegitimization. At the beginning, it was oriented also on the delegitimization of president Klaus (elected with the support of communists); afterwards, the delegitimization fixated in the depiction of social democrats as strong leftwing party unhesitating to receive support from the communists. Sometimes the discourse of exclusion is broadened even on the whole old generation, which is made responsible for the communism in the past and in the same time for the support of contemporary left in the elections.

The paper analyzes diffusing of positions of anticommunism of exclusion in the disputes about contemporary policies and their potential for (de)legitimization. The analysis (texts of the prominent anticommunist representatives and of some politicians and media) reconstructs the use of anticommunism of exclusion. The analysis will focus on how this discourse (a) legitimizes the Czech equivalent of the Institute of National Memory, which was founded in 2007 under the name Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, and (b) delegitimizes opponents of the right-wing policy reforms in the election campaign 2009-2010. In both cases, the paper will analyze the inclusion of the figures of exclusion into the structures of legitimization and delegitimization. In the same time, various positions of the anticommunist discourse will be differentiated: first, the position "not to forget" that accents on reminding of history and on "coming into terms with the past"; second, the position of "purity", which accents exclusion and suppressing "bearers of the evil" from the contemporary political disputes, and third, the position "not to permit" that accents the protecting against situation when historical evil could come back in any form.

Sonia van der Arend & Bertie Broekhans

Both in policy practice and in policy studies, policy success is generally treated as the clear-cut outcome of simply applying criteria of goal achievement to a policy. From an interpretivist perspective, however, success can only be seen as part of the everyday social construction of meaning that is endemic to any policy process. In other words, success as much as failure are socially produced. This issue has not yet received the same critical attention it needs.

Hence, in this introduction paper, we will do an initial attempt to open up the black box of policy success and failure. We feel that scrutiny of this issue is all the more relevant, now that policy making is perceived as a deliberative, participatory, goal-seeking process rather than as a rationalist, goal-oriented project. The primary goal of the interpretive analyses of policy success and failure is not to show that claimed policy successes are often true or false - indeed they often are. We aim to delve deeper into the intricacies of policy success and failure.

 Our first entrance into the social construction of policy success and failure is through the public and non-public debates that we would like to call "clashes of evaluations", where diverging claims on the achievements of a policy compete. Several case studies show that these policy successes have many interpretations and faces. In a policy field, the success of an actor's interpretation of success (or failure) needs confirmation. Therefore, actors will seek to protect their evaluation through the validation of other actors and try to undermine alternative interpretations.

 Secondly, some case studies show that any judgment of a policy's success depends on the circumstances under which it is produced. Policy evaluations change over time; they may also be a typical product of the method of investigation. The rise of participatory modes of governance is a significant development here, as policies in participatory mode may be seen to produce their own evaluation in the process of policy making. If all parties have agreed to the outcome, which evaluator would deny the policy's success?

 Thirdly, once the success of a policy is officially claimed and successfully secured, it can be put to use. The case studies in the panel show several types of uses, including the marketing of policies and policy models. And then we are full circle: success is used to breed success. Once success is produced, it can be used to produce more success. Hence, success is much more than just a positive evaluation. It could well be a vital precondition for the reproduction of policies, policy models and policy professionals.

Peter Matthews

 This paper reflects on fieldwork that enabled New Life for Urban Scotland to be "re-evaluated" 20 years after it was launched. This enabled a more nuanced interpretation of "success" to be accessed through ethnographic methods, particularly the way the places had been re-constructed by the most committed local residents through their interaction with public policy. Most strikingly, in one case study, a continued decline in social outcomes has led the neighbourhood to be labelled a "failure", particularly through official statistics. The commitment of local residents challenges these interpretations of policy failure within "so-called deprived communities". This suggests we need a much more nuanced view of success, particularly when policy is interacting with deprived communities and those that have been excluded from decision-making, or patronised within deliberative processes.

Lili Di Puppo

The paper aims at analysing the production of success in the anti-corruption field in Georgia. Drawing on Mosse's analysis of success and failure in development, success in anti-corruption is understood as being socially constructed.

The field of anti-corruption is characterised by the difficulty of demonstrating success. First, the classical definition of corruption as the "abuse of public office for private interests" is based on a Weberian bureaucratic model that presupposes a distinction between a public and a private sphere. Anthropologists have argued that this definition is too euro-centric and have contested its validity for other cultural contexts. Second, the objective measurement of corruption is problematic. As corruption is a hidden practice, measurements of corruption tend to be subjective and based on perceptions rather than real corrupt practices. Third, the impact of an anti-corruption programme on the levels of corruption is difficult to prove, as it cannot be isolated from other factors that can also influence corruption. As a result, it is impossible to measure objectively the impact of anti-corruption strategies that are translated in programmes and projects on a phenomenon like corruption.     

My hypothesis is that anti-corruption actors respond to this challenge by producing success through building a representation of their activities. This representation is based on establishing a coherent link between certain theoretical assumptions on the fight against corruption and the practices of anti-corruption projects. Furthermore, anti-corruption actors seek the approval of other actors to sustain these representations by enrolling supporters and building "interpretive communities". As Mosse remarks, success or failure are an interpretation of events rather than an objective description of reality. As a result, failure is a failure of interpretation and "projects do not fail; they are failed by wider networks of support and validation."

I will examine the production of success in anti-corruption in Georgia through the study of three different actors and their strategies: international organisations, the Georgian government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These actors seek at the same time to protect their representations through the validation of other actors and to assert their position in the field by undermining alternative representations. They alternatively employ different strategies: the construction of a self-representation in opposition to other actors in the field, the delegitimisation of other representations and simultaneously, the common search for a validation of these representations.

I will examine two case studies to illustrate these interactions between anti-corruption actors: the implementation of a national anti-corruption strategy in Georgia and the reform of the Chamber of Control.

Liudmila Mikalayeva

Several important international conventions have a monitoring mechanism attached to them. Within this mechanism States submit reports on their respect of the obligations undertaken to a special body within the international organization. This body then, considering the report as well as other information available, judges on the compliance of the State with the standards laid out in the convention and, eventually, recommends further improvements or changes. Such is the mechanism, for example, for the United Nations' Covenant for Civic and Political Rights and the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM). I claim that the written exchange within such monitoring mechanisms is a written negotiation between the State and the international organization in question on the (degree of) respect of the convention, but also on the interpretation of the domestic policy in light of the international obligations produced by the ratification.

The aim of the suggested paper is to analyze discursive strategies of the parties to this negotiation. On the one hand, I will focus on the discursive strategies that States use in their reports to display their policy in the respective areas in a favourable light, and also strategies of presenting the changes to the practices introduced from one to another round of monitoring. On the other hand, I will consider the strategies deployed by the special body within the international organization in order to commend or criticize certain policies and practices, with a special attention to the diplomatic practice of 'face saving' and to the communicative consequences of specific strategies chosen (by looking at the response to concrete claims in the State's comments on the opinion). The material for this analysis is the exchange of written documents on the respect of the Council of Europe's FCNM by Estonia through two cycles of monitoring (1999 - 2005).

Madelinde Winnubst

This paper presents the multiple faces of success in river policy. After a literature review concerning policy success, two policy processes in the framework of the Dutch Room for the River programme will be discussed. The first is the dike relocation in Lent in which the government plan to relocate the dike won after a close finish between the government plan and the residents' alternative, but an ill-feeling left among the officials involved. The second is the terps plan in Overdiep polder, a citizens' initiative to redesign their polder into a retention area that must be a success for both governments and citizens involved. However, each of them interpreted it differently. It turned out that policy success has many faces which are depending on various factors, including the relationship between the actors involved, their culture and traditions, and their use of power and frames. The relationship between actors is important whether the policy process is claimed to be a success by one of the actors or by both. Actors in a conflicting relationship will be divided on the outcome of the policy process, while actors in an alliance will be both strive towards success, although this could be interpreted differently. In addition, the actors' culture and traditions may have a considerable impact on their actions in the policy process, and thus on the outcome, whether this would be successful or not. Also the actors' use of power and frames is considered relevant as they are using these to influence the policy process and also the outcome. Actors may use various types of power based on coercion, legitimacy, obstruction, reward, knowledge, and performance in an attempt to influence the policy process in their direction. Similarly, they may use various frames in order to shape the policy process in a preferred direction. 

Jeroen Warner & Arwin van Buuren

Selling 'Space for the River' as a Policy Success: Contested river management frames in the Netherlands.

Since 1995 the Netherlands have experimented with non-traditional forms of river management. Rather than building embankments, the new interventions combines widening and/or deepening the river, creating natural banks, and natural, economic and safety values. Other interventions such as floating houses, and building far below sea level, complement an image of daring but responsible engineering. Unlike e.g. traffic infrastructure (HSL, Betuwelijn), the Dutch have proved adept at selling their water innovations abroad as successes both in terms of safety, spatial quality, consensus and time and cost control. 'Space for the River' is widely hailed in science and policy as a new and successful paradigm, playgrounds of a successful 'transition', and evaluated as an administrative success.

However, many regional 'Space for the River' projects have also proved highly controversial and contested, especially from a citizen perspective, leading to delays and lawsuits. Also, some observers have expressed doubt that changes are all that substantial. This raises the question what is a policy success, in whose terms, and what is the role of political marketing? Based on two in-depth case studies, we will peek below the surface of the interventions, and strategies for selling them as a success from the start.

The cases will be analysed as competing policy frames, enriched by a focus on hegemony and contest. We will make a preliminary analysis of the framing (or "branding") strategies to market (and to contest) Space for the River as a success. Our analysis will shed light upon the various mechanisms to include and exclude various process and content elements in the dominant "success frame" of a water project.

Lilla Balázs, Liudmila Mikalayeva

 In the process of the last two rounds of EU enlargement, the candidate States were expected to comply with a wide range of requirements before they could be considered as ready for joining the club. The respect for national minorities was introduced as a prerequisite for candidate countries because of the belief in the destabilizing effect of national and ethnic tensions and in the special vulnerability of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in this domain. In its periodic reports on the progress towards accession, the European Commission considered the State's compliance with this criterion together with other political developments, and for some countries, such as Estonia, Latvia or Romania, concrete demands were formulated as to what progress had to be made in specific areas (language policy, education, citizenship) for the State to advance on its way to the membership.

 The suggested paper will focus on the way the European Commission formulated its specific demands and subsequently judged on the compliance or non-compliance of the State with these demands. Based on the analysis of the legislation and policy changes and on the evaluations of the minority policy by the Council of Europe and other international and domestic actors, the claim is made that in many cases the interpretation of the compliance of the State with the demands by the EU was flawed. Thus, in some cases, negative developments were accepted as compliance, in other cases no real change was judged enough while the same situation one year earlier was considered as non-compliance. As an example of, in our opinion, inconsistent evaluation of the policy by the EU, the issues of language requirements in the professional sphere in Estonia and restrictions in the use of foreign languages in dealings with authorities in Latvia may be cited. These negative changes were decried by the European Commission and other international organizations, but all the pressure resulted in minor limitations of the scope of the restrictions, which were finally considered compatible with the international obligations of these States, although de facto represented a step back in the protection of national minorities.

Such cases put forward two questions: first, why in certain cases success or failure of the State policy was considered as compliance by the European Commission against the evidence of the contrary; second, how this inconsistency in the interpretation of the compliance by the EU influence the conclusions on the success or failure of the policy of conditionality. We advance that such interpretations are beneficial for both the State (because no major adjustment of the policy is needed) and the EU (because presenting partial non-compliance as compliance saves the 'face' of the EU). It also seems reasonable to assume that the inconsistent evaluations jeopardize the argument for the efficiency of conditionality in politically sensitive areas such as national minorities' policy.

Sylvain Barone, Christelle Gramaglia, Gabrielle Bouleau

The European Commission recently launched an infringement procedure against France for not complying with the EU Protocol for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea Against Pollution from Land-based Sources (the Athens Protocol) in the Etang de Berre, a lagoon closed to Marseilles. The judicial decision of the European court of justice, ruling in favor of the Commission, contributed to reshaping local stakeholders' political configuration. Elected officials of the area decided to work together within a new organization, GIPREB (Groupement d'intérêt public pour la réhabilitation de l'étang de Berre), to design a collaborative plan for restoring the lagoon. The success-story of etang de Thau, another Mediterranean lagoon on the other side of the Rhone Delta, could have played a pivotal role in inspiring GIPREB members to set objectives of Berre restoration, as it is regularly mentioned in various documents and often talked about. Moreover, it seems that the story of Thau exerts its influence beyond the GIPREB. For instance, one of the most critical actors opposed to the GIPREB's project, a local environmental NGO, similarly refers to the Thau model of sustainable management to promote alternative plans. In this article, we analyze how cross-case comparisons circulate between sites in narratives and policies and how they perform political legitimacy. We propose an analytic framework to understand the emergence of commensurable comparison between sites and the political use of such comparisons. We first argue that ecological science was the first vehicle for diffusing the reference to the etang de Thau to other lagoons. Thau benefited from early ecological studies which ecological scientists later cited as they expanded biological inventories. They naturalized this comparison based on physical criteria. Then we explain how such a comparison supports critical environmental accounts urging for a different water management. Indeed, scientific citations of Thau in studies of Berre legitimize the commensurability of both sites, supporting the argument that the path followed by Thau constitutes a realistic alternative for Berre. Last, we shift the focus toward political actors of the etang de Thau and local governmental officials. We intend to show that they actively contribute to developing and diffusing the exemplarity of Thau. Whether this strategy sustains the legitimacy of local political actors and the relevance of the territory of Thau is unclear. It could rather benefit state actors as they promote a new form of modernity based on environmental protection. We conclude by questioning the role of such cases constructed as models in environmental policy making.

Ernesto d’Albergo

The construction and use of success and failure as a political stake in three national urban agendas (France, Germany and the United Kingdom)

The paper will focus on the processes through which the discursive categories of policy success and/or failure are constructed, as well as on the use that different actors make of them when setting policy agendas. An empirical basis for such a focus is provided by a comparative desk research on some of the initiatives through which the national political systems of France, Germany and the UK have been addressing the

challenges affecting their cities since the nineties and even before. In particular, area based programmes will be focused on, such as the French Politique de la ville, the German Soziale Stadt and Stadtumbau East and West, the New Deal for Communities, Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, and several others in the UK. Even though such policies are often launched in order to urgently deal with urban crises raising social alarm, they

tend to endure for many years. Only to some extent is the continuation of such policies sensitive to criticisms, as they tend to be carried on even when official assessment and/or academic research point out more limitations than successes and, even though specific positions and justifications are differentiated, on the whole sceptical opinions do prevail, as it happens in France and the UK.

 The paper will address questions concerning the characteristics of the perceptions, definitions and representations of success and failure provided by the actors involved in the policy process (political entrepreneurs, national and local managing authorities, official evaluators, academics...), as well as the actual relationship between such representations and the reframing or rearrangement of the analyzed policies. This will make it possible to verify which use is made of success and failure when the emergence of public problems and the reflections on previous cycles of policy meet one another in the agenda-setting of nation states' urban policies. In particular, the discourses and argumentations that legitimate changes and adjustments of the policy strategies (visions, goals, instruments, evaluation parameters and public expenditures) over time tend to be based on narratives of success and failure, even when at a deeper analysis political needs of policy entrepreneurs seem to prevail over rational or deliberative reflection about policy outcomes. Success and failure are then to be somehow considered political stakes. The relationship between the definition of previous actions' success/failure and the changing interpretations of policy problems also turns out to be important in the shaping of the agendas of urban policy, as the latter appear to be socially and politically (re)constructed over time as well.

 Moreover, the paper will take account of the role played in the interactive construction of policy success and failure and in providing different actors with power of influencing such a construction by some factors that are not always considered, such as the existence and contents of institutional policy assessments, political cleavages and political change, interest-driven policy controversies, the relationships between specific national features and the trans-national normative and cognitive frames of different kinds of neo-liberalism.

 In the paper interpretative hypotheses and still open questions will be tentatively articulated and answered also with a view to future field research. 

Ole Andreas Brekke

In this paper, the policy process concerning reparation to victims of coercive sterilisation in Norway is investigated. Involuntary sterilisations were quite common practice within the Norwegian health care system from the 1930s until the 1970s. Although largely abolished by a new sterilisation Act in 1977, these previous practices did not come under public attack before the mid 1990s. In 1998, a formal apology to victims of coercive sterilisation was issued by the Government, and in 2005 Parliament issued a compensatory ex gratia payment scheme to victims of coercive sterilisations.

In some ways this process can be seen as a political learning process. Past abuses have been condemned and reparation claims have been acknowledged by virtually all political parties. However, at the same time there are traits of the process indicating that learning has been more superficial and 'ritual´ than substantial, and marked more by a distancing from rather than a reconciliation with past abuses. The paper specifically deals with the role of consensus and conflict in facilitating societal and political learning processes. 

Natalia Gerodetti

This paper is mapped against the history of eugenic practices and their enduring impact in relation to socio-legal perspectives on gender and sexuality. Historical consciousness and memory construction have been changing legal-moral landscapes for a number of states and recognition and compensation of historic injustices have been part of an emerging politics of reparation with attempts at reconciliation and redemption. Cases in relation to past eugenic practices have in recent years gained political salience in a number of countries and offer a prompt to rethink "biopolitics" in relation to the shaping of historical consciousness and policy making. National governments have been forced to face and deal with reparation claims in relation to historical injustice and often judicial recourse is used as a means to redress, through legislation, the legacy of historical wrongs in which nation states have been implicated. Yet despite testimonies to a proliferation of apologies, memorials, commemorations and other means of dealing with past practices, some claims regarding historical wrongs remain unaddressed, unsuccessful or unheard. This paper provides an analysis of discourses of eugenic legacies and reparation claims in relation to eugenic practices in Switzerland and compares in particular the different trajectories of the claims surrounding child removal policies of Yenisch children and sterilisation practices in the 20^th century. Whilst the former could be argued to have been more successful than the later, the legal-political discourses around compensating for sterilisation and providing new legislating regarding sterilisation in particular raise questions about historic wrongs and future wrongs.

Svea Luise Herrmann

The paper focuses on the construction of victims in reparations policies and public debates on reparations in post war Germany and the consequences thereof for victims of the Nazi-German sterilization programme. In particular it will discuss framing processes that lead to what I call de-victimization of certain types of victims.

In post-war Germany reparations politics were framed in terms of "Nazi-injustice" legally defined in the Federal Indemnification Law of 1953. The Law at the same time defined who is and who is not a victim of "Nazi-persecution" and thus entitled to reparations: including in the reparations scheme those persons who were persecuted for reasons of political opposition, religion, ideology or "race" while excluding any other person who suffered from Nazi-crimes and did not fit into this scheme. Processes of framing "Nazi injustice" prescribed that victims belong to certain pre-defined groups (such as political opponents or a certain "race") in order to be acknowledged as a victim, rather than focussing on the atrocities done to them. While this reflects a similar focus within studies on reparations politics or transitional justice, i.e. a focus on human rights violations done to "national minorities", "ethnic groups" or "minority cultures" the empirical analysis of the politics of reparations for coercive sterilisations challenges this focus: Programmes of involuntary sterilization were not necessarily directed at certain pre-set "homogeneous" groups but indeed targeted very different people for very different reasons, such as e.g. "public health", "homelessness", "poverty" or "demography".  If at all, victims of involuntary sterilization only become a "group" through their violation. A focus on groups within reparations politics or research thereof is thus prone to fail with regard to acknowledging victims of sterilizations programmes but indeed leads to their de-victimization.

Matt James

Using a postpositivist and critical policy studies approach, this paper seeks to understand the impact of the Canadian government's new reparation policy on social movement framings and public understandings of injustice. Originally called the Acknowledgment, Commemoration, and Education Program and since renamed the Community Historical Recognition Program, the policy is now the state's overall framework for handling all non-Aboriginal redress claims.  The paper studies the policy's historical development; its framework, instruments, and rules; its funded projects; the sorts of discourses that participants are officially allowed to convey; and the relevant political engagement of groups through interviews, media interventions and participation in parliamentary hearings. 

The policy itself embodies an approach to historical injustice that I call neoliberal heritage redress.  On the one hand, it uses the characteristic tools and tactics of neoliberal interest intermediation, such as conditional project funding.  This approach turns the recipient into the junior entity in a sort of public-private partnership, thus helping to boost the civic profiles of apolitical "service-provider" organizations while disciplining and constraining more activist ones.  At the same time, the new redress program proscribes the possibility of individual, politically negotiated redress settlements by forcing redress-seekers to participate in a far more formalized system.  The ensuing eligibility and funding rules serve to construct a sanitized field of official remembrance that helps to tame the past's politically disruptive potential by re-situating past wrongs as simply some aspects among others within a common Canadian "heritage"-one in which the bad and good alike commingle in a common scheme of official commemoration.  In this latter sense, the neoliberal heritage redress policy follows what the sociologist Jeffrey Olick calls the historical "normalization" strategies of the mainstream German right:  subjecting the past to a smoothly repetitive ritualization that helps to remove past wrongs from the arena of contemporary political conflict and debate. 

 One important finding is that the groups that have been generously funded under the policy are those that refuse to use reparation-seeking as an opportunity to shine a critical spotlight on ongoing, contemporary injustices.  Conversely, redress-seeking groups that have attempted to show the continuities between past wrongs and contemporary injustices have been deliberately marginalized and excluded.  For all these reasons, therefore, the policy appears to be helping to foster an interest intermediation landscape in which past and present are starkly differentiated and in which the most audible discourses of Canadian wrongdoing are those that locate injustice most firmly in the past. 

Angelika von Wahl

The paper compares governmental attempts to provide material and symbolic reparation after cases of severe human rights abuse. While many states have participated in the infliction of injustice and in atrocities it seems that relatively few cases of human rights abuse have produced reparations. What factors lead governments to agree to pay reparations and/or apologize and, more specifically, what kind of reparations and to whom? 

This paper focuses specifically on the question of how and why the same state (here Germany) treats claimants of human rights abuses that occurred under National Socialism very differently. Theoretically I do not concentrate on the relevance of legal or institutional explanations but on the agency of claimants. In an intra-state cross-movement comparison two German post-World War II cases are presented: social mobilization of German Jews and homosexual men. One can be considered a relative successful case of mobilization and claims making while the other has been a failure. This paper is interested in the starkly different outcome between two cases. The analysis shows the importance of political factors in explaining governments willingness to make redress. I argue that beyond the severity of the abuses organizational, identificatory, and discursive factors play a crucial role in the treatment and success or failure of survivors' claims making.

Renaud Hourcade

Putting an end to decades of amnesia, Bordeaux and Nantes have recently decided to "cope"

with their past as former slave trade cities, organizing memory events, building memorials

and museums. Claims from local racial and ethnic groups, associated in Bordeaux's case with

a pressuring national and international memory context, triggered this change. But it is clear

that in this process Bordeaux and Nantes have had to face the particular problem of

culpability and debt, given their historic role at the forefront of the transatlantic slave trade.

While in Africa, America and the Caribbean, the memory of slavery has involved many

burning debates about the morality and possibility of a reparation, the collective memory

processes launched by the French former slave trade cities have never allowed such a

discussion. Why ? What are the sociological, political or moral reasons that make claims for a

redress so unacceptable in the French context ?

I will argue that if both cities accepted to acknowledge the past, they nevertheless proved very

reluctant to address it in terms of justice, putting forward two main reasons. First, a policy of

redress needs perpetrators, whereas the cities' official discourse says that today's Nantes and

Bordeaux inhabitants should bear no collective or individual responsibility for their ancestors'

deeds. A reparation scheme also needs victims identified as such. Does the category of "slavedescendant"

have any legitimacy in this respect ? Second, it is said that thinking in terms of

guilt and debt would not be justice but "repentance", and would precisely perpetuate

stigmatizing identities as victims (Black people) or as perpetrators (Nantes and Bordeaux

citizens). Such a discourse finally draws an anti-culpability frame for the memory process that

deters the memory entrepreneurs from expressing claims regarding the possibility of an

official apology or, even more, of a redress. I will review the reasons why this perspective is

actually widely accepted by the various agents of memory, and I will try to assess the role of

the French "republican" conceptions on social identities in this respect. I will finally argue,

the dominant discourses notwithstanding, that justice lies behind the whole memory process,

albeit in a different perspective: justice through historical truth instead of justice through

indictment, conviction, and reparation.

Noémi Michel

Over the last decade, the French colonial past has come back into the French public space under the

form of highly controversial debates. Polemics over the use of torture during the Algerian war or over

the creation of a national Museum dedicated to the memory of slavery have, among others, contributed

to form a new contentious field, namely the field of the "politics of colonial memory". This paper

consists of a case study of one of the constitutive debates of this field. It analyses the discursive

construction of the controversy over the so called "article 4", namely a legal article aiming to inscribe

the "positive role" of the French colonisation in history programs in schools. Adopted in February

2005 by the French national Assembly, this article was cancelled one year later on the initiative of the

president Chirac after a controversial, highly mediatised, and very broad public debate. Indeed, the

"article 4" was mainly discussed during two parliamentary debates, through the official declarations of

key executive actors, through petitions of historians and through public mobilisations of the

descendants of the colonised. The corpus formed by these claims over the "article 4" is analysed in

two stages, in order to grasp which normative issues, collective identities and power relations are at

stake in the emergence of the French colonial past as a public problem.

A first section shows how this debate is structured through two main lines of contestation by staging

competing claims over the legitimate role of the French State within the field of the politics of colonial

memory on the on hand, and over the legitimate public narratives of the French colonial past on the

other hand. A second section deals with the specific power relations (re-)produced in this debate and

implied by the dominant rhetoric of the fear of a "war of memories". It is shown that this rhetoric

contribute to powerfully disqualify the claims of the descendants of the colonised as it perpetuates

authorized forms of "republican claims" excluding their forms of subjectivity and their claims. This

discussion leads me to conclude with an attempt to disclose the democratic possibilities implied by

these excluded subjectivities and claims. I argue that a public re-connexion of the colonial history to

contemporary practices, relations and identities - for example to current modes of discriminations -

could ground an alternative politics of colonial memory truly oriented towards democratic inclusion.

Marion Löffler

Protecting children and young people. Moral frames for censorship policies in Austria's First Republic

 After World War I censorship in Austria was abolished to a large extend. This was meant to foster democracy in the new republic. But already in 1920 the national parliament discussed new rules of censorship. As a result, film and cinema remained under control, and in 1922, censorship of journals and newspapers was partially re-established and expanded at the end of the decade. The official line of argumentation was the protection of children and young people, their welfare and moral education. Regulation was established on a local level and executed by police, schools, and youth welfare departments. Youth policy and the protection of children ensured the agreement of democrats to censorship. But others used those arguments in order to reach anti-democratic and anti-Semitic goals. So, protecting children and young people became a universal argumentative frame, open for abuse in nearly every policy. Social policies as well as cultural policies had a paternalistic bias which turned out to be an obstacle to the development of a democratic culture. Consequently, censorship was discussed for popular entertainment not for high culture, applied on cinema, hardly on theatre, on trash novels, but not on (high) literature.

 Those policies still affect our knowledge about popular political culture in Austria between the Wars. Libraries and archives have hardly kept trash novels or censored films and journals. Nevertheless, there still exists a very diverse set of data which could inform us about censorship policies of the 1920s. In 2002 the Austrian Film Archive published lists of censored films as well as journal articles and letters discussing censorship. Most of the films are lost. Nevertheless, the material gives insights into the real degree of censorship which was not very high. But we know of several scandals that were regarded as an assault on morality, like the performance of Schnitzler's "Reigen". Many cinema performances were disturbed by outraged groups who claimed moral protection of young people and demanded for censorship. Discussions on youth policy in the local council of Vienna and newspaper reports about them highlight further dimensions of use and abuse of youth protection during the period. One famous example is a dispute between Anton Orel and Julius Tandler on children day-care in 1924. This dispute was related to a controversial discussion of prohibiting a journal edited by Hugo Bettauer. Orel, in a very offensive anti-Semitic style, blamed this journal to seduce the youth. Further material can be found in the historical archive of the city hall of Vienna and in some youth welfare departments. Especially draft bills on censorship and related stenographical notes and letters can give further insights. In order to complete the moral frames on which argumentation for censorship could rely on I will also turn to novels and short stories which deal with questions of sexuality and violence.

Penelope Marshall

'The 'Newtonian' effect of a box of papers': To what extent does an interpretative analysis of historical data dislodge the current narrative of wild dog management and control policy?

 I sat on the floor of the 'walk in' safe and looked up. On either side of the walls sitting on rickety masonite shelving were hundreds of original historical documents: leather bound and worn, tan coloured, A3 sized, financial ledgers with ribbons dividing entries; Minute books dating back to 1868; 'scalp' books recording payments to trappers and landholders; travelling stock route maps and notices; rate notices and receipts, rolls of landholders and landholdings, old funding applications and reports; and a box of Christmas decorations and fund raising office confectionery shoved in between. I sat in awe while the full realisation of what I had discovered dawned on me. Later, as I probed the top shelf I dislodged a cardboard box. Like confetti, original speeches, correspondence and documents from the 1960s onwards fell to the ground. One of the office ladies came in after a while. 'Yeah,' she said, looking at me as I read with interest the then NSW Premier's address to a Symposium on the Dingo in 1978.  'The boys were going to have a clean up and dump it all at the tip, but I said we should divide the stuff up between the local historical societies and let them have whatever they want.'

 Written historical records of wild dog management and control in NSW begin literally with the European invasion of Australia although their presence and the stories they give witness to are scattered. By and large these records have been ignored, neglected, and reportedly appropriated at whim by policy makers. In contrast, various Wild Dog Associations and farmers around NSW treasure the records they still hold. Yet, overall, there has been little concerted attempt to catalogue what documents exist nor a recognition of how these documents may contribute to an understanding of the development of wild dog management and control policy in Australia. This paper walks through some of this rich 'data' asking the question: 'To what extent does an interpretative analysis of this historical data dislodge and challenge the current narrative of wild dog management and control policy?'

Katalin Teller

Mass Events as a Challenge for Urban Policy Making: Primary Sources and their Analysis in a Historical Perspective

How to analyze cultural and/or political events organized for urban masses in regard to their implications for urban policy making in a historical perspective? The proposed paper will discuss the challenges of such unique events on two discursive levels: first, through a descriptive approach, it will highlight tangible problems of infrastructural policies and city management, as well as conflicts between interpretations and solutions applied by the state and the city. Also, the crucial question of how tradition and innovation, exclusion and inclusion, centralization and decentralization are viewed by different political parties and on levels of city/state governance and the public field has to be raised. This will point towards a model of communication which is defined not only by prescriptive or deliberative political attitudes but also the way how cultural phenomena, such as mass culture and heterogeneity, are perceived and bear on policy making decisions. In this case, continuities and disruptions in ideologies, discernment, and therefore in policy solutions will come to the fore.

The second level that will be addressed in the paper concerns the methodology of such analyses. When aiming at the reconstruction of an historical event or its social, political and cultural contexts, one is confronted with the fact that all available sources are already results of different modes of representation, of various processes of symbolization and a number of discursive patterns. Newspaper reports, press articles and feuilletons, official statements, statistical data, diverse media records, archive materials offer, on the one hand, an extremely heterogeneous stock of materials in regard to their contents, genres, and medial and rhetorical qualities. In addition, the contingent character of finding sources and the possible materially determined lack of information call for an increased reflexivity on the qualities of these sources. On the other hand, they are integrative parts of both established and emerging discourses that have to be viewed in their historical contexts, latter being, again, an entity constructed via narration and interpretation. Thus, in order to apply a methodological approach which allows for appropriate statements the analyst is urged not only to expose these conflicting factors and consider their relevancy both on the micro and macro levels but also to define his or her position in terms of argumentation and mode of reflection. In this regard, Frank Fischer's general definition of argumentative policy analysis can be extended to the analyst itself: one has to "focus on the crucial role of [his or her own] language, rhetorical argument, and stories in framing debate."

Even if mass events can be considered as unique and exceptional cases in public life, one should note that they too were, firstly, integrated into seemingly homogeneous frameworks of urban management, and, secondly, they gave incentives for later policy decisions. I. e., they simultaneously influenced the ways of (symbolical and political) usages of spaces and signs and, being narrated, also induced certain patterns of policy interpretation determining how subsequent "readers" could trace back the event and apply its consequences both on practical and theoretical levels.

Thomas Koenig

When, in the early days of the Cold War, liberal internationalists in the Washington political arena started to discuss how to foster "mutual understanding" between the United States and its Western allies, educational exchange was one of the top priorities. The idea was not new, but striking: Engaging the growing academic community for the means of cultural diplomacy.

To some extent, this alliance between liberal politicians and the academic community was consequent: The liberal agenda matched with a specific premise from the scientific community that was engaged by the exchange program, usually known as "Fulbright Program". This premise was an elaborate set of values, commonly agreed on by the members of the academic community and commonly referred to as "academic freedom".

Nevertheless, to convince the members of the academic community that they would avail themselves of this program was crucial. The implementation of academic freedom, thus, was not an easy thing to do, particularly in a time when anti-communism and McCarthyism was growing and the practice of loyalty oaths became a regular habit on American campus.

In this presentation, I discuss how academic freedom became a key feature in the world wide exchange program, how it was enacted and, at the same time, used as a rhetoric to convince academic communities at home and abroad of the benefits of this program, and how it contributed to its ongoing success. The Fulbright Program is an important part of the 20^th century story about the fast growing entanglement of politics and academia; it is also a story that tells us something how a policy can be construed on the basis of a distinct cultural phenomenon, such as academic freedom.

Sascha Münnich

Ivan Lesay

Recent discussions have emphasized the need for multilateral development banks to embrace intellectual diversity and to avoid the hegemony of a single view of economic development. (Ocampo, Kregel, and Griffith-Jones: International finance and development, p. 8)

 The aim of this paper is to identify which current of development economics thinking inspires the programming of European Investment Bank's (EIB) development investments outside the European Union. Despite the growing significance of the EIB's development mandate, economico-politico-ideological sources of this relevant developmental institution have not been mapped out so far.

 My preliminary hypothesis based on observing the EIB's developmental discourse is that the institution's inspirations in the area of economic development are fairly limited. After selecting the key documents authored by the Bank and related to development, I will be asking with which of the outlined (simplified) theoretical currents of thinking in development economics EIB policies (i. e. declaratory level of the Bank's activity) could be identified. Do they draw from 1. the early development economics, 2. the Washington Consensus, 3. post-Washington Consensus, 4. heterodox development economics, or some combination of the four?

 I am trying to approach the research question drawing on methods and knowledge of more social science disciplines. In the core part, I am trying to apply the critical text discourse analysis rooted in the economic sociology - focusing on economic phenomena from the perspective of their actors and their cognitive and perception inspiration sources, but also their limits. In this sense, I also draw from the similar cross-sectional discipline of political economy. It is particularly relevant in the theoretical part, where I work with various theories of economic development, as they, in their essence, emanate from various ideas on human nature, organisation of society and working of economy. My research thus balances on the edge of more social sciences, such as economics, sociology, and political science. The greatest challenge - and if I succeed, also an original contribution - of the paper would be to identify, formally reconstruct and interpret EIB's 'cognitive map of developmental thinking'.

Yuan-Ming Chiao

  This paper addresses the interaction between state and business elites in the formulation of trade policy between divided, antagonizing states, where protracted sovereignty disputes preclude the establishment of normal and formalized diplomatic relations.  First, by noting how the treatment of economic relationships between antagonized states have been predominantly appropriated under the security dimensions of statecraft and artificially segregated from "high politics" it argues the need for a critical analysis of the effects of competing and complementary "localizations" of globalization discourses in analyzing the concurrent framing, justification and legitimization of trade policy in these cases as well as research within International Political Economy (IPE). 

By identifying hegemonic discourses of policy elites in Taiwan in time of democratic transitions of power, this paper also examines the effects of competing and complementary globalization discourses (neo-liberal structural readjustment policies, trade liberalization, etc.) and the role of domestic elites in the framing of national identity and economic sovereignty issues with regard to trade.  Using a frame-critical approach, the sustainability and durability of selected storylines created by policy elites in political parties and the business community in the articulation of trade policy including the use of identity politics, methodological nationalism and the integration of competing and alternative discourses are analyzed.  Special emphasis is placed on the important role of narrative framing at the heels of the negotiation and signing of a historical trade agreement ('Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement', or ECFA) between rivals China and Taiwan later this year.  As a comparative reference point, the similarities of political divisions and interactions between the Democratic Republic of Germany (GDR, former East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, former West Germany) as well as between South (ROK) and North Korea (DPRK) will also be briefly touched upon.

Joscha Wullweber

Gülay Caglar (Humboldt Universität Berlin)

IPE has undergone a significant shift from the analysis of asymmetric interdependence and power relations in the global economy to a paradigm, referred to as Open Economy Politics (OEP), which seeks to explain how institutions "aggregate conflicting societal interests" (Lake 2009) at national level and how this structures international bargaining. This, what Robert O. Keohane (2009) calls, 'new' IPE is characterized by a methodological reductionism and rigor inspired by neoclassical economics. In the context of this theoretical and methodological development within the field of IPE two approaches still remain in the margins: historical materialist approaches as well as post-structuralist approaches. As post-positivist theories, they both challenge methodological individualism and they both highlight the close links between ideas and practices. However, as Andreas Bieler and Adam D. Morton (2008) point out, they differ in the way how they conceptualize the role of ideas or intersubjective meaning, respectively and power relations in the global economy.

The objective of this paper is twofold: Firstly, it seeks to give an overview on the current state of theoretical debates within IPE. Secondly, by thoroughly discussing the commonalities and differences between materialist and post-structuralist IPE, the paper aims at developing an approach which takes account of the constitutive role of ideas on the one hand and the underlying power structures on the other hand, without collapsing into the problems of either voluntarism or determinism.

Eva Hartmann (University of Lausanne)

Towards a new strategy of the transationalisation of the state? Insights from the sphere of social policy

Social policy has been crucial in establishing the nation as an „imagined community" (Anderson). This sphere has been one of the few remaining bulwarks of national sovereignty in the European integration process organised by the European Community. Accordingly changes in this field will provide insights in the enabling conditions of an emerging postnational state with its own imagined community. Drawing on Michel Foucault and his concept of governmentality I will argue in this paper that the market has become instrumental in the postnationalisation of statehood. The delegation of certain control functions to non-state actors are thus to be seen not as an end in itself but as a major enabling condition for the Europeanisation of this policy field. Its regulatory framework includes major control mechanisms that used to be in many countries at the core of nation state's competences.

Bejamin Stephan (Universität Hamburg)

REDD - this acronym stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. This was the most hotly discussed topic at COP15, the most recent international climate negotiations, in Copenhagen. It is the newest step in expanding the global carbon market, in this case: turning nondeforestation into a tradable good and establishing a market for it. In this conference contribution I will develop a discourse analytical perspective on the process of market constitution, with which I will analyze the evolution of the REDD mechanism.

 The idea that markets are not a natural phenomena but should rather be conceived as social institutions, put into place by political decisions and based on specific social practices, has been around for decades. More recently, a number of contributions from political economy and economic sociology tried to shed new light on the preconditions and practices necessary for market constitution. What has still only been sparsely developed however, is a discourse analytical approach of the process.

 In this paper I will develop such a perspective by reviewing the most influential contributions to the debate made by political economists or economic sociologists. The intention is to re-read them from a discourse analytical perspective. I will show that discourse analytical concepts can give additional insights on the process of market constitution and are especially helpful to understand the process of disentangling objects and making them commensurable goods, both preconditions for a market to come into existence.

 I will base my reading of the literature on two analytical concepts: Michel Foucault's Governmentality approach and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory. The Governmentality approach enables us to identify and highlight rationalities, technologies and subject configurations that are at play when markets are being constituted. Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory and its emphasis on hegemony enables us to identify and analyze the discursive struggles and practices through which these rationalities or logics are being sedimented and "naturalized" in society and markets as social institutions can eventually come into existence.

 The paper will close with an explorative application of this discourse analytical approach on REDD. Emissions from deforestation make up between 12% and 20% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. Since COP13 at Bali negotiators at the international climate negotiations have been planning to reduce these emissions by linking forest degradation to the carbon market. While a REDD mechanism has not yet been finalized, it is very likely to get agreed upon during 2010. However, there is already an immense activity including a myriad of studies and numerous pilot projects that seem to be setting the standards. These provide plenty material for analysis. Doing this, the paper will identify the rationality and technologies (e.g. calculating the carbon content of forests) the idea of REDD is being based on.

Antonia Graf (Universität Münster)

In the field of International Political Economy discursive power of private actors is defined as the power to influence politics and the policy process as such by shaping ideas and norms (Fuchs 2007). This definition corresponds with Luke's third dimension of power: "The power to shape, influence or determine others' beliefs and desires, thereby securing their compliance" (Lukes 2005). Both descriptions have in common that they avoid giving closed definition, but rather say something about their channels of effect, through highlighting the possibility of influencing politics (Fuchs) and the moment of compliance (Lukes).

Other authors, too, emphasize the channels of effect, when they describe the discursive dimension of power. By using plenty of terms, they try to specify the abstract one. Hence the discursive power operates with beliefs, ideas, desires, preferences and virtues. By using the concept of norms one can identify a missing link in the theories of power: the individuals comprehending reception. Underlying norms in the comprehending reception allow for the exertion of discursive power. They provide a pool of standards for an individual's appropriate behavior (Finnemore, Sikking 1998), which enables the individual to believe, to prefer or to desire.

According to Lukes, the analysis of discursive power needs to focus on the individual reproduction of norms and the theoretical enhancement of a subjective dimension. The term ‚discursive net' (Foucault 1976) stresses the omnipresence and intertwining of power with what is perceived as reality. Butler recurs on Foucault when she uses the term ‚Matrix' in her concept of heteronormativity. By emphasizing the meaning of everyday life and the complexity of power, they stress the productive and performative dimension of power which needs the sustained re-production by the individual.

The analysis of discursive power from a post-structuralist perspective requires the reflection of actor-centric norm arrangements. These norm arrangements achieve meaning in context with other norm arrangements. By elaborating on this process the paper focuses on the felicity conditions of the examination of discursive power, as the effective examination of discursive power is the pre-condition for shaping the policy process.

Christian Sheper (University of Duisburg-Essen )

Beyond economistic and structuralist approaches to transnational production: Power, politics and governance in global production networks

Concepts of transnational production relations have formed a large body of literature within the last two decades. While the two prominent models of global commodity chains and global value chains have derived primarily from transaction cost economics and structural world systems theory, the theoretical concept of global production networks (GPN) aims at a more ambitious representation of social and political dimensions.

Whereas the GPN approach has mainly been developed by economic geographers of the so-called "Manchester School", the paper integrates two aspects that are central to a critical political economy of transnational production systems. First, it links the GPN approach with a concept of the political as the site of basic social antagonisms, thereby spotlighting implications for political contestation. The conceptualisation of global production networks as a ground of the political allows for a more sophisticated consideration of various fundamental social dimensions linked to the "transnationalisation of the factory", and an understanding of global production as a contested field that is characterised by hegemonies of meaning creation and different modalities of power exertion.

 Second, the paper examines different modalities of power that are exerted through production relations. Underlying concepts of power within the debate are often implicit and usually vary between the idea of power as capability "held" by central actors, such as major buyer companies and lead firms, and a structural notion of power in terms of flowing and accumulating transnational capital. However useful these concepts are, they so far do not offer a thorough understanding of the complex inter-firm and intra-firm relations of power entangled with cooperation and conflict. Drawing on actor-network theory, the paper conceptualises power as a spatially and temporally specific practice that is exercised by various actors within a network of production relations. Thereby, not only vertical relations alongside "chains" of value creation are considered, but also horizontal inter-business relations against the background of the wider social and institutional context.

While focusing primarily on the ontological implications of this network perspective, the major conceptual elements are specified by making reference to the governance of transnational business conduct in the electronics industry with regard to voluntary social standards and conditions of labour.

Elisa Chelle (Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble)

 "Data-driven" Social Policy: The Legitimating Role of Private Research Institutes and Committees in France and the Unites States"

Policy evaluation has become a common place in the U.S., and somehow France is on the same track. The widespread use of evaluation data as a way of legitimating social policy is what we call "data-driven" social policy. This paper would focus on the production and uses of evaluation data: how is it produced by private policy research institutes? What are the characteristics of the producers (Ph.D. holders for instance)? What are their relationships with political instances?

The case of social policy has been chosen to illustrate this process. The U.S. part consists in a New York City pilot program called "Opportunity NYC" that offers poorest new-yorkers cash incentives to "help them get out of poverty". This 3-year experimentation has been designed and is evaluated by a set of non-profits partners, including a private research institute named MDRC (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation). The French part is focused on the evaluation committee for the Revenu de Solidarité Active, a law recently passed to incentivize poor people to get back to work rather than relying on public assistance. The interest of the comparison relies on the fact that in New York City we observe a mainly private process, but still managed by a few public officials (local scale), and in France committees are appointed within a legal frame and a bureaucratic system (national scale). This study is based on qualitative field research: near 30 semi-directive interviews has been performed both in New York City and in France.

Both of these instances have produced reports intended to state whether a policy is good or not, whether it is correctly implemented or not, what challenges are faced and what corrections should be made. We'll see that the most important part of this process is not so much the mere content of these reports, but rather how it is used - or not - by politicians to legitimate their political action. The fact that they are at the same time the silent partners and the consumers of this expertise poses an interesting debate about how those two entities interact. That is not to say that one is entirely manipulated by the other. In the U.S. case, the research institute is paid to provide a service; in France, committees provide social visibility and usefulness to social scientists and experts. In both cases, "the results" always weigh one way or another in the public debate. The role of political science here would be to deconstruct the myth that the data speaks by itself and shed light on the political uses of science.

Momoko Sone (University of Toulouse)

BACKGROUND: Throughout its history, Japanese policy-making cannot be characterized as fluid - ryodo-teki - or pluralistic - tayo-teki - even after Japan was democratized during the United States Occupation. Therefore, Japan has been described as having "a gridlocked political system."If one wants to simply paint a picture of the current Japanese policy-making system, it can be said that the policy decisions are between the short, hardy bridge between the bureaucrats and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politicians or since recently, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) politicians. The combination of the Japanese bureaucracy and the conservative politicians, historically, has been a continual, dominant force in the political arena. The bureaucracy especially remains solid in Japanese politics with its "strong instinct for self-preservation" as they emerged virtually unscathed from the radical political changes enforced during the United States Occupation; the LDP was the unquestionable powerhouse in the Diet, the Japanese parliament, from its establishment in 1955 until its brief breakup in 1993 (and again in 2009). Even after the 1993 breakup, the LDP coalition steadily held a majority in both house in the Diet. This picture is obviously too simplified in many policy cases in Japan, but it is not a leap from reality to state that that the bureaucrats and the conservative politicians dominate the policy-making arena in Japan.

Not too long ago, only a few inside and outside Japan would have criticized this rigid way of policy-making; the bureaucracy with its strong ties to the LDP politicians is credited for Japan's economic recovery after World War II and the thriving economy during the "bubble Era" in the 1970's and the 1980's. However, beginning in the 1990's, "Japan's powerful bureaucracy was blamed for the country's inability to adapt to changes and new international realities." For example, there have been eleven economic packages - demonstrating the rigid, immutable ways of the Japanese policy-making system. Furthermore, the Diet is many times solely dependent on the bureaucracy for policy ideas and recommendations.

Anu Ketunen ( University of Jyväskylä)

 Shaping the future of Finland - the role of think tanks in producing foresight discourses

There are only few think tanks in Finland. They claim to be independent but have some clear goals where they aim at. They are not, however, connected to any political party.

This paper studies the role and significance of two different think tanks in the field of Finnish foresight work. One of them, the Finnish Innovation Fund, Sitra, is a significant and active player in the field. In recent years, it has launched several projects where the future of Finland has been outlined. Mainly the political, administrative and business elites have been invited to participate in the projects. Sitra is a public fund supervised by the Finnish Parliament and founded in 1967. It claims to be independent but has, however, strongly stressed economical aspects in its future visions. Improving the skills and knowledge base of the decision-makers on future challenges is an important aim for Sitra.

This paper contrasts Sitra with another think tank, Demos Helsinki. It was established in 2005. Demos Helsinki claims to be the only independent think tank in Finland. In addition, it claims to be creating a world where, instead of only choosing the decision makers, the common people are shaping the society (www.demos.fi/demos_hki). All in all, Sitra and Demos Helsinki seem to represent different approaches to foresight work; while the former trusts on current decision-makers and closed workshops, the latter promotes open discussion and wants to challenge traditional ways of thinking. This paper studies the role of these think tanks in shaping the future of Finland and examines the possible differences in their discourses. It asks whose future is outlined and what kind of expertise is used in its production.

The paper studies foresight discourses in Finland and focuses on the role and significance of think tanks in producing it. The production of expertise and legitimacy in foresight work and the vocabulary and the knowledge that the expertise is based on are discussed. Who can participate in foresight work according to the think tanks?

Sebastian Caré (University of Rennes 1)

The role of libertarian think tanks in American political life

This paper proposes to investigate the role of libertarian think tanks in American political life system through the example of environment. Following a split with conservatives in the late 1960s, the libertarian movement emerged from an anti-war coalition that brought together the Old Right and the New Left. In the early 1970s, this movement proceeded to found institutions (e.g. think tanks) and even its own political party. The latter is doomed to marginality by the two-party system, and think tanks such as the Cato Institute has proved to be the best tool  for disseminating libertarian ideas and influencing American politics. From this point of view, libertarian think tanks has been particularly efficient concerning environmental issues.

Observers of the G. W. Bush administration's environmental policy (2001-2005) usually invoke two types of motivation: a scepticism about climate science and a compliancy towards industrial lobbies. Without denying the patent importance of these motivations, this study aims at revealing that the latter policy has also been shaped by an ideology called Free Market Environmentalism (FME) and disseminated by libertarian think tanks. FME is a doctrine that recommends the use of market institutions - particularly property rights, voluntary exchange, and common law liability rules - to protect environmental resources. In 1991, when Terry Anderson and Donald Leal published their Free Market Environmentalism, it was still a fringe idea in America. During the intervening years, it is safe to say that FME has come of age, and gained a foothold in the US, far more so than in any other country. If FME was more theoretical than applied 15 years ago, it is now possible to provide numerous examples of FME principles put to practice in the real world.

The aim of this presentation is to survey the various forms FME has assumed in America, and to sketch how its ideas have entered political life. Based on a survey conducted in the United-States in 2005, this work would explore the role of libertarian think tanks such as the Cato Institute, the Property and Environment Research Center and the Foundation for Research on Economics and Environment, whose experts has gained credence among the Bush Administration officials looking for ways to shift regulatory responsibilities back to the states.

Xavier Carpentier -Tanguy (University of Coimbra)

European Think Tanks : new forms of diplomacy?

Defining what "think tank" really are still remains a difficult exercise [see Stone, Denham & Garnett (1998); McGann & Weaver(2000)]. Yet, the fact that think tanks have proliferated in great numbers tells much about the culture, society, and politics of the European Union. Think tanks depend on the more established institutions of academic, political, economic, and journalistic production for financial support, patronage, personnel, and formal partnership. The institutional anchors of the think tank world thus match with the symbolic bases of the policy expert's mixed professional role.

Our contribution seeks first to highlight a new form of power by considering both the set of historical and institutional forces in which think tanks are embedded and the distribution and functioning of policy experts.

 In such perspectives, my paper intends to present one possible way to observe and study influence of European think tanks. Brussels Based Think tanks call regularly themselves "diplomates intellectuels" which means they are some kind of facilitators. I propose to observe how some of these think tanks negotiate and formulate norms, commons ideas or tools on some specifics issues.

I selected three main topics as I already had to develop studies for other research programs.

The  network TGAE, initiated by the French Presidency of the European Council, was elaborated with 13 European think tanks worked together in order to present precise recommendations regarding tomorrow's major strategic issues to the future trio of the French, Czech and Swedish Presidencies. The report "Think Global - Act European" received an official support from the French, Czech and Swedish governments, designing a new kind of European elite. A second report, TGAE2, is already scheduled for the next three Presidencies of the European Councils. Some evolutions could be traced and reveal methods of think tanks to be or to remain influent.

Some think tanks (WPS, Chatham House, IFRI...) are involved in specific programs such as "Leadership programs", "Young Leaders" etc...their goals are to select and invite young scholars from East, Africa and so on, in order to build a network of possible leaders and to disseminate ideas, methods and norms around the world. This is a clear contribution to the circulation of ideas and a new form of corporate "Brain Drain" (i.e without any direct help of the States)

The long-term negotiation of Turkey in the European Union deals with several strategic issues (energy, European borders, religion..). The EU symbolically opened membership talks with Turkey in October 2005, but a number of stumbling blocks remain on Ankara's road to EU accession. The Copenhagen political criteria for EU membership include an active civil society which also supposes partnership with European networks, associations , for instance, think tanks. Consequently, we could observe the work done by several think tanks to support the candidacy of Ankara Turkey helps to build some of this supporting networks, as the opposite networks trying to explain why Ankara should not be European member..

 Through this presentation my paper intends to analyze the role of the interplay between all the well-known EU-actors in order to take into question the raise of new political elite

Guillaume Durin (University of Lyon)

 The Just War discourse renewal in the US intellectual field as a Discourse Coalition Process

The goal of the analysis is to enlighten the renewal of the American intellectual just war discourse from 1971 to 2008 by questioning an intellectual discourse aiming to face the dilemmas referred to « the moral reality of war » by its advocates.

Since the early sixties, various social actors (such as scholars, experts, editorialists, activists, retired military personals and clergymen) and groups they were able to create, gather their social positions and resources (academicals boards and societies, un-formal networks, foundations and think tanks) in a discourse coalition process. Michael Walzer, James Turner Johnson, Jean Elshtain, George Weigel but also Bill Galston, Robert Royal, John Kelsay Martin L. Cook and Michael Novak are actually its most prominent promoters. Think Tanks like the former World Without War Council, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Institute for American Values and its Malta Forum used to play a significant part in the process they initiated. Those organizations are mainly catalysing public intellectual's commitment, linking political and academic world and offering an access to material resources such as communicative tools: some highly attractive resources in both a public use of reason and a position-battle in the deliberative sphere of the American superpower.

Indeed from the Vietnam War to the Enduring Freedom operation through the Kosovo intervention, the just war thinkers and promoters arguments telescope others powerful ethical discourses such as pacifism - Christian or leftist -, cosmopolitan internationalism, and realism. The just war thinkers (and their opponents) evaluate, justify or try to denounce political choices on a moralistic ground against those other moral options, trying to aggregate public support. This political commitment and those permanent controversies both strongly shape their initiatives. Finally, the American just war tradition is not fully understandable outside of an interpretive sociology of knowledge.

Délia Lacan (University of Montpellier)

 The role of policy institutes and think tanks in abolishing affirmative action

 Affirmative action is a controversial policy adopted in 1965 and intended to provide remedy to minorities that have been discriminated against. Since 1995, this policy is under attack and has been abolished in several States (California, Michigan, Washington, Nebraska, Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Louisiana). Abolition has taken different forms: it is the result of ballot initiatives (as in the case of California, Michigan, Washington and Nebraska), of political action (Florida) and court decisions. Anti-preference actions undertaken by political activists such as Ward Connerly largely benefitted from support, documentation and funding from different conservative institutes and think tanks. Among these, it is worth mentioning the Pacific Legal Foundation and Pacific Research Institute, the Center for Equal Opportunity and Equal Opportunity Foundation, the Center for Individual Rights, the Institute for Justice.  Other major players in this institutional network are the Bradley Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation.  

This paper will concentrate on efforts undertaken by these policy institutes and think tanks in order to help advance the anti-preference movement and a color blind agenda in the 1990s. Efforts have been organized over a long period of time and include a large span of actions which will be detailed in my paper (media outreach, research grants, litigation, etc.). I intend to organize my research around the following topics:

• 1. Analyze the way in which the supposedly "neutral" scientific discourse advanced by these institutions becomes compatible with the advancement of a political conservative agenda. A large body of literature hostile to affirmative action has been sponsored, published and mediated by think tanks and policy institutes. Authors are well-known scholars. The case of black neoconservatives militating against affirmative action will be given special attention.
• 2. Think tanks and policy institute help "shape" American politics by reformulating the rules of the political game. They establish links with other groups and institutions which provide help and finance Ward Connerly's campaigns against preferential treatment at national and federal level. Policy institutes and think tanks are important elements in a larger "network" of institutions that are able to advance a political agenda independently from major political parties.

Atle Nyhagen & Tor Halvorsen (Bergen University)

 The spread of neo-liberal networks in Scandinavia - Neo-liberal think tanks in Norway?

Case study of the liberal think tank, Civita, in Norway established in 2003. Think tanks in Norway are a recent phenomenon and at the time there is not more than a handful in operation, although they are covering the whole political spectrum from left to right. In terms of resources Civita comes on top of the list. The budget of this tank tank was about one million euros (8 million kroners) in 2008, largely donated by The Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), the Norwegian Shipowners Association as well as some of the wealthiest businessmen in Norway.

 The aim of the work of Civita is to "contribute to an increased understanding for and commitment to the core values of a free economy, civil society and strengthened personal responsibility." (http://www.civita.no/en/about/civita) Through its main activities, such as research, publications, seminars and conferences, Civita engages in efforts to influence political debate and policy reform proposals in Norway. In terms of actual influence on day to day politics Civita can not be considered very influential and their standing as an independent expert organisation is probably limited due to their competition with public funded research institutes. In terms of networking activities however, Civita probably already plays and important role, particular in terms of spreading ideas and research from other think tanks and transnational think tank networks. 

This paper will document the spread of neo liberal think tanks in Scandinavia with Norway as a point of departure. Although a very recent phenomenon in Norway, the newspaper editor Trygve J. B. Hoff of Farmand, who also held a doctorate in economics, were among the founding members of the Mont Pèlerin Society. From this one would be tempted to think that Norway could be seen stronghold for neo-liberal ideas and think tanks for decades. It is however not before the last decade that think tanks of a liberal kind has developed in Norway and therefore the situation is different from Sweden, were Timbro - with inspiration from the UK and the rise of think tanks during Thatchers role as a leader of the conservative party - was established in the end of the 1970s. The paper raises the issue of how neo-liberal think tanks learn form each other in terms of organisation, agendas and profile. This however is also related to the different contexts the think tanks are related to and to what degree their main objective is influencing national debate. In addition recent initiatives to raise the profile of European think tanks are discussed in relation to the Stockholm Network of which Civita also is an affiliated member.

Kim Bizzarri (University of Strathclyde)

Neoliberal think tanks, "geo-historical blocks" and the "normalisation" of environmental discourses. A critical approach to the multi-leveled governance of environmental policy in Europe.

The unprecedented rise of think tanks since the mid 1980s invites us to pay greater attention to the cultural and legislative influence of epistemic communities within growing technocratic systems of governance. Particularly in relation to environmental policy, where scientific uncertainty is often high, expertise is increasingly regarded as more legitimate than democracy in shaping policy-decisions. By drawing from a transnational historical materialist perspective rooted in (soft) constructivism and informed by the teachings of Antonio Gramsci, the paper explores the role, both in terms of its diversity and extent, played by epistemic communities in shaping both political debates and policy choices in Europe.

In line with the constructivist tradition, the paper accepts the dialectical nature of structure and agency and takes epistemic communities as being both constituted by, and constitutive of, social reality. As such, the historical materialist slant of the analysis suggests paying particular attention to the material basis upon which epistemic communities rest, construct and reproduce their discourses. Whilst taking environmental policy as its area of investigation, the paper also explores the agency of think tanks across multiple and interconnected levels of governance (EU, UK, Scotland) in an attempt to produce a more nuanced understanding of the role and practices of "policy discourse coalitions" operating at local, national and transnational level - what could be defined as "historical-geographical blocks" in a Gramscian sense.

By identifying neoliberalism as the dominant ideology guiding the current phase of European integration, the research investigates, on the one hand, the cultural role think tanks play in "normalising" environmental discourses in accordance with neoliberal precepts whilst, on the other hand, it also investigates the legislative role think tanks play as legitimate experts within technocratic process of policy governance ("governing science"). The paper points towards the rise of a new professional class "in the making" and addresses its implications in relation to the notions of legitimacy, representation and accountability within a multi-leveled system of governance.

David Miller (University of Strathclyde)

This paper examines the origins of the Stockholm Network, a working group of European market-oriented think-tanks. It has two primary objectives: to build a wide network of pro-market policy specialists within Europe and to use that network to influence the future direction of European policy-making on issues of pan-European importance. It was founded in 1997 in London and Stockholm. The paper examines the organisational basis of the Stockholm network in its relationship with Market House International, a PR consultancy which 'hosts' the Network and the background of the network and its founder Helen Disney. Originating in one of the key first wave neoliberal think tanks the Institute for Economic affairs, the network is devoted to spreading neoliberal ideas in Europe. 

The paper then examines the UK think tanks involved in the network which include

The similarities between these organisations on market economics and the variations between them in terms of international security will be examined.  This will be followed by three mini cases studies on the role of Stockholm Network think tanks in climate denial, healthcare reform and in anti-Islamist activity in order to highlight the various approaches taken by network members.The paper concludes with some remarks about the significant of the network and the activities of the think tanks.

Karin Fischer (University of Linz)

Organized neoliberals back in office - the Piñera think tank government in Chile

Think tanks are often described as a part of civil society. In this view, they serve as a source of ideas and perform an independent role in the policy making and discussion process. A democratic environment is seen as a precondition that think tanks - along with NGOs and political parties - are able to perform their task: to raise an independent voice to promote the analysis, discussion, design and implementation of sound public policies. Consequently the concept of a think tank is unimaginable during dictatorships or periods of political unrest.

This assumption is not true in the case of Chile. At an early stage, neoliberal think tanks were founded to attack the inward oriented development and mixed-economy perspectives of the 1960s. During the dictatorship of Pinochet think tanks functioned as a civil support base for the regime. During and after the transition to democracy, organized neoliberals, now excluded from their posts at the centre of power, developed effective strategies to protect the neoliberal model and to secure its cultural hegemony. Especially important was the establishment of private universities and think tanks. The activities of the newly founded think tanks range from surveys and opinion-polls, publications and commentaries in the media to public seminars. Their back offices serve as meeting-points between big business and members of the government. The Chilean think tanks host international conferences, train young economists from all over Latin America and Eastern Europe and cultivate institutional and personal ties to Atlas Foundation and other like-minded transnational networks, e.g. the Mont Pelerin Society.

Of special relevance is the fact that the newly elected president of Chile, Sebastian Piñera, builds his cabinet on neoliberal protagonists stemming overwhelmingly from these think tanks and the private universities. From the presidential and state secretary to the ministers of economics, planning and education - they had been working during and after the transition to democracy on the forefront in the battle of ideas. Organized neoliberals have now, after 20 years of work from within civil society, conquered again significant positions in the state.

William Dinan (University of Strathclyde)

Shifting European: the Stockholm Network, market liberal think tanks and EU policy discourse

 This paper examines the role and impact of a number of neoconservative and market liberal think tanks operating at the EU level. The analysis considers in particular the activities and strategy of think tanks in the Stockholm Network in relation to EU policy debate and deliberation. The paper considers the shared goals, strategies and areas of policy interest of Stockholm network affiliates based in Brussels (ECIPE, European Ideas Network (EIN), Health Consumer Powerhouse (HCP), Institut Economique Molinari (IEM), Institute Thomas More and Ludwig von Mises Institute Europe), and how they relate to the wider Stockholm Network, and to other right wing think tanks operating on the Brussels scene (such as the Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal, Bertelsmann Foundation, Open Europe).  It is argued that the increased 'competition' for funding and policy ideas in Brussels occasioned by the arrival and activism of new right think tanks is having some impacts on the terms of policy debate in Brussels, and on the activities and strategies of more established centre right think tanks.

Susan Robertson (University of Bristol)

Global Competitiveness and Higher Education: Discourses, Logics and Selectivity

In this paper I examine two, linked, discursive shifts central to thereconstitution of higher education around the meta-narrative of global andinstitutional competitiveness. The first logic, 'comparativecompetitivism' resulted in the restructuring of universities, and thehigher education sector being constituted as part of an emerging educationservices sector. The second logic, 'competitive comparison', usesgovernmental techniques, such as rankings, indexes and benchmarks, tocreate a set of social identities for universities that in turn locatethem in a hierarchical relation to their competitors. This status andmoral economy works to ensure the unleashing of a telos towardparticipation in an imagined knowledge-based economy. In this paper I howthe dual  discursive logics work to structurally and strategically select,materialise and institutionalise a new kind of university, economy, andknowledgeable subject.

Detlef Sack (University of Bielefeld)

Selectivity, Meso-Level Analysis and Mechanisms: The Case of Public-Private Partnerships

The contribution to the panel aims at discussing mechanism of selectivity within the process of new public management (NPM) on a meso-level of analysis. The topic at stake is the distribution of the British PFI-scheme to Europe and to Germany in particular. This PFI-scheme is a complex form of contractual Public-Private Partnership in which private companies deliver public services over a long period (15-30 years). As a specific kind of commodification of services in general interest and contractualization of statehood PFI-schemes has to be considered as part of the NPM programme. The paper will argue in three steps.

First, Jessops concept of strategic selectivity will be scrutinized in order to identify concepts for case-studies on a meso-level. The concepts of cultural political economy on the one hand and a modernized variant of the actor-centered institutionalisms on the other will be compared. This comparison aims to discuss categories for policy analysis, their analogies and their mis-matches.

Second, the strengths and weaknesses of the categories will be discussed looking at  the case study at hand. The distribution of PFI schemes in Germany over the last two decades is subject of the research. It will be compared with the respective process in Britain since 1992.

Third, the contribution discusses mechanism of selectivity identified in the case study in order to generalize the finding on the one hand and to scrutinize how the approach of strategic selectivity can be fruitfully conceptualized for policy analysis on meso-level.

Margo van den Brink (University of Groningen)

The managerial turn in Dutch water management: discourse and framing theory

The central theme of this paper is public sector reform in Dutch water management. In particular, the paper focuses on the changing positioning and organisational transformation of Rijkswaterstaat, the policy-implementing agency of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. Rijkswaterstaat is well known for its powerful position in the development of transport and hydraulic infrastructure in the Netherlands, for its engineering expertise and for bringing the Dutch worldwide fame by realising major public works such as the Delta Works. In recent decades, however, Rijkswaterstaat's strong position of power and its technocratic working methods have been increasingly challenged. The explosive rise of the environmental movement, the democratisation of Dutch society and, from the 1980s, the rise of the neoliberal politico-economic ideology, gave rise to intense public debates about the functioning of this public organisation.

Adopting a discursive approach, I examine the way in which Rijkswaterstaat tried to construct a new organisational identity, in particular in the early years of the 21st century. First, I use a post-structuralist discourse-theoretical perspective to analyse the constitution, functioning and transformation of the hegemonic discourse within Dutch water management, the technocracy discourse. As the focus of discourse theory is mainly on structure, not on agency, I supplement the discourse-theoretical perspective with insights derived from framing theory - in particular the schools of thought referred to as frame-critical policy analysis and collective action framing - and introduce a relational approach to framing to analyse the concrete attempts by Rijkswaterstaat to adapt the technocracy discourse to the changing social and political circumstances. 

Subsequently, I explain how Rijkswaterstaat chose to reposition itself in particular by identification with the neoliberal managerial discourse, and how it domesticated elements and practices from the new neoliberal politico-economic perspective in its predominantly technocratic system of meaning. I refer to this development as the managerial turn in the technocracy discourse (1980s to the present). The period of the 1980s and 1990s constituted the first phase of this turn. In line with New Public Management ideas, Rijkswaterstaat introduced various management tools from private business to improve its effectiveness and efficiency. In the early years of the 21st century, the managerial turn accelerated under the influence of new external events, and Rijkswaterstaat became much more actively engaged in changing its organisation into a government business. I characterise its new organisational identity in terms of a managerial master frame. However, as a result of the managerial turn, Rijkswaterstaat's expert status came under pressure. The paper therefore ends with a critical reflection on the recent developments within Dutch water management

Barbara Dickhaus (University of Kassel)

The selectivity of translation: accountability regimes in Chilean and South African higher education

 This paper examines the translation of global educational norms of quality assurance in two countries with very different regulatory regimes in higher education, Chile and South Africa. The translation process is conceptualized here as a contested socio-political process of appropriation and creation of meaning. Drawing upon the strategic-relational concept of selectivity and re-conceptualizing it for a Meso-level analysis, the paper argues that quality assurance policies have become a hegemonic tool for re-organising higher education because a variety of - partly contradictory - meanings and interests can be attached to them: quality assurance is linked to rationales such as democratic transformation, re-establishing public governance, strengthening market governance, contributing to national competitiveness, internationalisation of higher education or positioning universities in the (global) education market. Looking at the translation of quality assurance policies with the concept of selectivity enables us to see how structure, agency, discourses and scales operate strategically-selective in creating compromises between different interests in higher education governance.

Irene Rafanell (University of the West of Scotland) & Sarah Vaughan (University of Edinburgh)

Interaction, Consensus and the Practice of Development

Central to much thinking about the movement of policy from one domain to another seems to be a residual assumption that some essential meaning of the policy remains, but is variously interpreted in different contexts. We argue, by contrast, that the new consensuses that emerge in the process of dissemination and implementation themselves (re)constitute the policy. In doing so, we stress both the open-ended nature and the constitutive power of the new knowledge which emerges from micro-processes of interaction in policymaking. We suggest that understanding social phenomena as underdetermined helps explain how and why the 'translation' of a policy developed in one context and implemented in another is inherently unpredictable.

 We illustrate the utility of this approach by tracing the processes by which a Public Sector Capacity Building Programme (PSCAP), developed and devised by the World Bank, was discussed, developed, and implemented in Ethiopia, and how it evolved in practice. Empirical discussion focuses on the ways in which World Bank officials recruited senior government support for their policy; how these policymakers rethought and shaped the policy in their own interests; and, finally, how the exceptionally mixed understanding and reception of the policy in different parts of rural and urban Ethiopia continued a process by which original outcomes were importantly transformed. What was initiated as a technocratic project became a highly political undertaking, with problematic consequences for those who first conceived it.

Nina Amelung (Technical University Berlin)

Production of Standards as stabilizer for deliberative policy instruments

Policy instruments are institutions that determine actors' behavior; they allow forms of collective action to stabilize;

hey include certain interests and actors and exclude others. Therefore the choice

of an instrument is a political issue because it structures the political process and its results.

(Lascoumes/LeGales 2007)

Claiming on Deweys call for new participatory forms of democratic governance and many other

democracy and communication theory oriented approaches (e.g. Habermas, Dryzek) deliberative

policy instruments emerged over the last decades. A huge spread of deliberation methods, tools,

procedures on local, national or even international level can be observed (planning cells, citizen

juries, scenario workshops, worldwide views etc.). Connected to this a "deliberative industry" is

visible with instrument designers, facilitators and variety of applications and implementations who

built a social life around those instruments. In this "industry" actors and networks are involved in

cooperation and competition for enforcing the innovation processes of single instrument designs and

bring them from invention to implementation and stabilization. This is nested in discourses of

standardization of instruments.

This paper investigates the phenomenon of two trends in the field of deliberative procedures

evolving in the last three decades. One is that there is a designer community of deliberative

procedures (practitioners, facilitators) who developed and redeveloped concrete procedures as tools

for implementation (sometimes even with protecting them as a brand with a trademark) that

become de facto standards and another is an ongoing process of national and international

standardization discourses about technical standards and quality standards that influences the

designing process itself, the choice for instruments and finally its spread when policy instruments

materialize with own dynamics in implementation contexts which allows them to become dominant

designs.

In this paper an approach of mapping the genealogy of deliberative instruments is presented. Based

on literature review 10 instruments and their historical genealogical innovation journeys, their

standardization processes and its influence on theirs spreads are analyzed and interpreted.

Hugh T. Miller ( Florida Atlantic University)

Public Policy and Administration as Discursive Dominance: The Process of Structuration  and Institutionalization

TBA

Marte Feiring (Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research)

This paper explores two processes of policy-making in action. On the one hand, it looks into the processes of defining the field, i.e. how the concept of self-help is defined and redefined by the practitioners and policy-makers in Norway. On the other hand, it follows the processes of how of structuring or regionalising the self-help field to a service for all citizens of Norway. 

In the Norwegian self-help field today there is a debate on how to delimit and define the concept of self-help. One contested theme is how to delimit assistant self-help (or professional supported self-help work) from self-help that takes place without professionals and without a leader. By following the actors in their every-day activities, I am interested in what tensions, negotiations and alliances exit between the different agencies (i.e. private and public, administrative and service-oriented, lay-people and professionals).

The self-help field in Norway is based on organisational diversity of networks made up of civil agents as well as professional and bureaucratic agencies at state, regional and local levels. At state level the Directorate of Health is an expert body in charge of administrative, technical and professional tasks; while all health care services are governed by the Ministry of Health and Care Services. Specialists health services are state responsibility and taken care of in regional trusts, while the local authorities are in charge of primary health and social services. The field of self-help is in the making and main actors represent politico-administrative bodies such as in the Directorate of Health as well as the main self-help bodies (as for example Self-help Norway which is a nodal point and a clearing house).

This research project is funded by the Norwegian Directorate of Health; it starts in March 2009 and will lasts for two-four years. Methodologically speaking, it applies the ethnographic approach "follow the actors" in order to development of the field at national, legal and local level. Case-studies including documentary research, interviews and observation are the main methods.

Trine Vilumsen & Cristian Bruger

Security Expertise after Securitization: Coping with Dilemmas of Engaging with Practice

The end of the cold war saw several security analysts pose the question of whether academic security analysis was "actually part of the solution or part of the problem", contributing more to the manufacturing of insecurity and threats than it did to 'de-securitizing' contemporary politics. A normative dilemma was formulated: "how to write or speak about security, when security knowledge risks the production of what one tries to avoid, what one criticizes: that is, the securitization of migration, drugs, and so forth". Analysts have shown, for instance, how the discipline of strategic studies helped construct the language of nuclear politics and define its universe of the thinkable. 1990s constructivists sought to show that the end of the cold war was influenced by the proliferation of new strategic thought, and contemporary empirical studies stress how security professionals manufacture insecurity. Given this evidence it seems a dangerous business to do security research. The sharp distinction between theory and practice - which left theory in an ivory tower detached from the world of practice - is replaced by a 'field of power' encompassing theory-practice-policy. In this field, questions of the potential political role of the analyst become central. But, how to be a security expert in the face of the 'normative dilemma'? Answers to this question have been almost absent from debates. Problematizations of the role of the analyst have become widespread, but solutions have been scarce. This paper tries to fill this gap by developing three positions/practices available to the security analyst 'after securitization'. These are; first, the notion of the 'organic intellectual' based on (Neo-) Gramscian thought; second, the concept of the 'collective intellectual' developed from the work of Bourdieu; and third, the vision of an 'ironist' inspired by the work of Richard Rorty and John Dewey . The paper introduces the core dilemmas analysts face, and proceeds to discuss the different answers the three ideal types suggest.  Equipped with these ideal types, the security intellectual will have tools to contemplate his/her position towards the world of practice and un-intended securitization may be minimized.

Jennifer Dodge (

 Evaluating Claims of Justice: Credibility and Legitimacy in Environmental Policy Making.

This paper presents empirical findings from comparative, interpretive case studies of two grassroots environmental organizations in the United States. It documents the different kinds of policy claims that these organizations make based on their members' experiences of environment hazards. These claims are often articulated through justice discourses that attempt to call attention to the unjust distribution of environmental burdens in society. This article draws on empirical observations and theoretical arguments about legitimacy and credibility in deliberative democratic argumentation to develop a framework for evaluating arguments based on justice claims. It focuses on identifying distortions in communication that might be based on the use of emotions, rhetoric or performance/dramatization. A core goal of the paper is to begin to untangle when these communicative strategies are used to make arguments more compelling to apathetic or hostile audiences, and when they are used to distort interlocutors' understanding of "the facts" or coerce interlocutors to take action that they might otherwise not take. This paper will contribute to our understanding of deliberative democratic practice from the civil society side as civil society actors interact with governments and other actors.

Merlijn van Hulst (Tilburg University)

This paper starts from the idea that credibility can be established in big part through sense making.

It takes a few examples of credible and 'incredible' sense making in times of crisis to support this claim. It then focuses on two vital and interrelated aspects of (in)credible sense making: storytelling and performance. An important question is: When and how does one reach that magic moment when the audience no longer doubts and see story, performance and reality fuse? Although this never is a matter in which narrators and performers can have full control over their audiences, an interpretive approach to credibility can show how moments of magic did or did not come about.

Tamara Metze (Tilburg University)

Credibility in deliberations on cultural incentives for challenged neighborhoods.

This paper presents a theoretical discussion of deliberative governance and credibility and relates it to empirical work on cultural incentives and cultural planning for challenged neighborhoods. I will argue that deliberative governance theory promises that an increase of the deliberative quality of interactions between governmental and non-governmental actors, experts included, will lead to more credible and thus democratic decision making for the collective. More credible decisions will be the outcome, as it is in deliberations that participants enact the legitimacy and authority of other participants and their arguments. I will draw on an empirical example of a learning network on cultural planning to demonstrate how credibility is established in deliberations. Members of this learning network are governmental actors, housing corporations, artists, schools and citizens of challenged neighborhoods. They collaboratively investigate how and why cultural planning, and the stimulation of cultural activities in challenged neighborhoods is or is not successful to regenerate the neighborhood. In their collaborative inquiry participants consider some arguments and decisions more credible than others. This paper explores why.

Maartje van Lieshout (Wageningen University)

Constructing and undermining credibility through scale framing in complex decision making processes.

Co authors:

Art Dewulf, Assistant Professor, Public Administration and Policy group, Wageningen UR

Noelle Aarts, Associate Professor, Communication Science Group, Wageningen University

Professor Strategic Communication, University of Amsterdam

Katrien Termeer, Professor of Public Administration and Policy, Wageningen University

In this paper we analyze a complex decision-making process about the establishment of a so-called 'new mixed company' or 'mega-farm' in a small town in the Netherlands. We draw on interactional theories about frames and framing to analyze how key actors (politicians, entrepreneurs, an action group and citizens) use scale frames in different interactional settings. What is the role of scale frames in regaining/ maintaining credibility in conflictive or constructive interaction modes? (e.g. What is the role of scale frame mismatches?)

The framing of a problem is the result of interactions between different actors. Out of various frames people may construct in interaction we analyze scale frames, since these provide for many arguments both pro and against the establishment of the new mixed company. Different scale frames make it possible for both supporters and opponents to use the same facts to either confirm or reject the advantages and disadvantages of the new mixed company. And since it is possible to mix and match arguments on different scales and levels, scale frames provide for many possibilities to regain/ maintain credibility. Studying actors in different interactional settings shows us how they (attempt to) construct credibility taking their public/ conversation partners into account.

Scale frames are strategically used to construct credibility in different interactional settings. Actors take their conversation partners/ context into account and adjust their scale frames to construct credible arguments in that particular context, leaving certain aspects out and emphasizing others. However since scale frames provide many possibilities to construct credible arguments and since these scale frames are not specified, different actors continue to talk past each other and as such, in itself credible arguments, play a role in the continuation of the controversy.

Betsy Super (University of Edinburgh)

Constructing credibility on the doorstep: Thresholds, networks, and local political campaigners.

This paper addresses the way in which candidates for elected office rely on local campaign activists to build credibility with voters. While often referred to in an underdetermined role as 'ambassadors' for political elites, local campaign volunteers and paid staff who go door-to-door to solicit votes undertake a more complex set of practices to make elected officials credible for citizens. Local campaigners provide credibility for a candidate by building trust through discussions with voters, by providing personal endorsements for candidates, by acting as the physical representatives of those candidates, and - perhaps most importantly - by acting as boundary workers who bridge local community and elite political groups. Like Bang's everyday makers and expert citizens (Bang and Sorensen 2001, Bang 2005), these local campaigners act in a political context that is shaped primarily by and through networks rather than formal organizations. In short, one has to be a part of a specific social neighborhood or community, but also be a part of campaign.

The implications of this are (a) it signifies a qualitatively different role for local activists than what party politics scholars such as Scarrow (1996), Katz (1997) and Clark (2004) have theorized and (b) it re-imagines the organization of political parties as a series of overlapping networks. In terms of the discussion for this panel, the implications of this research are more helpful for understanding how easily credibility may be lost once candidates win office. If credibility is indeed constructed through door-to-door political campaigning but the work of local political activists in endorsing, communicating, and crossing community-elite networks only happens during election times, then elected representatives are vulnerable to declining credibility with their supporters once in office. Taking this view further, the problem is not the 'permanent campaign' that has taken over many political processes (Blumenthal 1980), but that the campaign - in its grassroots and local forms - is not permanent enough. Drawing primarily from fieldwork and in depth interviews from a 2006 gubernatorial election in the United States, this article also uses data on more recent events (including the start of re-election campaigns for the 2010 cycle) to elaborate on the implications of grassroots organizations and activists for the credibility of public representatives.

Tom Roberts (Lancaster University)

Walter Fisher's (1987) 'narrative rationality' emphasised the human mode of evaluating and attending to the significance of social stories.  His criteria of 'coherence' - whether or not a given narrative hangs together structurally - and 'fidelity' - how well a story resonates with its listeners - is an important reminder of the rhetorical power that narratives hold in everyday life and a useful insight within post-positivist policy analysis. We might augment Fisher's theory by the addition of a third criterion to narrative rationality, which can be thought of as the product of the interplay between coherence and resonance: namely narrative credibility. Looked at in this light, credibility is a relational attribute contingent upon the social standing of the rhetor or storyteller amongst their audience. Credibility is thus what is conferred upon the storyteller by the listeners through their successive endorsements of his/her account or oration. These insights are important in thinking about given the growing disconnect and bad faith between politics and society, expert and laymen respectively. The deliberative turn (Dryzek 2000, Fischer 2003) in policy analysis in many ways was recognition of the relationality of credibility as a two-way process between policy practitioners and publics, and the need to distribute credibility (and power) more equally. Scholars have long since argued the instrumental, normative and substantive advantages (Fiorino 1989; Laird 1993; Stirling 2005) of increasing public engagement in policy decision-making processes on trenchant socio-political issues (such as energy policy).  But what if citizens were to take an even more participatory role in working with decision making experts? How would this change the credibility dynamic? I argue that Jungkian Futures workshops (1987) offer huge promise in this respect providing the opportunity of a non-judgemental deliberative forum for storytelling, mass imagination and knowledge sharing. Storytelling and story-making in such an arena, can, I believe, go some way to establishing a common storied and thematic cultural language that transcends the expert non-expert divide and may even go some way to fostering mutual respect and credibility.

Steve Connelly (University of Sheffield)

Legitimacy through practice: how is 'new governance' made acceptable in democracies?

An important aspect of the development of and prognosis for new forms of governance is their legitimacy: for authority to be successfully devolved and diffused to new institutions and actors not previously engaged in policy- and decision-making it must, by definition, become legitimate.   Yet it is widely recognised that the traditional certainties of legitimacy conferred by the ballot box on decision makers, and by technical expertise on their advisers, (to a contested extent) break down in 'the new governance', raising the questions of how and why new forms of governance actually take root and become acceptable and accepted. 

To some extent this process becomes visible in explicit 'legitimacy discourse', through which actors explicitly set out, justify and often contest processes in terms which draw from political, and other, theoretical positions (e.g. norms of inclusivity, representativeness, effectiveness and so etc.)   Empirical research has also used interviews to engage practitioners in reconstructing similar arguments through reflections on their practice.   However, this approach plausibly leads to an over-theorisation, biasing analysis towards an understanding of legitimacy as arising from contests between defined theoretical positions. 

In contrast, this paper explores the possibilities opened by two other bodies of theoretical work.  On the one hand, theories of practice and practices suggest that legitimacy arises through the doing of governance (conceived as an interactive, skilled, and situated activity) rather than in arguments about legitimacy.  On the other, social and psychological theories have explored how innovative practices and their associated power relationships become legitimate in contexts such as management innovations within commercial organisations i.e. setting which are not 'political' in the classic sense of being engaged in the authoritative allocation of value in the public sphere.  

Illustrated by drawing on observations made by the author in various participant/observer roles and governance settings, this paper explores how these two perspectives allow an analysis of how new governance processes become legitimate, both through being practiced in legitimate ways and through shaping new norms of legitimacy.  However, it also seems important not to lose the normative evaluatory power of political theory - pre-eminently to enable us to make judgements about the democratic qualities of governance.  The paper thus concludes by suggesting how political and social theories of legitimacy can be reconciled in the analysis of governance practice.

Michael Orsini & Sarah Wiebe (University of Ottawa)

Feeling "Rules": From Institutions to Emotions in the Study of Autistic Activism

 The study of contentious politics has been influenced heavily by approaches that take as axiomatic the important structuring role of institutions in shaping movement strategies and the policy outcomes that flow from these. The most influential of these approaches, political process theory, pioneered by Tarrow (1996) and McAdam (1996), sought to capture how the political opportunity structure - features of the external political environment often outside of the direct control of movement actors - can encourage or discourage movement actors from engaging in collective action. These approaches have filled an important gap in a literature that was too often squarely focused on social movements as irrational outbursts of time and space. An overwhelming emphasis on the rational features of collective action, however, has frozen out of discussion the role of emotions in framing, nourishing and sometimes structuring social movement claims and policy outcomes.  A growing body of literature has begun to make up for this neglect in the literature. I explore the "emotional turn" in social movement analysis by drawing on a comparative analysis of activism in Canada and the US in the area of contested illnesses such as autism and multiple chemical sensitivity.

Angelika Sjöstedt Landén (Umeå University)

This paper explores how emotions become intertwined with processes of identification. This is studied through interviews with employees at a work-place moving from Stockholm; the capital of Sweden, to Östersund; a small town in the northern inland. The time of the move was seen as an uncertain period by many of the employees, and they talked about how new social patterns were formed at the work place. Emotions thus figured in articulations that constructed social groupings within the work place and justified subject's belonging to either of these groups. These work-related groups were in turn associated to geographical places relevant to the relocation of the workplace. I therefore want to look closer into the relationship between place and emotion in order to understand how places become 'marked' with different status through referring to emotions. Preliminary findings show how such (emotional) differentiations of places may become part of how subjects understand, for example, work markets and living conditions in different places. This could in turn have an impact on what subjects perceive as possible work life choices.

Bel Parnell- Berry (University of Hull)

The discipline of interpretive policy analysis recognises that despite the implied link between policy drafting and implementation, in practice little actually holds these two processes together. Especially in the field of social policy, where dilemmas of how to implement a document into community life may be of an ethical nature, personal interpretations play a large part in how policy documents are acted out by implementers (Yanow, 1996: 24).  Certain policy dilemmas may involve conflict between personal ethics and organisational ethics, as well as the various ethical values of different groups within the community that is to be affected (Bellah, 1987: 366).

One such area is policy involving the Travelling community, where focus is on the relations between the local authority, its planning and land policy towards this community. Across Europe, for centuries, questionable measures have been taken by governments against traditional Romany or Gypsy ways of living with the argument of protecting society and therefore making an ethical choice (Liegeois and Gheorghe, 1995: 8). However, policies and legislation that banished gypsies, had them put in prison or executed or simply made them (rather than their way of life) illegal, eventually became less socially acceptable (Liegeois and Gheorghe, 1995: 10). Instead there was pressure to assimilate Travelling and Gypsy communities with settled communities (Liegeois, 2005: 180). This pressure has been referred to as a method of eradicating their culture - a form of ethnic cleansing (Hawes and Perez, 1995). 

As researchers we can study the personal values of individuals from the way they interpret certain texts and from the decisions they consequentially make. Ethnographic methodological approaches can aid us in investigating these interpretive processes, firstly by providing the researcher with the tools necessary to understand a group's cultural and/or ethical values and also providing an insight into how these values would be applied in certain social scenarios, when faced with particular dilemmas (Russell, 1996: 2 and Thomas, 1983: 478).   

In this paper I will demonstrate how I have been and will continue to use ethnographic methods in order to explore these issues. The use of semi-structured and conversation interviews are being used within local authorities and the Traveller Gypsy community to gain an understanding of conflicting ethical values and how this can relate to views of citizenship and lifestyle choices. Additionally, I have been analysing the language of policy documents and some news articles from local media coverage in order to explore the way individuals articulate about the Traveller Gypsy community, their way of life and their expectations of the way policy should be implemented in this area. Finally, I have been studying 'built spaces' - local authority caravan sites that are designed and built by local planning organisations in order to investigate how individuals interpret their values from the page and implement them into real life. This part of the research will also explore the effects that this individual, interpretive process has on the many individuals that make up Traveller Gypsy communities.  

Bernard Lamizet (Institute of Political Studies, Lyon)

 Interretation and identification in Politics: Modalities of the identification in politics(policy) and elaboration of a metalanguage

 We shall name here « identification » the whole complex process during which we elaborate the identities, and establish ourselves as political actors, at the same time by the appropriate elaboration of a speech, by the implementation of recognizable symbolic practices and by the elaboration and the implementation of strategies and practices appropriate to identify us in the political space.

 The concept of identification indicates the process of elaboration of the identity of an actor, as well as the transformations processing of which this identity will be the object during history.

 The interpretation indicates the symbolic process by which the subject appropriates a representation by giving it a meaning, possibly multiple, and by integrating it, in this way, into the political culture which he bears, and which defines its political identity.

 The political identification consists in the elaboration of an identity established on a relation between subjectivity and membership, and shown in symbolic expressions implemented in the public place. The political interpretation consists in the recognition, the formulation and the implementation of a mediation between the singular and the collective. This mediation bases itself on the recognition of the meaning. The political practices and the commitment base establish themselves on a constant dialectic between the relation to the other one in mirror and the political confrontation to the others.

 The interpretation and the identification articulate the one in the other one in a complex political process which we can analyze in five points, the display of which will be the object of the proposed communication.

 1.         The interpretation of the speeches articulated in the identification of their authors

 To interpret the speech, in politics, consists in identifying the author. It is advisable, here, to distinguish three different functions. The énonciateur is the actor who gives his existence to the speech by registering it, orally or in writing, in the public place. The author is the political actor who signs the speech, i.e. the actor who gives his institutional dimension to the speech, who places the speech in the political space. The destinator is the political actor in the name of whom the speech is expressed, the actor whom represents the speech, to whom the speech gives a symbolic existence.

 2.         The interpretation of the political practices conceived as expression of a political identity in the public place

 To interpret the political practices consists in recognizing the identities which implement them in the public place, the identities which give their institutional dimension to the political practices. The political interpretation does not limit itself to the clarification of the meaning, as the interpretation of the common facts of communication and statement: it also consists in identifying the actors who implement them and the political and institutional strategies which they join and who give them their political consistency.

 3.         The relation between identification and interpretation as elaboration of a political system of statement

 The political statement is a particular mode of statement which articulates political identity of actors and meaning. The institutional identity of an actor and the stakes in power and in membership which expresses its symbolic activity are swown by the identification. The meaning of a speech or a symbolic practice of representation expresses a relation in the political imagination (utopia or fear) and in the reality of politics (expression of a law or a constraint). It is revealed by the interpretation.

 4.         The articulation of the identification and the interpretation in the evaluation of the political practices

 The evaluation of the political practices is a practice which has always existed under several forms. It can involve the vote or the election, but it can also involve processes of evaluation implemented in the political logics of management and validation of the activities of institutions and the political actors. It finally can involve processes of legitimization by which a practice is assumed by an actor or an institution. The identification and the interpretation are articulated in these processes of evaluation, by creating the link between the identity of the actors, the logic of the political strategies and the meaning of the speeches and the representations.

 5.         The facts of censorship as institution of a regulation of the interpretation and the identification

 The censorship consists in the expression of a judgment of validation or invalidation concerning an actor's political practice or an activity of an institution. The censorship consists in the articulation of the identification, the interpretation and the implementation of a power. It is the relationship in the power which marks the specificity of the activity of the censorship in the field of the practices of regulation of the political space. The censorship consists, in particular, in excluding certain symbolic practices by striking them of illegality by virtue of the power exercised by the actor who implements it.

 This communication will propose concepts elaborated in the other fields, in particular in the works on political semiotics and on the political mediation..It) will bend over present situations of articulation of symbolism and of the imagination (in particular about Iran) such as they are presented in mass media, so as to seize the way, in the public place, the media propose modes of expression and interpretation of politics. 

Anna Durnová (University of Lyon)

Reconsidering the practice of policy analysis: intimacy of dying

The recent agenda of poststructuralist policy analysis has shown to which extent interpretive methods can uncover the underlying (and often hidden) aspects of policy practices. I suggest a new way of studying theses practices by arguing that meanings are not simply there but that they are negotiated within a governing framework shaped by emotions. Emotions function as governing triggers of respective policies and intervene also as interpretive elements. How do we asses the in the practice of policy analysis?

Against the experience from the qualitative research within policies on inpatient dying care I investigate principles of analysis emphasizing interpretation and acquisition practices that are generated by emotional situations. I aim to illustrate how current policy analysis can respond to the challenge the emotions make to the practice of analysing such policy practices. I identify "intimacy of dying" as a substantial political power that influences the respective negotiation of practice of inpatient dying care and that involves both; financial and technical possibilities on the one hand and the social and emotional involvement of the affected persons on the other hand. I understand therefore intimacy as a consideration of emotional knowledge that lies behind power relations and systems of acquisitions that generate policy practices.

I observe the practice of analysis that results from these assumptions. I embed the pragmatic approach to emotions - that conceives them as judgements of values building regimes of justifications - into the concept of "politics of intimacy". Politics of intimacy is understood as a regime of governing of emotions and through them and involves a re-consideration of the analysis procedure itself.

Doris Urbanek, University of Vienna/Austria,

Discursive analysis, especially frame analysis, has gained increasing importance in feminist policy analysis in recent EU-wide research projects, e.g. MAGEEQ, QUING or VEIL. Exploring the meanings given to social phenomena with a focus on norms underpinning these policy frames has been a common methodological feature in these policy studies. Yet, such an analysis of gender equality policies faces the challenge of accounting for intersecting social categories in its analytical tools. But intersectionality, despite figuring as 'buzzword' and core concept in contemporary feminist theory, is still underdeveloped with regard to the question of how to operationalise it for policy analysis.

It is the aim of this paper to close this methodological gap by conceptualising an intersectional discursive policy analysis. Drawing from the study conducted in the frame of the QUING project, this article will develop the existing method further. Inspired by Myra Marx Ferree's dynamic approach to intersectionality, it will draft a processual perspective. Taking some of the insights of inter- and intracategorical approaches to intersectionality, I aim at exploring processes of structuration and within, the construction of subject positions. The lead questions of analysis are: Which intersectional subject positions are created in selected policy debates and made intelligible through which underlying norms? Which rights are negotiated in the course of these policy debates? Analysing the rights at stake answers to Carol Lee Bacchi's 'What the problem'-approach which demands that the effects of discourse be addressed in analysis.

Basically, such questions may be directed at any policy field. Applied to the issue of family reunion, discussed in the German New Immigration Act of 2007, this methodological approach exemplifies as follows: How are migrant women and men depicted in policy frames and what are the underlying rationales? How are rights to security, freedom from violence, family life and gender equality negotiated in this respect?

Elisabeth Prügl, IHEID Geneva

The 2008 financial crisis saw in its aftermath an extensive public preoccupation with the fact that most of the "culprits" in the financial sector were men, engaged in what some interpreted as typically male behavior. If women had been more present in the financial sector, this argument went, the crisis would not have happened. In this paper I outline the contours of this discourse on gender and the financial crisis. I argue that it is an exaggerated instance of making difference productive, i.e. reinterpreting the significance of gender, race, ethnic and other differences in such a way that they are considered to yield pay-off rather than problems. Thirty years of "diversity management" in corporations and administrations have sought to instill this ethic. Drawing on Foucault's insights on neo-liberalism, the paper argues that making difference productive in this sense is more than a cooptation of feminist radicalism, but an innovative inclusion of feminist ideas into constructions of the individual under neo-liberal conditions

Rahel Kunz, Universität Luzern, kunzrahel@gmail.com

Foucauldian analyses reveal how disciplinary neo-liberalism contributes to transform and create new subjectivities. Feminist theories have demonstrated how these neo-liberal subjectivities are deeply gendered. Using a combination of insights from a Foucauldian analysis and postcolonial feminist insights, the objective of this paper is to analyse the various gendered subjectivities that have been created in the context of global restructuring, the economic and the crisis of social reproduction, focusing on the context of Mexico. Bringing together various current discourses on gendered subjectivities, I argue that gender-specific subjectivities have been created, based on a number of gendered dichotomies that oppose the male migrant remittance-sending hero to the remittance-receiving non-migrant woman; the entrepreneurial investor migrant man to the producer non-migrant women. Finally, the paper also analyses the broader implications of these gendered subjectivities in terms of gender-specific rights and access to resources. 

Gülay Caglar and Helen Schwenken,

The gendered effects of different policies have been thoroughly examined in the past decades. However, the reasons for the gendered effects still remain underexposed. In the paper we will put the focus on the reasons and scrutinize the normative foundations of policy designs which lead to gendered effects. The argument put forward is, that these interpretations are deeply rooted in the actors' background knowledge, which comprises both scientific and normative knowledge about the material world. Referring to the concept of "gender knowledge" ("Geschlechterwissen") we further argue that interpretations are made against the background of assumptions about gender relations. Indeed, all policies are based on certain gender knowledge. The concept of gender knowledge refers to different types of collective and individually appropriated knowledge, which co-exist in society about the difference between the sexes and the 'correct' relations and divisions of labor between men and women (Andresen/Dölling 2005). This knowledge can reaffirm hierarchical gender orders (example: "women are the better care-givers than men"), openly question them (example: "women are socially constructed as better care-givers") or range somewhere in between these two poles. The aim of the paper is to systematize existing concepts on gender knowledge and gender orders in order to develop a conceptual framework to systematically analyse gender knowledge in policy making.

Andrea Krizsan

Studies of EU integration mostly focus their attention on developing models to explain the level of compliance with the EU norms, where compliance is understood to cover transposition and application much more than implementation (Schimmelfennig, Trauner ed. 2009). Relatively limited attention is paid to conceptualizing compliance, going beyond the formal transposition and application, to include also implementation of norms. This becomes particularly noticeable in fields such as gender equality, where EU legislation and compliance with it can hardly be meaningfully interpreted in isolation from soft policies. In the context of a definition of EU gender equality policy as a three-legs stool including anti-discrimination, special programs and gender mainstreaming (Booth and Bennet 2002), looking at formal compliance with EU hard law (which mainly stands for the equal treatment approach) is problematic. This paper starts off from a conceptualization of compliance with EU norms in the field of gender equality that is wider than formal compliance with the EU hard law at legal and institutional level.  It proposes an understanding of compliance that includes beyond formal compliance also compliance at the level of special programs and gender mainstreaming (the other two legs of the stool), particularly conveyed through soft policy tools including gender equality strategies, European Employment Strategy, Social Inclusion Strategy, and EU structural funds programming and spending (Krizsan 2009). The paper aims to propose a research agenda for comparative measuring of compliance with the EU in gender equality in this wider sense and argues for the use of qualitative methods of policy analysis, and particularly discursive analysis methods in pursuing such analysis.  A Hungarian case study and additional data from Czech Republic will support and pilot the research agenda proposed. 

Očenasová, Zuzana

The proposed paper investigates the Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies in three EU new member States: The Czech republic, Lithuania and Slovakia. It aims to contribute to the research on the Europeanization of gender equality policies and more specifically to sociological and historical institutionalist approaches focusing on the dynamics of Europeanization and domestic structures and processes. The EU accession process significantly facilitated the development of gender equality policies in post-socialist member states as it was part of conditionality criteria. As a result, main legislative, institutional and strategic changes in the realm of gender equality policies took place during this period. Nevertheless, the effect of Europeanization process can be assess only in the post-accession period. This article will therefore focus on whether conditionality that has generated change leads to sustainable compliance of gender equality policies and how the change in the incentive structure from external to internal has affected gender equality policies adoption.

The paper uses the concept of “needle’ eye” developed by Ostner and Lewis (1995) who argued that the adoption of gender equality policies is hampered by the domestic level needle’s eye – the welfare regime of each member state and the gender order underlying it. The paper analyses the dynamics between Europeanization and national needle’s eyes that was present also during the accession process and has resulted in different ways of adoption of EU gender equality policies (gender equality Act and machinery in Lithuania, general antidiscrimination Act and machinery in Slovakia and Labour code modification and consultative gender equality body in the Czech republic) at the moment of the accession. This has become even more apparent in the post-accession period and has influenced more significantly further development of gender equality policies. The paper also uses discursive frame analysis developed within the QUING Project in order to compare framing of gender equality policies in the three countries with focus on comparison with EU frames, frames presenting national needle’s eyes and their impact on national gender equality policies development., PhD

zuzana.ocenasova@gmail.com

Faculty of Social and Economic Science, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

The Europeanization of gender equality policies through the needle's eyes of the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Slovakia: a cognitive approach

The proposed paper investigates the Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies in three EU new member States: The Czech republic, Lithuania and Slovakia. It aims to contribute to the research on the Europeanization of gender equality policies and more specifically to sociological and historical institutionalist approaches focusing on the dynamics of Europeanization and domestic structures and processes. The EU accession process significantly facilitated the development of gender equality policies in post-socialist member states as it was part of conditionality criteria. As a result, main legislative, institutional and strategic changes in the realm of gender equality policies took place during this period. Nevertheless, the effect of Europeanization process can be assess only in the post-accession period. This article will therefore focus on whether conditionality that has generated change leads to sustainable compliance of gender equality policies and how the change in the incentive structure from external to internal has affected gender equality policies adoption.

The paper uses the concept of "needle' eye" developed by Ostner and Lewis (1995) who argued that the adoption of gender equality policies is hampered by the domestic level needle's eye - the welfare regime of each member state and the gender order underlying it. The paper analyses the dynamics between Europeanization and national needle's eyes that was present also during the accession process and has resulted in different ways of adoption of EU gender equality policies (gender equality Act and machinery in Lithuania, general antidiscrimination Act and machinery in Slovakia and Labour code modification and consultative gender equality body in the Czech republic) at the moment of the accession. This has become even more apparent in the post-accession period and has influenced more significantly further development of gender equality policies. The paper also uses discursive frame analysis developed within the QUING Project in order to compare framing of gender equality policies in the three countries with focus on comparison with EU frames, frames presenting national needle's eyes and their impact on national gender equality policies development.

Réjane Sénac-Slawinski

In a context of promotion of global antidiscrimination policies by the European Union,  the integration - if not the dilution - of gender mainstreaming into diversity mainstreaming is increasingly questioned. The inclusion of "sex" in article 13th of the Amsterdam Treaty ( 2006 ) and the choice of the European Commission to make of 2007 " the European Year of the equality of opportunity for all " have thus been analyzed as embodying the shift to an additional conception of anti-discrimination policies (Shaw, 2004 ; Verloo, Lombardo, 2006). Various strands of inequalities are indeed considered separately through the register of the identity, which clearly distinguishes from an intersectional perspective (Crenshaw, 1991; Makkonen, 2002) and treated through the register of the transversality/mainstreaming (Squires, 2008; Smith,  2005). 

Our purpose is to analyze the link between gender equality and diversity by concentrating on the French case (Bereni, Jaunait, 2009; Laufer, Silvera, 2009). In a cognitive approach, we examine how the diffusion of the notion of diversity participates to the tension between equality and identity policies. On the one hand, we examine the location and the role of various actors (individual and collective) in the emergence of diversity as a political problem, in the sense at once of justifiable and problematic political subject. On the other hand, we place under consideration their interpretation of different principles of Justice which are also at stake within this frame. For this, we crossed the analysis of reports, works and declaration on diversity with a qualitative survey drawing upon personal interviews with 150 actors, male and female, primarily concerned by the emergence of diversity as a social and political problem: party officials, public officers in charge of equality and anti-discrimination policies, NGO representatives, trade union leaders, head of private companies, and academics.

Our hypothesis is that episteme and public policy - following the example of parity - illustrate and embody the institutionalization of an equality in the difference conditioned by an assignment to difference performed as an added value.

Alba Alonso

The Europeanization of regional governance has long been addressed through the sole lens of the regional policy of the European Union, that is, in a top-down perspective. Yet, limited attention has been paid to the different types of regions considered, especially as regarding the emergence of regions with a legislative capacity which are integral to domestic political systems (Pasquier, 2006). Meanwhile, studies trying to capture the complexity of domestic change as consequence of Europeanization processes have mainly focused on the State-level. However, if we adopt a more inclusive definition to Europeanization, as suggested here, we might consider the impact of Europe on the regional level also in terms of policy practices and paradigms, 'ways of doing things' and social learning. This led us to engage the regional dimension of Europeanization through the politics of Gender Equality, a field of public action where the pressure for adaptation is clearly put on the national level of governance, but where hard-law instruments coexist with a number of soft Europeanization channels.

In so doing, this paper addresses Spain, one of the most affected countries in Europe by a process of regionalization. Despite the fact that Spanish constitution ascribes to the State the responsibility for ensuring citizen's equality, Spanish regions (Comunidades Autonómicas) have developed comprehensive legislation and policy instruments to tackle gender inequalities. Moreover, whereas it can be assumed that the EU policy framework until recently had relatively little impact on the making of equality State policies in Spain (Lombardo, 2004), there are some evidences that Europe hits the regions to a relevant extent.

This paper tentatively explores the Europeanization of Gender equality policies in Spain through four case-studies, corresponding to the historic communities that have been the driving force of Spanish regionalization process since early 1980's. The Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia and Andalusia thus reveal highly differentiated polities, shaped by the role of ruling parties, civil society and, alternatively, by nationalism, regionalism or autonomism as the principle upon which centre-periphery dynamics have developed during the two past decades. The contribution briefly discusses the relevance of such basic features in the making of gender equality policies. Then, it attempts to capture different patterns of Europeanization at the regional level, emphasizing the level of good practices and policy transfers (Marsh, Dolowitz, 1996), as well as the discursive usage of references to the EU by regional actors as an integral part of contentious centre-periphery politics. Therefore, it intends to contribute to the sociological-institutionalist approach of Europeanization within the frame of a multi-level polity.

Konstantia Kosetzi

The focus of this paper is the Europeanisation of gender in Greece (cf. Liebert, 2003; Walby, 2004). I  specifically embark on an analysis of National Action Programmes (NAP) of Greece from 1998 to date, focusing in particular on NAPs for employment. In this endeavour, I make use of the notion of re-scaling (see e.g. Jessop, 2002; Fairclough, 2006, 2007; MacRae, 2006) and employ Faircloughian Critical Discourse Analysis (mainly the 2006 version). Such a framework links discursive changes with social changes, see both the discourses on Europeanisation of gender and their material constitutions (through operationalization and implementation of such discourses). The findings point towards a nodal EU discourse with discourses of social agenda, the market, positive action, education, and immigrants clustering under the nodal discourse. Further - national - discourses on the importance of the Greek family and society also contribute to this interdiscursive hybridity (Fairclough, 2006). 

Emanuela Lombardo

The proposed paper will address the following three questions: to what extent does the European Union influence the framing of national gender+ equality policies? What does the framing of equality policies tell us about the quality of policies? And why do some countries show a greater quality in the framing of their gender+ equality policies? 

The paper, which draws on research conducted within the QUING European project (www.quing.eu), will compare policy frames on gender and other equality in the European Union and three Southern European countries (Italy, Portugal and Spain) in the area of 'general gender equality and machinery' in the period from 1995 to 2007.  The expression 'general gender equality and machinery' is employed to refer to comprehensive state policies on gender equality legislation that plan broader action in different equality fields with the use of different policy strategies (for instance, equality plans such as the EU Roadmap) and that establish the structure and responsibilities of state agencies promoting gender equality (for example, regulations on the creation of new equality bodies). Policy documents analysed in this area (which include laws, plans, parliamentary debates and civil society documents) will be compared on the basis of a set of criteria to assess the quality of policies. Context-specific institutional, political, and cultural factors of the case studies will be taken into account to understand the variations in the policy frames found, to grasp the reasons why some cases show a greater quality in the framing of their gender and other equality policies, and to detect the extent to which policy framing on equality in Southern Europe is related to the European Union discourse.

Emo Gotsbachner

Renegotiation and stabilization of meanings is inherent to all political processes. Hence Discourse Analysis aims to reconstruct, how habitualised and recognizable ways of speaking legitimise (or otherwise criticise) particular social and political practices, in affirming patterns of meaning which certain actors take for granted while trying to normalize their ideological world-views as ‚social knowledge'. Discourses which become hegemonic as defining frames of social reality demarcate what is politically feasible at certain points in time, and how discourses become hegemonic is a crucial question.        

In my paper I argue that a process-oriented Discourse Analysis specific to Political Science must become one step more complex. It needs to conceptualise that discursive propositions competing for hegemony in the political arena of public discourse are related to each other, and take into consideration that the main addressees, to whom these discursive propositions are tailored, are a heterogeneous electorate. How different audiences actually make sense of political messages is an open question not even touched in most discourse analytic research designs. Illuminating the antagonistic ways competing discourses structure people's perception of a complex social and political world therefore must be a crucial part of the discourse analytic endeavour, which cannot be left to quantitative opinion polls. Under the conditions of politics of meaning mainly being channelled through television news and other mass media it is also a common strategy of political actors to orient to these heterogeneous understandings of different audiences in adopting a kind of heteroglot rhetoric. There is a competition about who stands for a legitimate solution to which political issue, where it burns down to the question to whom the audience ascribes the competence, credibility and suitable political position to talk about these issues, deciding about rights of definition and burden of proof. Discursive strategies of politicians trying to establish certain framings as 'social knowledge' can backfire severely, because what certain communities of interpretation regard as common sensical knowledge, for other communities rather represents pure ideology.          
I will present first impressions of results from an ongoing research project, which tries to integrate these conditions, conceptually and methodologically. Our 'Frame Project' examines how political actors try to establish their interpretative frames of political issues in televised panel discussions, and explores their influences on the interpretational orientations of various groups of audiences. We analyse how different audiences assign credibility and importance to different aspects of information and representation and whether or not they take them on as appropriate, close-to-experience definitions of social reality. Especially important are cases where political actors are able to establish their framings and readings beyond their 'logical' clientele (in terms of social background and party affiliation), because where interpretative frames and their definitions of social conditions, problems and roles spread to the wider public and become dominant, one can expect to find a basic leverage point of social and political dynamics.

Markku Lehtonen and Ms Mari Martiskainen

Nuclear power is undergoing a revival in a number of countries of both developed and developing world, and is increasingly portrayed as a solution to the problems of climate change and energy security. This paper presents an analysis of the current debates concerning nuclear power, focusing specifically on the debates in Finland, France and the UK around the projects to build the new European Pressurised Reactors (EPR), at present under construction in Finland (Olkiluoto) and France (Flamanville). The controversies concerning the EPR projects, notably the Finnish reactor, are of high relevance for the future of nuclear power, notably because the Finnish and the French reactors are seen as showcases of the EPR, portrayed by the nuclear protagonists as a safer and more efficient new generation of nuclear technology. A number of countries, including the UK, are considering the EPR as a possible technology for their future nuclear projects.

The empirical analysis of the debates in France and the UK relies on an approach of pragmatic sociology, employing the research methods of 'socio-informatics'. This approach is centred around the application of 'Prospéro' software, developed at the research group on pragmatic and reflexive sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. The research approach enables the analyst to follow the actors and arguments in a wide array of arenas in which controversies are created and transformed. The analysis places the current debates within their historical context, traces the transformations and key turning points over the years, including notably the changing actor networks and the argumentative strategies employed by these actors. Major benefits of a Prospéro-based analysis include its flexibility and openness to different research approaches, its open-ended nature which makes it suited to analysing on-going debates, and its ability to combine quantitative statistical analysis with qualitative in-depth analysis. Because Prospéro does not yet allow analysis in Finnish, the analysis in Finland will focus on a more limited sample of debates in Parliament before its decision in 2002 to give a go ahead to the EPR project and selected recent newspaper articles, press releases and policy documents concerning the problems encountered in the Olkiluoto site construction. Stakeholder interviews will complement the analysis in all three countries, notably in order to validate the inferences made on the basis of the textual analysis. Conclusions will be drawn on the similarities and differences in the EPR debates in the three countries; the importance of country-specific and cultural factors in explaining differences; and on the respective qualities of the two analytical approaches - the Prospéro (France and the UK) and the more traditional content and discourse analysis (Finland).

[1] Corresponding author. Until 30 June 2010, visiting fellow at the Groupe de Sociologie Pragmatique et Réflexive (GSPR), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris.

Reiner Grundmann, Ramesh Krishnamurthy, Mike Scott,

The topic of climate change has become one of the fastest rising issues in media coverage over the past years. At the time of writing there is not a single day in the Western world on which the topic is not mentioned in the news. Climate change has made a phenomenal impact on policy circles and the public at large. It raises fundamental questions about the function and influence of media reports on global environmental politics, such as the lead up to the Copenhagen conference and the prospects for future reporting.

In previous work we have collected full text data on climate change reporting from four countries. After creating a Corpus and starting a preliminary analysis, we found that there is a continuous rise in levels of newspaper reporting on climate change, indeed, there is an exponential rise after 2005. 2007, the latest year in our database, is the year with the highest levels of reporting ever observed (Grundmann and Krishnamurthy 2010).

We now want to examine why there has been a steep increase in attention after 2005. We will pursue a key word analysis that aims at showing how significant specific content words are in relation to their wider use. Key words/phrases, i.e. sequences which appear in text to an unusually high extent, can be revealing in identifying patterns. Significant differences with regard to some key words would suggest a shift in discursive practice over time.

There are three kinds of key words in this connection. First there are the obvious ones which directly relate to the physical phenomena, such as greenhouse effect, or global warming. These terms may be of interest in terms of their changing frequencies or differing uses for different readerships. We might see variations of such terms, e.g. global heating or climate chaos.

Second, terms which have been popularized as part of the debate and whose status reflects changes in focus. One example has to do with the increasing use of the term 'tipping points'. 'Tipping points' appear for the first time in 2003 when The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article 'Hot Air and Cold Fear: Scientists Debate Whether Global Warming Can Cause a Big Chill'--before any publications are documented in the scientific literature on climate change. The first academic publication dates from November 2005. Russil and Nyssa (2009) examine the diffusion of this popular concept into climate science. Popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book with the same title in 2000, the term has been also taken up by political leaders in 2006 when Tony Blair and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende wrote in a letter to EU leaders that 'we have a window of only ten to fifteen years to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points.' (Quoted in Hulme 2009:333).

Other relevant terms include the window metaphor as in 'window of 10-15 years' and 'climate stabilization' goals (Boykoff et al. 2009).

Thirdly there are other not easily noticed indicators such as time expressions or signals of reader-writer interactivity, which the software WordSmith is useful in picking up.

Using our Corpus, we will present data from a key word analysis that aims at showing how significant such specific words are compared to their general use. In so doing, we will demonstrate a discursive shift taking place after 2005 that has led to a dramatization of the climate change discourse in the print media.

Our study suggests that media dramatization of climate change may have important political implications.

Nathalie Ortar (LET-ENTPE Lyon)

During a biographical interview the interviewee recalls his/her life. All the process of the interview is there to reshape a linear story according to the linear Newtonian acceptance of time. A story has to have a beginning, childhood and an end, the actual time of the interview. By doing so extraordinary events are stressed, those which have marked a turn in the life of the interviewee during his life cycle.

In the case of multilocation the interviewee is there but continues also to live a time and a life where he is not physically present. For example a mobile worker who still "lives with" his family, experience a multiple time experience. The contiguity of those times cannot be retranscript by the linearity of the biographical account based on events and facts. Time distortions, circularity and parallelism do not appear or only on the margins of the interview.

Based on biographical accounts made with French and British mobile workers as well as second home owners we will analyse the possibilities and constraints of the method due first, to the need to apprehend the life of the interviewee in different places, places the researcher does not know, secondly the various support used to help recall the different time-space the interviewee has experienced.

Reiner Keller (University Koblenz- Landau)

The contribution outlines a research pro­gramme which I have coined the "sociology of knowledge approach to discourse" (Wissens­sozio­logische Diskursanalyse WDA). Originating in comparative studies of public debates on waste issues in France and Germany in the early 1990s, the WDA-Approach since then has been spreading across different social sciences disciplines in Germany, including sociology and political sciences to figure by now amongst the most established approaches to discourse in these fields. Recent studies in political sciences have focused on nuclear energy debates (R. Bern, Norway) and forest policies (G. Winkel, Freiburg), on campaigning and voting for the European constitution in France, Ireland and the Netherlands (W. Schünemann, Landau), on Identity politics of social movements (P. Ulrich, Berlin) or on the scientific construction of Islamic terrorism (C. Brunner, Wien).

The WDA approach to dis­course integrates important insights of Foucault's theory of discourse into the interpretative paradigm in the social sciences, especially the "German" approach of hermeneutic sociology of knowledge (Hermeneutische Wissenssoziologie), referring to the Berger/Luckmann tradition. Accordingly, in this approach discourses are con­sidered as "structured and structuring structures" which shape social practices of enunciation. Un­like some Foucauldian approaches, the WDA approach to discourse recognises the importance of socially constituted actors in the social production and circulation of knowledge as well as the interpretive dimension of discourse research. Furthermore, it com­bines research questions related to the concept of "discourse" with the methodical toolbox of qual­itative social research. Going beyond ques­tions of language in use, "the sociology of knowl­edge ap­proach to discourse" (Wissenssozio­logi­sche Dis­kurs­analyse) addresses social sciences inter­ests, the analyses of social relations and politics of knowl­edge as well as the discursive construction of re­al­ity as an empirical ("material") process. For empiri­cal research on discourse the approach proposes the use of analytical concepts from the sociology of knowledge tradition, such as inter­pretive schemes or frames (Deutungsmuster), "clas­sifi­ca­tions", "phenomenal structure" (Phäno­men­struktur), "narrative structure", and the use of the methodological strategies of "grounded theory". Materialities of discourse are adressed by concepts as 'dispositif', 'practice' and 'actor'. The presentation will address the WDAs theoretical groundings, methodological reflections and strategies for research in politics of knowledge, drawing on examples from empirical research.

Anders Hanberger

A highly controversial issue in Sweden and in countries using nuclear power concerns how to deal with the nuclear waste. The Swedish government has assigned a special agency to investigate and explore alternative solutions to take care of the waste. A special task has also been given to the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste, an independent committee on nuclear waste, to be the government’s advisor in coming to judgement about sustainable solutions for nuclear waste deposit. The council is an independent actor and source not only for the Government, but for other state agencies, local governments and stakeholders as well.

Anja Bauer

What will be the environmental and health risks of nanotechnology and how should they be regulated? How does the economy of a region develop and which areas for industry are needed? What challenges arise for mountainous areas due to climate change and how can strategies to remedy the adverse effects look like?  -  All these questions refer to some future state or event, challenge or problem, goal or vision. While their happening is expected in the future, the questions are raised as orientations for current decision-making in politics and society. The challenges, chances, risks or visions are anticipated and reflected in order to prepare for, to limit or to foster them by investments, strategies, planning, regulations, etc. Following increasing concerns about unintended side-effects of developments and decisions, new concepts of environmental policy integration and Sustainable Development as well as the call for evidence-based policy-making a range of analytical and interactive instruments, concepts and tools have been established with the aim of providing anticipatory knowledge as a guide to decision-making.

Basing on the idea that such instruments and tools co-evolve with particular theoretical ideas and discourses on anticipatory knowledge and knowledge production, the decision-making process and the role of knowledge therein, I discuss three such anticipatory instruments, namely Strategic Environmental Assessment, Technology Assessment and Foresight. By their institutionalization, through guidelines and textbooks, professional communities, laws and regulations, organizations, networks, etc., the instruments form a more or less coherent and identifiable set of specific ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions about collecting, weighing and using anticipatory knowledge. By their institutionalization and application, in turn, they contribute to the reinforcement and objectivation of these assumptions. Against this background and drawing on insights from policy analysis as well as Science and Technologies Studies, I discuss the conceptions, underlying assumptions and resulting design principles of the instruments. In particular, I analyze the underlying ideas about what can be known about the future and how. Further, I reconstruct the assumptions about the nature of the decision-making processes and the rationality of actors, about what accounts for legitimate expertise, the role of knowledge in decision-making and the character of the science-policy-society interface in general. For example, while the conception of SEA refers to technical rationality and positivistic knowledge production with a strong belief in instrumental use of knowledge, Foresight emphasizes the constructed nature of knowledge and interactive knowledge production processes.

The different underlying assumptions have implications on how the processes of anticipation are organized, which methods are applied, which actors are seen as legitimate to participate, the dealing with different knowledge claims, data, uncertainties and ambiguities as well as the way decision-making is informed. Within this paper critical attention is paid to forms of inclusion and exclusion; allocations of power, authority and control; making of credibility, expertise and legitimacy; manifestations of rationality and technocracy that are inscribed in the conceptions and reinforced by the use of the three instruments of anticipatory policy information and deliberation. 

Liz Sharp

For me, interpretative approaches have a strong visceral appeal.  They feel right.  But why?  Existing arguments for interpretive research are based on either on their appropriateness in the light of the 'new governance' (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003), or on the need to factor in wider expertise in a post-positivist world (Collins and Evans, 2002).  In this paper I seek to move beyond these general arguments to consider specifically why research about environmental governance needs to be more interpretative.

Environmental governance is taken to mean "the regulation and mobilisation of the social actions that impact on our physical surroundings" (after Healey, 2006).  Drawing on insights from the sustainable consumption literature and from science and technology studies, this paper makes two new contributions:

1. Environmental governance is understood as the governance of socio technical systems, that is, the governance of interwoven physical, individual and institutional components through which our daily lives, including our consumption of resources, are structured.  Past discourses are sedimented in these components, but the different components also co-evolve via the medium of practices.  If we want to influence these systems, we need to think about how the range of (governance) institutions are structuring both the physical infrastructure and the assumptions, understandings and preferences of individuals.   This means that we need to unpack how practices are understood by those performing them.
2. Here, attention is given to the interaction between institutional and individual components, and related issues about trust, power and collectivity.   Using contemporary water systems as an example, the characteristics of socio-technical systems are characterised in relation to the grid-group analysis of Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson.  Contemporary water systems are understood as hierarchical; that is, extremely effective in the provision of collective services, but offering system little knowledge, understanding or control to citizen-consumers.    Attempts to 'transition' this highly sedimented system to a different type of water services are argued to be difficult within the existing hierarchical dynamics.  A strong argument for interpretative research is the potential it offers to provide space for the renegotiation of our water (and other socio-technical) systems.

The paper concludes by laying out a programme of priorities for interpretative research on socio-technical systems. 

Jan Dobbernack

Initiatives to invigorate counter-terrorism measures increasingly profess an interest in root causes of extremism. The concern with 'home-grown terrorism', it seems, has made governments expand their purview to cover a range of previously unproblematic choices, expressions and practices. The British Contest II strategy of 2009 focuses on individuals that 'reject and undermine our shared values and jeopardise community cohesion.' Concerns of German security agencies over terrorism have been expanded, as witnessed in recent policy papers, to cover those milieus that 'strengthen their own religious and cultural identity' whilst 'refusing to assimilate into German society.' In France, in a recent White Paper, fractures sociales are presented as the most salient factor in explaining radicalisation and extremism. Counter-terrorism, it seems, has become a crystallizing point for definitions of social cohesion and national unity.

This paper compares and contrasts such definitions in recent initiatives across the cases of Germany, France, and the UK. It inquires, in particular, into the relations of two themes: how are the according definitions of social cohesion and national unity operationalized into expectations of conduct and demands for self-responsibilization? How do new definitions of 'risky' populations, in turn, substantiate changing imaginations of society? 

Claus Drejer

This paper is about subjectification of pupils' in the Danish primary school (here after The Folkeskole). In the paper, I will tell the story about what kind of impact teaching after the implementation of The Folkeskole Act from 2006 has on teaching and the pupil. The paper is based on my PhD research on The Folkeskole.

Firstly, I will briefly introduce The Folkeskole Act. In 2006, a new legislation for the primary school was agreed in Folketinget (The Danish Parliament). The new legislation is basically based on performance and accountability. The key elements in The Folkeskole Act is; an increased use of evaluation, mandatory national tests, written plans for each pupil, quality reports, and a new independent council of evaluation and development of quality. (See Law 313 of 19. April 2006 and Law 576 of 9. June 2006). These different steering technologies The Folkeskole Act is a result of a PISA-test from 2000, where Danish pupil's got low test-scores, and it is also a result of a new government.

The paper begins with a problematization of the way low-test scores in subject as Reading and Science in the PISA-test from 2000, and the educational a priori judgements the Pisa-test produced. In addition, the use of the above mentioned steering techniques such as tests, evaluations, written plans for each pupil, quality reports, to enhance the responsibility of the pupil has become a widespread tool. My approach to the analysis is a scepticism of teaching and the techniques and mechanisms which its 

I will employ a governmentality approach to study subjectification in The Folkeskole. Foucault's work on 'conduct of conduct' provides an exiting base to analyze the operation of power. He sees governmentality as a three-step process of power and knowledge. (Foucault 2008: 116f). Governmentality is a process, in which the human sciences concepts and frames our understanding.

I combine two different data producing techniques: interviews and documents. The interviews are semi-structured qualitative interviews with experts in field and with teachers as well. My primary data source is Folkeskolen (a specialist journal for teachers in primary school). But to make the material heterogeneous, it is indispensable to include other empirical sources, such as different reports (Pisa-reports and governmental reports etc.), relevant news paper articles, articles in specialized journals, and relevant websites.  

Steve Griggs (De Montfort University) & Dr David Howarth (University of Essex)

It is perhaps something of a commonplace to suggest that mainstream political science tends to presume, and then favour, notions of equilibrium, continuity, order, and rational consensus. It is certainly true of rational choice theory, structural-functionalism, systems theory, and even Marxism. New institutionalism and historical institutionalism are no exceptions to the rule. Historical institutionalists like Paul Pierson argue that 'there are self-reinforcing processes in institutions', which 'make institutional configurations, and hence their policies, difficult to change once a pattern has been established' (Pierson, 2000 cited in Peters et al, 2005: 1276). These intuitions are captured by terms like path dependence, which are 'used to describe the powerful influence of the past on the present and future' (North, 1994: 364). Institutional change thus depends on previously existing institutional patterns and social relationships. Yet they are also visible in the concept of 'punctuated equilibrium', in which it is assumed that policies remain in equilibrium for a lengthy (though not determinate) period of time until they are diverted from one line of flight to another, thus inaugurating a new equilibrium (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993).

         An emphasis on continuity is also evident in the field of policy studies. A major tendency is concerned with the persistence of policies, and various obstacles to policy change. A minority report, on the other hand, stresses change and policy reversals, though their accounts are not wholly convincing. The focus on continuity is not unimportant. In fact, as we shall argue, concepts associated with institutionalism - path dependence, punctuated equilibrium, policy legacies, the logic of appropriateness, and so on - are essential in analyzing and explaining important aspects of public policy. Yet they need to be deconstructed, supplemented and then reworked. Part of this work is conceptual and theoretical. But in our view it must also be rooted in detailed empirical case studies, which enable theoretical ideas to be probed and tested, whilst also enabling them to be further developed and specified. Our focus on the grip of aviation in the UK works toward this task. More precisely, we explore the installation and persistence of what we term a regime of aviation expansion in postwar Britain, which emerged during WW2. On the surface, our object of analysis appears to exemplify the concepts of policy continuity, path dependence, punctuated equilibrium that makes up historical institutionalism. Yet our analysis will show how these notions are insufficient to provide a fully fledged critical explanation.

         Instead we use post-Marxist discourse theory to integrate the importance of political conflict in deciphering the 'ignoble origins' of various policies and regimes, and we articulate the complex interplay between social, political and fantasmatic logics to account for their sedimentation and reproduction. We begin by problematizing the issue of sustainable aviation in postwar Britain, and then set out the contours of our theoretical approach. We then use post-Marxist concepts and logics to characterize the regime of aviation expansion, before explaining its ignoble origins during WW2 and its immediate aftermath. By pinpointing a complex interplay of political and fantasmatic logics we then provide an explanation of the management and reproduction of this regime, and we conclude with a critique of the ideology of sustainable aviation, along with an alternative set of projections. In short, then, we take the problem of UK aviation as an exemplary and critical case study, which can offer us important theoretical and empirical insights into questions of policy change and continuity. 

Benjamin Hawkins (School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh)

This paper looks to explore the relationship which exists between the UK government's policy towards the EU and broader societal discourses about British identity and the position of the UK within the EU. Drawing on scholarship in the field of post-structuralist discourse theory (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Glynos and Howarth, 2007), and its application in the field of international relations (Campbell, 1998; Hansen, 2006), the paper aims to develop a theoretical framework for analysing the question at hand.

In addition, it will argue that the logics of critical explanation developed by Glynos and Howarth provide a set of methodological guidelines for the examination of the foreign policy process. Discourse theory offers a set of concepts through which it is possible to investigate the structure of eurosceptic discourses and, drawing on the insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is able to account also for the strength and longevity of this discourse. In this way it aims to contribute towards the development of discourse theory as an approach to studying the political process at the supranational level.

The paper will offer an overview of the discursive terrain in which government actors are immersed and will examine the ways in which the hegemonic constructions of EU politics open up certain spaces for political activity, whilst precluding others. Drawing on a recent study of the debates surrounding the EU treaty reform process, it focuses on the eurosceptic discourse of British national identity which dictates the terrain on which debates about the EU are conducted in the UK.

Within the eurosceptic discourse, EU politics is seen as a zero-sum game in which the most powerful member-states compete for advantage. Above all, France and Germany are seen as the most powerful and influential states in the Union, who benefit from the EU at the UK's expense. Underpinning this discourse are fantasies of domination and suppression which are able to explain the strength and enduring appeal of eurosceptic discourses.

The construction of the EU as a forum for international bargaining means that the role of state actors is to defend their national interest. The focus is not on the benefits which may derive from EU membership, but the harms which must be avoided. The presentation of the EU as a threat to the British national interest which must be neutralised, it will be argued, precludes a more positive engagement with the EU and opens up only a narrow space of action for the British government in articulating its policy towards the EU.  

Dr Benjamin Hawkins (School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh)

e-mail: b.r.hawkins@sms.ed.ac.uk

Anja Eleveld, (University of Leiden)

Glynos and Howarth's Logics of Critical Explanation (LCE) can, thus far, be conceived as the most comprehensive attempt to construct an explanatory framework on the basis of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. This explanatory model is innovative as it seeks to replace realist explanatory models without falling back on to the relativism of hermeneutics. This paper argues that LCE can also give a new impulse to post-positivistic policy analysis which, like hermeneutics, faces the critique of being mere descriptive. However, LCE can only be of additional value for post-positivistic policy analysis in case the model is modified in at least three respects. That is, LCE should also be of use for micro-level research. Secondly, LCE should not only draw on Laclau and Mouffe's post-structuralism but, on different post-structuralist insights. Thirdly, the strict distinction between the ontical and the ontological level should be softened. For this purpose, the paper proposes, among others, to extend LCE with the a further explanatory category, rhetorical logics. A critical explanation of the emergence of the Dutch life course arrangement illustrates the working of a modified LCE.

Anja Eleveld, PhD Candidate (University of Leiden)

e-mail: A.Eleveld@LAW.leidenuniv.nl

Jason Glynos & Dr Ewen Speed (University of Essex)

This paper explores the political and ideological significance of timebanking as a community economy in the UK. After a brief sketch of the basic features and variety of timebanking practices, we situate them in relation to the wider UK social economy and health policy context.

Timebanking rewards people who offer their services to others. The reward comes in the form of time credits which can be exchanged for services offered by other members of the timebanking network. The hour A spends ferrying B about in a car is credited with one time unit, which A can then exchange for the carpentry services of another time bank member, C. In such a framework, people's skills and assets are identified, acknowledged, and given recognition, and labour is valued equally, one hour's work always being equal to one time credit. Timebanking can operate as a free-standing practice, set up for whatever reason participants care to consider. However, an interesting feature of the way timebanking has developed in the UK concerns its tendency to function as a complement - support even - of public services.

From the perspective of public service delivery, timebanking is seen as a potential boon for service users, offering them the opportunity to become much more centrally involved in their care, and indeed in the wider community. In this context, timebanking is seen very much as an instance of co-production, in which service users and health and social care practitioners 'co-produce' the health or social services being delivered. But, we argue, co-production carries with it both radical and ideological potential. Timebanking can empower people and it can yield significant positive health benefits; but it can also be subsumed under a wider imperative to shrink statutory services and achieve compliance with public sector funding cuts. Which pathway is followed will be a function of the power relations and discursive strategies available to key actors operating within a shifting policy terrain. Situating itself broadly within a logics framework (Glynos & Howarth 2007) this paper draws on case material to explore the conditions under which iterations of co-production principles can receive, maintain, or lose the radical edge that advocates invest in them. The analysis will consider the implications of these different iterations in terms of what they might suggest in the context of 'policy as practice'. The paper thus starts to map out some of the main actors and dominant policy assumptions that advocates and practitioners of timebanking will have to negotiate or overcome in practice.

Dr Jason Glynos (Department of Government, University of Essex) & Dr Ewen Speed (School of Health and Human Sciences, University of Essex)

e-mails: ljglyn@essex.ac.uk; esspeed@essex.ac.uk.

Karen West (School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University)

This paper works from the assumption that public sector management is in the grip of a serious critical deficit in which there is limited space for practitioners to apprehend, much less to (politically) articulate, the decoupling of policy prescriptions from the underlying conditions they purport to address. Practitioners risk being reduced to mere performers in a surrealist policy pantomime.  However, knowing this and acting upon it depend crucially on having the right conceptual tools for diagnosing the pathology of 'performativity' (accepting that this term itself requires further exploration) and for the development of a critical response.  The paper argues that the concepts of radical contingency and hegemony are keys to such a critical project.  It draws on two (different) understandings of these, hailing from different schools of social theory - post-structuralism and science and technology studies/Actor Network Theory and explores the possibilities for a synthesis of these.  It takes Glynos and Howarth's logics of critical explanation as an exemplar of the post-structuralist and Anne-Marie Mol's (2002, 2008) notion of 'ontological politics' and the 'logics' issuing from competing and co-existing realities, of the Actor Network (or, perhaps more correctly, post-Actor-Network) approach.   In summary, it argues that Glynos and Howarth's logics, meshed into a comprehensive ontological schema, provide a framework for explaining the various ways in which subjects face (or not) radical contingency, and thereby offers up serious possibilities for critical re-engagement with public management.  However, it is also argued that the way in which their theory separates the social and the political risks de-radicalising the radical contingency they seek to foreground.  Conversely, Mol's deep commitment, as ANT and associational sociology more generally, to the empirical specification of the logics of practice and her understanding of the political as emerging from the (social) practical, serves firmly to fix the gaze on radical contingency.   However, and again as with ANT more generally, while this provides very sharp tools for engaging with the (radically contingent) empirical world of practice, it falls short in its lack of  overall analytical scheme for explaining the 'the transformation, stabilization, and maintenance of regimes and social practices' (Glynos and Howarth, 2007).   Hence it relies on a rather vague notion of hegemony.  This is also evident in the work of others who hail from the same ontological stall, for example Boltanski and Thevenot and Latour himself.

The paper begins with a brief empirical examination of the condition of performativity in the policy domain of older adult social care in the UK and explores the possibilities occasioned by the public sector financial crisis as a 'dislocatory event' (Glynos and Howarth, 2007) capable of reactivating political subjectivity.  It then examines Glynos and Howarth's influential logics of critical explanation, as a serious way forward in exploring and explaining the pathology of performativity and its possible remedy.  It then explores the ways in which alternative thinking on the logics of practice and the values they enact, in particular the work of Mol, could give back the radicality lacking in Glynos and Howarth.  It then considers how a synthesized framework might be deployed in enlivening the critical project in public management.

Dr Karen West (School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University)

e-mail:k.west@aston.ac.uk

Allan Dreyer Hansen (Institute of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University)

The notion of logics was introduced in Laclau and Mouffe discourse theory from the very beginning, specifying that the deconstruction of essentialism necessitates the redefinition of the status of the notions of "classical analysis - such as 'centre', 'power', 'autonomy'": No longer essences or fully fledged objectivities, they are now to be seen as "contingent social logics which, as such, acquire their meaning in precise conjunctural and relational contexts, where they will always be limited by other - frequently contradictory - logics; but none of them has absolute validity, in the sense of defining a space or structural moment which could not in its turn be subverted" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 142-3)

Two points should be given specific attention here. First, the distinction is made between discourse theory and classical analysis; second, in HSS logics are social logics. As is well known the development of Laclau's discourse theory let to the explication of the thesis of the ontological primacy of the political, from NRROT onwards, turning the most basic distinction in the theory into that between the social (sedimented) and the political (the reactivated)(Laclau 1990). 'Logics' has been developed into a centre stage concept by Glynos and Howarth, showing its advantage over 'classical' alternatives, be they of a causalist, interpretivist, or other kind. In their path-breaking work, however, they follow the basic claim and introduces the distinction between social and political logics as the founding one (even if supplemented with a third type, the fantasmatic) (Glynos and Howarth 2007).

In this paper I want to take issue with the notion of logics in the light of a critique of the claim of the ontological primacy of the political. I situate discourse theory in the theoretical frame of 'post-classical theory' as developed by Plotnitsky (1994; 2002). My claim is however, that the "irreducible loss" is to be situated not in ontologizing antagonisms (leading to the claim of the ontological primacy of the political), but rather in - what might well be called - a general (rather than a specific) theory of articulation. The point is that articulable objects - i.e. objects that are essentially open to change - is most productively seen as logics.

However, if the thesis of the primacy of the political cannot be maintained, we cannot maintain that logics are basically either political or social. This obviously has a set of consequences for the the concept of logics. First of all, all logics must be seen as social logics. Political logics are not to be distingusihed from social logics as such but from different kinds of other social logics: e.g. economic, artistic, scientific, legal etc. This forces one to state the ('social') specificity of political logics. In Laclau's later writings he has actually introduced the notion of 'claims' as a 'minimal unit' for political analysis (Laclau 2005a; Laclau 2005b). This seems to be a very productive starting point, but the question is whether this is a logic of 'national-popular subjectivity' and whether 'politics' do not cover a much broader spectrum. Furthermore, I believe that we need to rethink the status of the logics of equivalence and difference, presented by Howarth and Glynos as the main characteristics of political logics. My claim is that all logics can be placed along the parameters of substitution and combination.

I end the paper with a brief sketch of the debate on 'neo-liberal' hegemony showing how neo-liberalism should exactly be seen as a specific articulation of a set of logics, forcing us to be much more specific when referring to and analyzing neo-liberalism.

The paper is in 3 parts. 1) I situate Laclauian discourse theory within a broader post-classical theoretical movement. Here I show that the political might well be seen as a privileged site for the 'observation of contingency', but that it cannot be granted ontological primacy. 2) I dig deeper into the notion of logics in Laclau's writing, and present the way Glynos and Howarth has developed these first movements into a full account 3) I show how the 'sociality' of politics appears in Laclau's writings (on populism), and from there I sketch the way we might rethink 'social logics' when they cannot be distinguished from anything 'beyond' (i.e. non-social logics). 4) I conclude the paper by sketching how the re-articulated notion of logics can be used in analyzing 'neo-liberalism'. 

Associate Professor Allan Dreyer Hansen (Institute of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University)

e-mail: adh@ruc.dk

Eric Deibel

The study of non-modern networks (Latour 1993) has much to learn from science fictions - in particular from its lively debates over what counts as life and nature in biology and informatics. Even though futuristic viewpoints on life and nature are necessarily over dramatized, such perspectives are not as limited in their diagnosis as many academic views of science and society. Only they provide an alternative for the dismal situation that is the result of not being quite non-modern enough -the possibility that this humanity would become unrecognizable and will be replaced by something else entirely.

Slavoj Žižek has observed that the fear about the future of human nature and for our post-human future is the shadow side of the triumph of liberal democracy; when its universalism took on the shape of an end of history, its human subject started dissolving. The possibility to genetically engineer "better" humans does not demonstrate that we are in danger of losing our freedom and dignity as individuals, but rather that "we never had them in the first place" (Žižek 2004: 130). In other words, genetic engineering makes it explicit that human consciousness was never in control of the biological body and its distributed cognition. This appears to be the aim, for example, of those that would protect 'human nature' from biotechnology, which Žižek explains has as its positive condition a 'fetish split' between science and an ethics that clings to the illusion of human autonomy (Žižek 2004: 194). The subject that is idealized as autonomous, reasonable and dignified can only survive through more control over the dissolution of its increasingly informatic body. Continuously biogenetics - especially in medicine and food - affirms the post-human theme; suggesting an expiry date for a political subjectivity that is considered as unchanging and as the universal standard for democracy in the future. In brief, biogenetics reveals the end to history of liberal democracy as an illusion in its demonstration of an end to nature.

Furthermore, when the inflated liberal subject is threatened by biogenetics it reveals the 'non-modernity' that Bruno Latour (1993) proposes. Latour suggested that the seemingly separated domains of science and society can be combined on the precondition that these are not so much two separate domains that at times interrelate, but were always already one domain to begin with. This is where the science fictions are important: often their imagination about a separation of science and society has catastrophic consequences - like the 'end' to humanity theme. This dramatization could be considered as the flipside to the 'patch up' that Latour imagines. Where Latour would rejoin the big divide of science and society, the science fictions imagine the unfolding of brave new worlds wherein the drama of his symbolic division is magnified to the maximum.

This paper draws on some of the vigor and urgency of the discussions of the dystopian and utopian connotations of biology in science fiction literature. More specifically the convergence of biology and informatics is studied as it appears in recent science fictions as alternative imaginaries to the many promises about food, empty fuel tanks and the weather that permeate biology. This is what the title refers to: there is fiction in biology and there are many science fictions that demonstrate an admirable proximity to the contemporary issues in biology and bioinformatics. A selection of science fictions is studied in relation to post-humanity and the commodification of life, to a fear of (dis-)embodiment in genetic modification and the geo-political consequences of the business-interest in the management of more and more informatic bodies at a time when life is being rendered into information resources that can be programmed, engineered and traded.

Charlotte Epstein (University of Sydney)

Aysem Mert (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Sustainable development is one of the most ubiquitous concepts in international relations today: Most UN system institutions use the term in their mission statements; international summits are held in its name; governments construct sustainable development programmes; corporations write reports and establish their own global 'council' on the matter, and NGOs make sure that they merge it with their various aims and demands. Wherever one looks, one can find it is constantly reified.

Such omnipresence makes it difficult to analyse social phenomena, as it inhibits the construction of a uniform reality; what Arturo Escobar (1995: 5) -following Michel Foucault- calls colonisation of reality. In a more practical vein, Ivan Illich has also shown how certain institutions not only limit the modes of thought one is able to make sense through, but also make alternative modes of institutions, technologies, and living impossible, which he names the creation of radical monopolies. It is the aim of this paper to analyse the 'colonisation of reality' by the sustainable development paradigm. To escape this omnipresence, the psychological/fantasmatic level will be the starting point of my analysis. It is possible to trace back in the western myths that the two ideological roots of sustainable development (environmentalism and developmentalism) are interwoven: the myth of development emerges from the disruption of the principles of moderation that originally flourished in ancient Greece. The Greeks acknowledged, feared, and avoided the infinite, as their social imaginary was based on limits and the myth of moderation. Human arrogance against gods (hýbris) would necessarily bring divine wrath (nemesis), which would restore the natural order. The idea of 'divine limits' and the golden rule of 'maintaining the proper mean' were central to Greek thought, and was only dismissed after monotheism has rationalized the myth that the universality of Christianity and the Roman state would assume a global model on the basis of a coherent 'civilization of growth.' Luigi Zoja (1993 [1995]: 7, my emphasis), argues that the Western psyche still continues to (1) "nourish the taboos and fears of punishment that in the past were associated with arrogance and excessive fortune" and (2) "to live in fear of catastrophe, the forgotten denoument [sic] of its myth." In this sense, the growth-focused developmentalism and the limits-focused environmentalism belong to a unifying myth.

The paper uses a detailed study of myths as an introduction to a more complex analysis of the politics that merged developmentalism with sustainability. In order to understand this hybrid, I first trace the two ideologies separately and relate them to their respective historical contexts. Only then, will it be possible to account for how sustainable development became the dominant discourse in international relations and ineradicably shaped the ways in which reality is imagined and acted upon, and how its institutions became 'radical monopolies'.

Stephan Engelkamp & Katharina Glaab (university of Münster)

How do myths influence the local adaption of norms in non-Western contexts? In their seminal essay, Meyer and Rowan (1977) consider isomorphism of institutional structures as a "celebration" of an institutionalized myth of rationality. According to this approach, social actors ground their practices in a myth of modernity ("world culture") in order to raise legitimacy for their policies. This implies that norms diffuse in a simple top-down direction of effect which leaves the "delivered" norm unchanged.

This paper takes up Meyer and Rowans' focus on myth. However, we look at the discursive conditions of normative change from an interdisciplinary and critical perspective. This enables the identification of local contingencies and struggles for discursive hegemony which concurs with the diffusion of apparently universal norms to local contexts. Here, local norm adoptions are complex discursive processes that entail interpretation and re-signification of global norms. Myths play a key role in these processes as they are necessary to translate global norms into local contexts. Norms hybridize in these discursive processes; a norm does not only diffuse, the norm itself also gets diffuse. Thus, the approach sheds light on the hybridizing effect of myths in the adaption process of "global" and "local" norms.

Two case studies illustrate the argument: the debate about genetically modified food entering Indian markets and the persistence of ritual constructions of legitimate authority in Southeast Asia. In both cases, the role of myths is crucial for the different strategies social actors pursue to construct political legitimacy by trying to "naturalize" their respective political positions in the political discourse. Our focus on mythscapes (Bell 2003) opens a discursive field in which purportedly dominant Western myths of rationality and modernity struggle for discursive hegemony vis-à-vis alternative local narratives.

Richard Holtzmann (Bryant University)

The 2008 election of President Barack Obama, on the heels of a major defeat of the Republican Party in Congress just two years prior, signaled the possibility that a major ideological realignment was taking place in American politics. Obama's promises to aggressively reform the nation's ailing health care system by providing health care coverage for the 47 million Americans who are without, represented an effort to translate this perceived leftward shift into policy reality. However, while this proposed reform had overwhelming public support and appeared well within the realm of possibility just one year ago, today the effort has come to be interpreted by a majority of the population as inimical to American values. What happened? Or more precisely, how can we explain the breakdown in this policy-making process? What are the forces that have frustrated Obama's attempts to reform a set of social practices that has come to be driven more by profits than the health of patients? 

While these questions could be addressed in many ways, my project offers an explanation that focuses on the power of ideas, the ideological dimension of politics and policy-making, rather than drawing upon behaviorist or materialist premises. Specifically, it explores the operation of fantasmatic logics within the American public discourse regarding health care reform. Of particular interest is the American myth of "creeping socialism" and its rhetorical use as a means to sow fear and block the progressive transformation of U.S. social policy. Coined by F.A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom (1944), the notion of creeping socialism warned of America's "drift" toward state control of the means of production as a consequence of FDR's New Deal policies. This narrative has reemerged with new vigor during the Obama presidency, accompanied by claims that the president himself is a socialist. Consequently, his efforts to reform the health care system, which ironically would (to the dismay of liberals) increase both the power and the profits of private sector insurance companies, has largely been dismissed by the poorer and middle classes-those whom it is intended to help-as fundamentally un-American. Therefore, the concept of fantasmatic logics, which Glynos and Howarth (2007) offer as a means to understanding the "inertia of social practices," represents a particularly valuable analytical tool in this context.

This myth of creeping socialism has the impact of reproducing existing social practices that maintain a stark division between the "haves" and "have nots" in the American health care system. As Glynos and Howarth (2007) argue, identifying and conceptually articulating the logic of fantasy in this policy arena can "generate reasons for why practices are maintained or transformed," as well as provide a "means for the ethical critique and normative evaluation" of these practices. Employing the concept of fantasmatic logic as an analytical lens, this project explores the perserverance and  influence of the American public narrative of creeping socialism and identifies its obstructionist effects on Obama's attempts to reform the American health care system.   

Maja Essebo

This paper presents the prospect of a somewhat novel approach to sustainable mobility transitions - the merger of myth and mobility theory. It addresses the prospects for shaping policies for structural transition towards sustainable mobility by investigating the myths that currently underpin resistance to such a transition. Mobility myths, this paper suggests, serve and sustain patterns of high mobility by granting them intrinsic value and making them appear as if part of natural societal evolution.

The concept of myth, although in itself not new, is a novel and underexplored approach to mobility policies, which can help explain why, in spite of the environmental urgency, a transition to a sustainable mobility structure has yet to be made. Although the word myth is part of everyday life, it is a mysterious and multifaceted concept, often mistakenly used as synonymous to an amusing tale, or, worse yet, a lie. This paper seeks to explore another, deeper aspect of myth - myth as a shaper of desires and a definer of society. The main active component in this function is a covert power, a naturalising power. Its strength lies in its ability to make appear natural that which may not be so. It is based on non-conflict and inaction rather than discord and action. In the matter of mobility, the naturalised can be found at the very core of the mobility concept, in the idea that mobility has evolved naturally as an incontrovertible effect of and prerequisite for modern society. High mobility, says the myth, is the very mark of success, individual as well as societal. It is, literally, the way to prosperity that no man, community or nation can afford not to take. Note that even though the power of the myth is challenged, its "truth" is neither claimed nor denied. It is simply stated that the myth is created and, as such, can be recreated in order to aid a policy shift towards a sustainable mobility structure. It is a key component in the understanding of policy making and structural change and/or inertia. 

In order to illustrate these concepts more concretely, this paper will reframe them in the context of a case study of the Øresund region in the south of Sweden - a region where the mobility myth has fundamentally changed policymaking and, as a consequence, the societal structure . Here high mobility has become a way of life, a development lead by a strong policy agenda but that now equally moulds and limits the policymaking process of tomorrow.

Ben Glasson (University of Melbourne)

The most vocal opponents of measures to tackle climate change come from the political hard-right of fossil-fuel dependent nations, often aiming their opposition at the spectre of global bureacracy likely to emerge as a response to climate change.  Yet these critics remain oblivious to the operations of power/knowledge at work in their naturalised version of liberalism.  Their acquisitive and entrepreneurial liberalism, has been shown to be the product of particular technologies of the self rooted in a complex web of historically specific discourses such as private property, Protestantism, and consumerism, among others.

The discourses employed by these critics are substantially enforced by a range of fantasmatic nodal points which, from a Laclauian perspective, maintain the force and regularity of discourse through their status as tendentially empty signifiers.  An analysis of chiefly US and Australian discourses of climate 'skepticism' or 'denial', can demonstrate how purportedly rational arguments are buttressed by a collection of deeply sedimented nodal points which disavow the contingency of the discourses they serve.  This is not to suggest that discourses in concordance with the prevailing climate-change science are somehow immune to the structuring role of the fantasmatic.  But it is to argue that climate skeptic discourse is a fruitful site of analysis and one of strategic interest for progressive politics.  Prevalent among these fantasmatic constructions are those that gather under the signifiers of 'science', 'nature', 'Man', 'progress', as well as a fantasmatic logic of masculinity and domination especially embedded within Western political culture.  It is also argued that the rich fantasmatic content of nodal points of 'nation' are deeply embedded within, chiefly, US discourses of climate change and the environment.

Through the analysis of US and Australian skeptic discourses, this paper demonstrates how the operation of nodal points can be discerned from key texts.  It argues that a logic of interdiscursivity governs the interactions between both elements both logico-semantic and fantasmatic, which implies that climate policy discourses are embedded within, and therefore cannot be studied in isolation of, the rich fantasmatic repertoires of their broader discursive contexts.

Charlotte Dany & Katja Freistein (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Civil society participation in global governance has a mythical core, which we seek to reveal in our paper. Beyond identifying different narratives that help to constitute this myth, i.e. the legitimacy of global governance or the effectiveness of political outcomes, we will look at the functions and political consequences of these mythical narratives in concrete political processes. We aim to find a perspective to civil society participation in governance without normatively exaggerating their potential contributions or simply denying them any political influence at all.

Our understanding of political myths sees them as repeated claims that is made in a certain political context to legitimise a specific form of governance: "what makes a political myth out of a simple narrative is not its content or its claim to truth, but first, the fact that this narrative coagulates and produces significance, second that it is shared by a group, and third that it can come to address the specifically political conditions in which this group operates" (Bottici 2006: 14). Myths have a political content in this sense; however, at the same time, myths do also depoliticize certain issues (Barthes 1964: 131). Therefore, we aim to demonstrate what political consequences the myth of civil society participation has for international negotiations.

Empirically, we will analyze the repeating claims about civil society participation in two international governance processes: the UN World Summit on the Information Society (2003, 2005) and recent developments in the regional institution ASEAN. We analyse and compare political statements of all political actors involved - those representing states and international organizations as much as NGOs - about the role, function, and necessities to include civil society in these international policy processes.

Richard Freeman

Our study is concerned with the fundamental problem of order in complex domains, and with how that order is developed by multiple, collective actors.  We are interested in the particular role of knowledge as a resource for regulation.  This paper draws on a case study of WHO Europe's initiatives in mental health.  Its principal sources of empirical data include the social scientific literature on WHO, WHO's own publications and policy documents, and a series of elite interviews.

The paper sets out to show how WHO works by comparison, which means producing and deploying knowledge which brings actors into relation with one another.  These comparisons are both 'scientific' and 'practical'.  WHO epistemology is in part that of epidemiology, now applied to policy and health service organization rather than to disease.  Its surveys of policy and practice encode the activity of medical and other staff, planners, administrators and other public officials, service users and their carers in abstract, comprehensive and mutually exclusive categories.  Through them, discrete units of organization and behaviour are constituted, discriminated and sorted.  But WHO thinking also assumes a mutual and practical interrogation, by actors of each other and of the domain in and on which they act.  Through what is a multilateral process of information gathering, actors come to know about each other, about what others know about them, and about themselves.

The paper is in two parts, which focus on international surveys and on international meetings respectively.

(i) the comparison of performance

In conducting surveys of mental health policies and services in European countries, WHO has proceeded by exploration, by trying to find out what it might find out.  Different initiatives have been followed incrementally, unfolding through the agreement, redefinition and redirection of projects over time.  We review successive surveys undertaken at more or less ten-year intervals since the early 1970s, including work on subnational regions and districts and a signal attempt to classify mental health services in order to compare them more effectively.  We discuss the 'baseline study', a jointly financed WHO-EC survey of policies and practices meant to assess progress against WHO's Declaration and Action Plan for Mental Health in Europe.  We conclude by noting the emergence of a common agenda in mental health, attributing it at least in part to the performativity of comparison. 

(ii) the performance of comparison

We begin our study of WHO-sponsored international meetings and workshops by noting that the international order is also an interaction order: international relations are also human relations.  What is called the 'international' is a place and moment in which actors enter the presence of others, a moment at which some relationship between them is posited in some form or another.  Those actors chosen to represent their countries in meetings are concerned that others should respect the approach taken on mental health policy in their home countries.  Actors therefore seek to control the perception others form of them through the way they perform at meetings, and they do so through controlling the information others are able to gather about them.

Richard Freeman

School of Social and Political Science

University of Edinburgh (UK)

richard.freeman@ed.ac.uk

Hanneke Duijnhoven

The study on which this paper is based focuses on the ways in which organizational actors within

railway organizations in the Netherlands and Spain shape and give meaning to security in light of

institutional and societal changes and the ways in which this is enacted in their daily practices. In

particular it deals with the processes of sense making, interpretation, and the enactment of security

issues into the daily work practices within these organizations (Duijnhoven, 2010 ). One of the reasons

why security has become a very salient theme among railway organizations (and beyond) is the

increasing number of terrorist attacks and threats in Western societies. The Madrid bombings of 2004

were still fresh in people's memories when in the summer of 2005 the London underground was hit by

a new wave of terrorist bombings.

This was around the time that I started my PhD research on security practices among

organizational actors in the railways. I decided I wanted to study railway security in two very different

contexts, mainly because I was interested in understanding local constructions of meanings and

attitudes towards security, as embedded in broader (discursive) structures. The next step was to select

two contexts that seem to be different in many ways. I selected the Spanish and Dutch railways as my

cases, mainly because of the apparent cultural, historical and political differences between these two

contexts. In that respect, Spain may be characterized as a country with a very turbulent political history and experience with terrorism, and the Netherlands as a country with an image of tolerance and little experience with large-scale security threats and incidents. Obviously, these are stereotypical

representations of the two countries, but it offers enough ground for an interesting combination of

these fieldwork locations.

As Adcock (2006) discusses, an interpretive approach to comparison in social sciences generally

aims to combine the understanding of locally situated particularities with that of some general

movement or phenomenon. This general conception of a 'problem' (in this case security) serves "to

help illuminate how legacies of the past play into the shape of developments in different societies"

(Adcock, 2006: 63). To put it more precisely, an interpretive research design allows for the studying of

local manifestations of public discourses around security, in relation to individual actions and general

historical and political developments. The aim is not to talk, at an abstract level, about differences and

similarities between the Netherlands and Spain (as is often the case in more traditional, variable-based

'comparative' research designs), or compare the culture of both organizations/countries. On the

contrary, the aim is to discuss the situational meaning constructions of security and the life-worlds of

railway employees in the Netherlands and Spain, in relation to historical, political and societal

developments in each country as well as in the railway sector in general.

In this paper I will reflect upon my experiences with the comparative aspect of my research and

further develop some ideas concerning interpretive practices of comparison.

Hanneke Duijnhoven
Faculty of Social Sciences
Vrije Universiteit (NL) 
hl.duijnhoven@fsw.vu.nl

Barbara Lucas and Lea Sgier

The aim of our paper is to make a contribution to the methodological discussion around the use of discourse analysis in policy research.

The role of discourse in policy research has attracted increasing attention over the last decade, by scholars in public policy who have started to get intrigued about what they call the "ideational", "cognitive" or "ideological" aspects of policy, also referred to as "values" or "référentiels" (P. Muller)^[1], on the one hand; and by discourse analysts who have become more and more interested in policy issues^[2] on the other hand.

Although both approaches have produced valuable insights into the role of discourse in public policy, there remain gaps in-between these two approaches that hardly communicate. Policy analysts tend to have a rather vague and under-problematised notion of "discourse" (or their conceptual equivalents), and continue to rely on external explanation of policy change (such as changes in government coalitions) rather than taking into account also mechanisms internal to discourse, as discussed for instance by Foucault.

Discourse analysts interested in public policy, on the other hand, typically under-conceptualise the notion of public policy. The boundaries between a "policy" and a wider notion of politics often remain unclear. Similarly, the precise connections between discourse as "talk" and discourse as "practice" are often under-specified.

In our paper, we argue that these conceptual problems become particularly problematic once we consider comparative and/or longitudinal policy analyses. Both the synchronic and the diachronic dimensions of DA (as well as the combination of the two), have already been explored by discourse analysts, most prominently by Foucault in his genealogical works. However, with regard to contemporary quality criteria in qualitative research, these works must be considered unsatisfactory.

In our paper, we defend the usefulness of synchronic and/or diachronic policy analyses, whilst also arguing in favour of a clearer conceptualisation of key terms such as discourse, public policy, 'context' and (for diachronic comparisons) time.  On the basis of our own works - on care policies in Europe and on gender quota discourses - we will also illustrate the methodological difficulties of a diachronic and synchronic DA (such as the difficulty of establishing truly comparative analytical categories, dealing with the danger of historical anachronism, etc.).

[1] We think of authors like F. Fischer, Majone, P. Hall, S. Hall or (in France) P. Muller.

[2] For example authors like M. Hajer, C. Bacchi, H. Gottweiss, H. Wagenaar.

Barbara Lucas

Department of Political Science

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Barbara.Lucas@unige.ch

and

Lea Sgier

Department of Political Science,

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Lea.Sgier@unige.ch

Matthew Kearnes and Matthias Wienroth

Abstract

Over the last half-century a range of new research programmes has come to dominate public and policy discussion of the nature of scientific and technological innovation. Cybernetics and systems research, followed by information and bio-technologies, and latterly areas such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology have emerged as new and interdisciplinary technoscientific programmes. Though often presented in technical terms - as epistemic developments within hitherto disconnected fields - such programmes are also typically established through forms of state sponsorship and strategic coordination. Fuelled by a range of strategic concerns, the emergence and development of research programmes in areas such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology have become archetypal sites for innovation in scientific governance.

This paper begins from a simple proposition - how might we understand the emergence and consolidation of research programmes in nanotechnology and synthetic biology symmetrically? That is: how might we attend to the constitution of the emergence of new research communities and objects in both epistemic and political terms?

Through an analysis of UK science and research policy we develop a narrative account of contemporary technoscientific governance. In particular, we explore the circulation of a range of problematic narratives that inform the development of science policy priorities and programmes. These narratives draw on wider discourses concerning both knowledge-based innovation and risk-based precaution in the context of pre-existing institutional structures and perceptions of national needs and capabilities to address these. Modes of argumentation implicit to contemporary science policy suggest that mechanisms of research support and coordination are one key instrument with which nations address strategic problems - the future of the nation, the future of democracy and the future of society itself. Informed by a range of overlapping theories of innovation and technological development, these narratives operate both symbolically and instrumentally. Accordingly, we suggest that they are deployed, and must be interpreted, in light of a discursively complex institutional landscape in which the role of the state in coordinating the emergence of new research programmes is mediated by a range of intermediary organisations. 

Matthew Kearnes and Matthias Wienroth

Department of Geography, Durham University

m.b.kearnes@durham.ac.uk

Tiago Moreira

Over the past two decades, the growth of public interest in the biotechnological approaches to the 'problem of aging' has been sustained not only by shifts in the biogerontological knowledge base  but also by scientists' appeals for rethinking the organisation of ageing research itself.  According to these scientists, as the US Alliance for Aging Research put it in 2005, 'the aging research field [is] on the threshold of a new way of thinking-shifting from a focus on specific age-related illnesses to a search for an understanding of aging itself'. This new 'aging research agenda', channelled through science policy platforms such as the House of Lords S&T Committee and consultations on public attitudes toward research into the causes of ageing, explicitly proposes a new articulation between 'society' and biogerontology.

This paper focuses on the emergence of this articulation and analyses how its development and mode of governance diverged between the US and the UK. The paper suggests two dimensions through which this difference can be understood: how technological innovation and expectations in this domain are framed and the devices used to manage them; how the linkage between technological expectations and changes in the rights and obligations of different age strata within contemporary societies is produced in different contexts. 

Tiago Moreira

Durham University

tiago.moreira@durham.ac.uk

Martina Merz

A central concern of current science policy, that academic science benefits industry, has been taken up by universities and public research organizations. This is especially so for the case of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology. In this context, a specific organizational form has come to the fore: the technological platform. These instrumental facilities provide scientific and technological equipment and expertise (various forms of microscopy, specimen preparation, micro- and nanolithography, characterization, etc.), the corresponding personnel, and dedicated work environments (e.g. clean rooms). In the realm of micro- and nanotechnology, technological platforms, typically serving both academic and industrial users, have been promoted with the promise that they foster new forms of academia-industry cooperation and partnership, the intensified ties being seen as constitutive for the emergence and consolidation of these research fields. This paper investigates how technological platforms participate in framing science-industry activities. On the basis of a comparative analysis of three publicly funded technological platforms in Switzerland, it shows that they relate distinctly to academic and to industrial users. The paper then discusses how technological platforms reconfigure the science-economy divide. While the observed platforms provide new institutional contact and interaction between academia and industry, new research collaboration does not necessarily materialize in practice. In this respect science-industry mediation by way of technological platforms does not make science-industry boundaries more porous. Instead, the declared openness of public research with respect to industry, in the case of technological platforms, may contribute to maintain public science's autonomy.

Martina Merz

Institute of Sociology

University of Lucerne

martina.merz@unilu.ch

Emilie Mutombo

Laureen Elgert

Brigitte Portner, Annika Salmi

Graham Walker

Graham Walker

Yannick Rumpala

Georg Winkel, Metodi Sotirov, Johanna Gleissner

Rolf Hugoson, Umea university (Sweden)

Pierre Lefébure, Université de Bordeaux

Caroline Maury, Ludovic Méasson, AgroParisTech Clermont-Ferrand (France)

Hélène Reigner, INRETS, Sébastien Segas, Université de Rennes 2 (France)

Damien Vanneste, Catholic University of Mons (Belgium)

Taoufik Ben Mabrouk PACTE (Grenoble, France)

Governing the city with(out) the citizens : the Janus face of the democracy-based discourses about the city

Local government tends to become a more inclusive process with an increasing emphasis on participation and consultation through negotiated urban projects or urban planning which aims to define the development options of a city through permanent debate (Blanc & Beaumont, 2005; Blondiaux, 2001; Irvin & Stansbury, 2004; Lowndes et al., 2001; Salet et al., 2003). This participative turn not only changed the content and the shape of urban projects and plans but also, and more importantly, the political process of local government with new speeches and self-legitimization techniques of local politicians in charge of urban management, highlighting the political uses of participation and consultation. In that perspective, the recent production of strategic plans and the development of consultation devices of urban management as well require a more critical examination to assess their possible use for the purpose of political regulation. A clear illustration of this major trend is the use of the notion of "collaborative planning" by politicians as a rhetorical element to boast the planning processes though its author, Patsy Healey, coined it at the first stance to examine critically the dynamics and practices of planning (Healey, 2003). But more importantly, such political uses praising the merits of a collective definition of the futures of a city are all the more frequent that contemporary urban planning increasingly relies on a systematic mobilization of democracy-based ideals of participation and consultation. In these conditions, urban planning actually favours a framing of consensual images of the city which change the conditions and the dynamics of the political regulation of the city by politicians and bureaucrats. In this process of framing, citizens are simultaneously present through the abstract image of people for whom proposals are made and absent as participation and consultation involve primarily representatives. Built upon a critical examination of the strategic plans in Europe, this paper will focus on the new patterns of planning documents and their effects on the political regulation of cities in a context of widespread participation.

Andreja Vezovnik, PhD, University of Ljubljana,

In 1992 - the Slovenian Ministry of Internal Affairs erased the legal status of 18.305 of ethnically ex-Yugoslavian inhabitants of Slovenia who, after the secession of Slovenia from Yugoslavia, did not obtain the Slovenian citizenship. Their status became equal to illegal immigrants, although the majority of them for several years, even decades, worked, lived and had families in Slovenia. The paper is based on the qualitative analysis of Slovenian op-ed press in order to determine the discursive frame in which a newly established 'democratic' system created, what Agamben would refer to as 'the Muslims' - people reduced to bare life with apparently no possibility for political subjectivation. Based on the case study of the Erased this paper explores the ethics of the Erased and establishes a dialog between Agamben's conception of the Muslim as pure negativity and Laclau's conception of a discursively inscribed demand as a condition for subjectivation. Therefore the paper wants to address Laclau's and Agamben's different views on theorizing the inside/outside position of the Muslim (in this case the Erased) and tries to address the problem using both theories. While on the one hand, the concepts of hegemony and antagonistic relations are useful in order not to reduce the Erased to pure objects, on the other hand the concept of the Muslim tells us a story of an ongoing reality but, at the same time, implies the role of the Witness or representative that can mediate between the failed enunciation of the Muslim and the discursive inscription of a political demand.

Andreja Vezovnik, PhD, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, andrejavezovnik@gmail.com

Ola Svenonius Department of Political Science Södertörn University

Recent years have witnessed a sharp rise in surveillance practices and installations aimed at the collection of information about human behaviour in general, and behaviour of certain "risk groups" in particular. Surveillance is often a controversial activity, and almost always in need of legitimation in for example legal, financial, and social/political terms. Actors claiming to perform legitimate surveillance adapt rhetorical strategies and apply discursive devices available in the larger discursive field of state-citizen relations within a given context. Such strategies include e.g. voluntary limits to the scope surveillance practices, and addressing fear of crime and social distrust, as well as claims of the outstanding character of surveillance practices as efficient, legally unproblematic, and protecting democratic and even human rights.

This discursive practice does not exist in a vacuum, however. First, such claims can only be made against a cultural-historical background; second, they are almost always subject of resistance. Resistance to surveillance has been an issue of concern not only to policy makers but also for the scientific community (see e.g. Surveillance & Society vol. 6, no.3) and the artistic community (see e.g. New York based artist Jill Magid). Unfortunately, scientific accounts of resistance are often overly theoretical or empirically thin, being based on single observations or exclusively on media material (Cf. Marx 2007). The paper addresses the need of empirical accounts of resistance to surveillance by use of new data generated in a comparative PhD project where discourses and legitimation of surveillance in Germany, Poland and Sweden are analysed. Focusing on resistance to camera surveillance in the local transport in Berlin and Stockholm, the paper highlights different strategies applied by organisations to criticise surveillance practices, both in terms of street activism and lobbying. The results point to several interesting aspects: first, how the resistance in Sweden and Germany focuses on quite different - and irreconcilable - targets; and second, that these differences are related to the general discourse of citizenship in general and security in particular; third, that resistance can be very pragmatic in an ideological sense.

Ola Svenonius Department of Political Science Södertörn University (Stockholm, Sweden) Email: Ola.Svenonius@sh.se

Dr. Semin Suvarierol, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Whereas the growing scope of citizenship requirements in Europe has received much scholarly attention, the actual content of these 'citizenship packages', i.e. the introduction films, booklets, and citizenship tests, has hardly been closely analyzed. These citizenship packages provide us with valuable data to study new nationalisms. The information included in (and excluded from) these packages offers us valuable insights into how the receiving state presents itself to its prospective members. Citizenship packages include descriptions of the nation-state that include an encapsulated summary of the history and the identity of the nation as well as what the newcomers are expected to know and socialize into. Through these packages, the state constructs its own 'national image' to prospective citizens who have missed out on state socialization mechanisms such as national education. In analyzing the new nationalisms reflected in these citizenship materials, I draw on the insights of classical theories of nationalism (cf. Renan, Anderson, Hobsbawm, Gellner) and examine the extent to which the new nationalisms resemble the old nationalisms.

What kinds of images depict the nation-state in citizenship packages? Which historical details and national values are selected for this group of 'late socializers'? How is the migrant portrayed in these national stories? This article aims to answer these questions by analyzing and comparing citizenship packages of three West European countries: the Netherlands, France, and the UK. The data includes introduction films, welcoming packages, and citizenship tests. In analyzing these data, I look both into text and images. The focus of the article will be on the presentations of the Self (as the receiving state and the native) and the Other (as the migrant and the foreigner). I critically assess and analyze the citizenship packages of these countries and focus particularly on the positioning of building blocks of nationalism in these packages; namely, language, history, and norms.

Dr. Semin Suvarierol, Erasmus University Rotterdam E-mail: suvarierol@fsw.eur.nl

Teresa Pullano Fulbright-Schuman Fellow Department of Political Science Columbia University New York

Is there a change in contemporary forms of government with respect to the classical idea of the modern state? And, if yes, is this transformation linked to a different way of appropriating territoriality? Following the hypothesis that Michel Foucault outlines in Security, Territory, Population, this paper will explore the changes in European Union government, with a special focus on citizenship as both a strategic, instrumental, tool and as a normative category, opening up spaces for self-government.

According to Foucault, the central issue for the classical, modern sovereign, such as it is theorized by Machiavel's Prince, is how to rule on a population that is sedentary and how to keep this population within the territory's borders. Historical phenomena that are happening in Europe during the XVIth century, such as epidemics or food shortages, contribute to a shift in government, since the main problem for rulers becomes how to make people circulate and how to control these circulations.

In this paper, I would like to apply Foucault's hypothesis to the analysis of the link between citizenship, territory and circulations in the case of the European Union. I will, at first (I), make the hypothesis of the centrality of policies of free movement and circulation for the restructuring of (a) citizenship and (b) statehood in the case of the EU. I will propose an interpretative analysis of the link between membership space and the restructuring of territoriality in Europe. In this respect, I will make an analysis of the discourses of EU institutional actors concerning citizenship and circulation, with a special focus on the transitional measures concerning the new Eastern members. I will consider European citizenship, in this context, as a strategic tool for the government and classification of individuals within the European political space. I will therefore test Foucault hypothesis in the context of free movement and citizenship policies in the EU.

In a second time (II), I will consider citizenship, territoriality and circulation from a normative point of view. Using philosophical tools, I will build a normative definition of both citizenship and territory and I will argue for the centrality of space and materiality in contemporary forms of government. In this respect, I will drive on Foucault's notion of milieu and I will try to show its implications and also its limits for thinking citizenship as self-government in contemporary Europe and within the context of a different paradigm of political authority and of statehood.

Teresa Pullano Fulbright-Schuman Fellow Department of Political Science Columbia University New York and Italian National Research Council contact: teresapullano@gmail.com teresa.pullano@sciences-po.org

Hernán Cuevas (Universidad Diego Portales) and Isabel Pérez (Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano)

This paper explores the identity politics of Vivopositivo, a key Chilean organization of people living with HIV/AIDS. Vivopositivo's politics coheres around issues of health promotion, public recognition, inclusion/exclusion and the promotion of the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS from the most diverse walks of life. Drawing on individual interviews, documents, press research and participant observation, we explore how Vivopositivo members understand and use ideas relating to sexual citizenship and biological citizenship. Although citizenship can be considered a biopolitical category that primarily relates to the government of populations, here we explore the affirmative biopolitcs of sexual citizenship and biological citizenship. We take sexual citizenship to be a complex concept that works as a metaphor (Weeks, 1998) condensing experiences from the realms of, on the one hand, sexuality and, on the other, citizenship and rights. Similarly, biological citizenship (Rose and Novas, 2004; Rose, 2007; Petrina, ) puts together the apparently discrete experiences of the body, health and illness with that of citizenship and rights. These concepts seem significant to us precisely because they shed light to individuals and groups narrations and understandings about apparently 'private troubles' concerning identity, sexuality and the experience of health and illness, with that of social and political struggles concerning 'public issues' and discourses about discrimination, inclusion/exclusion, visibility, recognition and the constitution of a pluralist public realm of rights and a differentiated citizenship. The paper explores empirically how and to what extent people living with HIV/AIDS in Chile have managed to alter their subject position from a disempowered, stigmatized and even abjected minority to one of equal moral worth.

Hernán Cuevas (hcuevasster@gmail.com) e Isabel Pérez (isaisapz@gmail.com)

Institutions:        Universidad Diego Portales / Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano

Katharina T. Paul Assistant Professor Erasmus University Rotterdam

In the 1990s, medical research concluded that infection with specific strands of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) was a necessary agent for the development of cervical cancer, the second most common form of cancer in young women worldwide. HPV is a sexually transmitted infection; it is estimated that around 75% of sexually active persons will get in contact with the virus at some point in their lives. In 2006 and 2007 respectively, two vaccines (Gardasil and Cervarix) were approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. These vaccines are intended to immunize women and young girls against several strands of the HPV, including those that cause cervical cancer. While the vaccine has been integrated into national health care programs in many countries, the vaccine continues to trigger debate and disagreement. In particular, these debates address the ethical implications of immunizing young girls against a sexually transmitted disease. Others, in turn, base their criticisms on cost-benefit analyses, expressing doubt regarding the effectiveness of the vaccine.

In this paper, we seek to unpack these criticisms and to develop a new framework of analysis inspired by poststructuralist interpretive policy analysis. In doing so, we want to draw attention to the discursive, bio-political, and socio-technical implications of the vaccine. In particular, we point to the gendered logics that govern cervical cancer prevention policy and the ways in which medical research produces linkages between sexuality, contagion, cancer, lifestyle, and women's health. The present paper is structured as follows: Following a critical review of the existing literature on the subject, we introduce the concept of governance. In line with the interpretive tradition in policy analysis we understand governance as the complex, interactive, and informal modes in which issues, specifically those related to medical innovations, become objects of policy. Subsequently, we complement the governance approach with insights from medical anthropology and science studies, particularly feminist approaches, and propose to drawon document analysis and in-depth expert interviews in the tradition of policy discourse analysis and social studies of science.

Such a methodological approach, we argue, makes it possible to explore the contextually contingent factors that account for the ways in which new, unstable technologies are taken up across different socio-political contexts. In an illustration of our approach, we conclude with an empirical overview of our research results so far, focusing on Austria, England, and the Netherlands. We suggest that three factors help account for contextually contingent cervical cancer prevention policy discourses, i.e. adoption or rejection of this particular vaccine: institutional structures, socio-cultural traditions in the field of medicine producing a more or less permissive policy stance, and discursively shaped gender relations.

Katharina T. Paul Assistant Professor Erasmus University Rotterdam Institute for Health Policy and Management (ibmg) The Netherlands paul@bmg.eur.nl

Michaela Theresia Mayrhofer, PhD student at the University of Vienna (Austria) & Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France)

The collection of human biological material is an old practice that has gained new significance in the post-genomic era with the emergence of so-called 'biobanks'. In some cases, biobanks can be understood as locations of 'biological citizenship.' A genetic predisposition can be a constituting element of an individual's identity as a patient that assigns him/her to a particular group around a particular biological component. Donating blood to a biobank can, for instance, be understood as a symbolic act, as an articulation of the refusal to accept the biological component of one's identity as a 'fate'. In an entrepreneurial manner, the act of donation can be depicted as an act of self-governance.

In this paper, I present the Généthon DNA and Cell Bank as an institutional articulation of the concept of 'biological citizenship', whose corporate identity is determined by the goals and promises of the stakeholder institution, the patient organisation AFM. This patient organisation is not only financially independent but also a strong supporter of genetic research. Since the late 1980s, the AFM has initiated several biobanks and has become a very active actor in the French biobanking scene. It has encouraged the French Ethics Committee's opinion on biobanks, fostered collections at hospital sites and supported the creation of networks of biobanks. By employing a warfare-like rhetoric it positions the patients as active citizens who have to fight against an (internal and often invisible) 'enemy'. In case of rare disease patients, their fight is fought over internal borders because the 'enemy' is often inscribed on the genetic level and might be called an unwanted; life threatening and internal 'other'.The 'enemy' is literally within the individual's body and therefore creates new groups and categories of patients reunited in a biobank.

Methodologically, my research is grounded in the study of proclamations (such as advocacy statements), a series of qualitative interviews and extensive on-site observations. 

Michaela Theresia Mayrhofer, PhD student at the University of Vienna (Austria) & Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France)michaela.mayrhofer@medunigraz.at

Naja Vucina Pedersen

 Ph.D. Fellow

, Institute of Society and Globalisation, 



Roskilde University

Preventing the occurrence and spread of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes type 2, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, obesity and cancer has increasingly become an integral part of public health efforts in Denmark. Within public health, these diseases are generally perceived as being associated with risk factors such as smoking, alcohol intake, stress, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets. Consequently, public health efforts increasingly seek to transform people's lifestyle in order to eradicate or minimise high-risk behaviour. The promotion of healthy lifestyles opens up new fields of intervention for the public health administration.

Taking the recent efforts to prevent lifestyle disease as my case, this study sets out to examine these efforts as a particular outcome of modern government. It involves exploring how this new field of intervention is tackled with an array of new techniques and practices concerned with an overall problem: how to govern individual and public bodies and mentalities in order to improve the health of the population.

A recurring subject matter is the relationship in public health promotion between two aspects of government: a. the techniques and practices launched to attend to the administration of public health services and b. the techniques and practices instigated to transform individual conduct. The relationship between these two modes of assessing government of prophylactic health will be reflected on and displayed theoretically, methodologically and empirically throughout the dissertation.

Michel Foucault's notion of bio-power allows me to draw attention to a characteristic of modern power as an operating device for the vitality and the wellbeing of the individual citizen and the population as a whole (Foucault, 2000: 125). Health policies aiming at the transformation of lifestyles are identified as a mode of government in which the preservation and care of the living constitute a central object of intervention (Osborne, in Petersen & Bunton, 1997: 173-89).

In addition to the notion of bio-power, governmentality (Foucault 1980, in Burchell, et al., 1980; cf. Rose, 1998; cf. Dean, 1999) will serve as a way to conceptualise contemporary health promotion as specific ways to problematise and act upon an overall concern: how should one govern oneself and others in order to attain a healthy life? In the case of citizen directed health promotion, conceptualising governmentality equally involves problematisations, practices and techniques relating to the transformation of individual conduct and problematisations, practices and techniques relating to health policy administration.

Naja Vucina Pedersen

 Ph.D. Fellow

, Institute of Society and Globalisation, 



Roskilde University

Michelle Brady (University of Alberta)

Acknowledgements: I gratefully acknowledge that my travel to this conference was supported by a J Gordin Kaplan travel award

The aim of my research project Interrogating Capacity Building is to grasp the spaces of freedom and constraint that the Australian government's capacity building programs for single mothers open up and close down. It seeks to throw new light on the contemporary problem of capacity building programs (such as welfare to work programs), to understand the current limits of thinking about these programs, and to loosen the grip of ways of thinking that have become sedimented. In doing so it aims to highlight concrete ways of thinking and acting differently. It does this through a combination of historical, textual and ethnographic methods that takes inspiration from, and extends, Foucault's later works (on governmentalities and technologies of the self) and the governmentality debate in Anglo Saxon political science and sociology (Lemke: 2003). The historical (genealogical) methods developed by Foucault and the governmentality literature provided many of the tools needed to achieve the aims of this project. Importantly, they enabled a focus on the concrete practices of governance as well as the language and forms of thought through which the problem of capacities arose and solutions to this problem were developed and implemented. They provided tools for illuminating how in the present certain forms of thought, practices, and subjectivities are seen as natural and necessary, and for opening up a critical space around these. Through historical contrasts between how problems of capacities are understood now and how they have been understood differently in the past, these genealogical tools enabled me to provide readers with a critical relation by making "those things [in] our present experience" that are given to us "as if they were timeless, natural, unquestionable" seem strange and not inevitable (Rose 1999).

But these genealogical and historical tools of analysis were insufficient on their own to enable an understanding of the current limits of thought and practice in relation to capacity building programs.  These tools have been developed to focus on 'mentalities of governance', or ways of thinking about governance laid down in official plans for governing, such as those written by Australian Government bureaucrats. But they have not been developed to enable a focus on the 'witches' brew' of actual practices of capacity building programs.  When employed by Anglo-Saxon governmentality researchers, these tools are used to identify the most recent ways in which the issue of capacities has become a problem for the state and the solutions the state has devised. These problems and solutions devised by the state are identified as the current limit of thought and practice. Such an approach ignores the point that new plans and schemes for capacity building programs come into being within a complex social fabric that includes a heterogeneous mix of pre-existing political discourses, including historically specific national discourses (Larner, 2000). New policy solutions do not completely dis-embed existing practices and forms of thought but instead they mix together with them. Thus current capacity building programs combine practices and forms of thought from many different times. Given this mixing, the spaces of freedom and constraint within actual practice may be rather different to the spaces of freedom and constraint that are apparent in plans and programs for governing. In this paper I illustrate how I used ethnographic methods together with historical and textual methods to understand the spaces of freedom and constraint that current Australian government capacity building social policies have opened up, and closed down, and to highlight concrete ways of thinking and acting differently.

Julia Trombetta (Delft University of Technology)

The term "climate security" has gained popularity over the last few years. It merges discourses about environmental security and energy security, and like these discourses, it divides scholars and practitioners about the opportunity of using the term. One of the main reasons of this divide is the debate about "securitization" which has focused on the opportunity and implications of applying a fixed, antagonist security logic based on Schmitt's understanding of the political, to a variety of issues, including the environment and energy.

For this reason, - instead of focusing on the implication of securitizing climate change adopting a fixed, antagonistic security logic for environmental governance - this paper explores the implication of applying environmental language and concepts to security and how the process, in turn, affects environmental governance.

The paper uses Foucault's considerations on the concepts of environment and of security "dispositif". First, the concept of environment for Foucault is the notion which supports ideas of circulation and causality and the paper outlines how this understanding is embedded in contemporary environmental discourses but it has been marginalised in the security debate. Second, the concept of environment defines a field of intervention in which individuals are turned into a population; in this perspective the conceptualization of a global environmental problem seems to suggest the possibility of generating a global population to be governed. Third, for Foucault security dispositifs organise and conceptualise a specific environment. The question then becomes how the call for new security dispositifs prompted by the climate security and the conceptualization of a global environment affect global governance. 

Julia Trombetta (Delft University of Technology)

M.J.Trombetta@tudelft.nl

Elspeth Oppermann (Lancaster University)

While research continues to debate how to conceptualize human security and adaptation to climate change, conceptualizations of adaptation are already being codified in policy and practice by a range of governmental and non-governmental institutions, with enormous implications for the discourse of adaptation at a wider societal level. This paper seeks to unpick the codification as played out through the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) which has discursive reverberations not only through British society but also internationally. It demonstrates that in the UKCIP's discourse of adaptation, the account of risk management establishes a dominant rational techno-scientific framing that assumes fore-knowledge and fore-planning. This obscures a subsidiary framing that speaks the language of systems and complexity thinking, but this is not developed into a related account of adaptation. The conceptual tensions between these frames are especially clear in the way particular accounts of uncertainty are integrated (or not) into the discourse of adaptation, and what is understood to constitute 'capacity' to adapt. The paper will argue that the rational techno-scientific framing limits the possibilities of understanding adaptation more substantively in terms of the internal connectivity and flexibility that enable adaptive capacity. It also notes that the UKCIP account helps to disconnect the concept of 'adaptation' from the wider discussion of 'resilience' in UK discourse, contributing to the fragmented nature of the overall government response to climate change.  

Elspeth Oppermann (Lancaster University)

e.oppermann@me.com

Eva Lövbrand (Linköping University) and Johannes Stripple (Lund University)

To measure, report and verify (MRV) flows of carbon has become an integral part of global climate governance. Since the Bali Action Plan was adopted in December 2007, the credibility of a future climate treaty has hinged on the development of an appropriate MRV regime that guarantees effective greenhouse gas mitigation efforts in the post 2012 era. Although the MRV concept per se is a fairly recent innovation in climate politics, this paper argues that it can be traced back to a whole series of techniques and practices that have been developed and refined throughout the UN negotiations on climate change. Ever since the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, states have been asked to keep track of their national sources and sinks of greenhouse gases (GHG) and to regularly report their results according to a standardised set of guidelines developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Through the rise of carbon markets such as the EU ETS and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, this national GHG accounting has been complemented by new ways of measuring, reporting and verifying site-specific flows of carbon. Although closely associated with climate governance, many of these MRV practices have been developed in expert domains that typically appear too technical and specialised to be considered political. However, following Foucauldian governmentality studies this paper seeks to broaden the understanding of politics and government to include the many ways in which technical artefacts and practices shape the field of possible action for groups and individuals. As argued by Miller and Rose (2008), governing a sphere requires that it can be represented and depicted in a way that can enter the sphere of conscious political calculation. Hence, only when studying the many MRV practices that have given rise to particular ways of 'seeing' and 'knowing' the climate is it possible, we argue, to fully understand how the climate has been constructed as an administrative domain amendable to certain forms of political and economic rationality. We begin our analysis by conceptualising MRV techniques as a political practice that orders and reconfigures the climate as political space. As a second step we exemplify our argument by outlining the technologies of government that have established 'the national carbon sink' and 'the global carbon economy' as two thinkable administrative domains in international climate politics.

Eva Lövbrand (Linköping University) and Johannes Stripple (Lund University)

eva.lovbrand@liu.se, johannes.stripple@svet.lu.se

Chris Methmann (University of Hamburg)

More and more international organizations and institutions ranging from the World Trade Organization to the Convention on Biological Diversity are starting to incorporate climate protection as an important policy goal. Strikingly, most institutions only rephrase existing activities in the terms of climate protection instead of changing them. For example, the WTO depicts climate change and free trade as complementary goals, while the CBD focuses on the link between a high biodiversity and a stable climate. This 'consistent inconsistency' points to the contentious nature of the very meaning of climate protection. The aim of this paper is to explore the logic of 'climate mainstreaming' and explain the paradoxical result of such a 'consistent inconsistency'. Departing from rationalist and global governance literature, this paper employs a poststructuralist approach that combines elements of governmentality and discourse theory. Drawing on the case of global economic governance it shows that mainstreaming follows from the underlying governmental discourses structuring the governance of climate protection across different policy arenas. It argues that it is the dominant framing of climate change in the terms of an 'advanced liberal government' that allows for merging a wide array of heterogeneous and partly contradictory practices into a unified discourse. 'Climate protection' becomes an 'empty signifier', and this makes consistent inconsistency possible. This allows for the hegemonic integration of climate change issues into dominant discursive structures of world politics. This claim is backed up by a discourse analysis of World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund discourses on climate change.

Chris Methmann (University of Hamburg)

chris.methmann@uni-hamburg.de

Jennifer Smith-Merry (University of Edinburgh)

We argue that the limited impact of practitioner knowledge on the resulting TAMFS policy was a result of both the form of knowledge produced by practitioners and the context of the consultation process as a policy instrument. The type of knowledge used and produced by practitioners, which is tacit, based in experience and transmitted orally through vignettes, does not flow easily through the consultation process and into the policy document. This led us to question the value of their contribution to the consultation. We found that far from being irrelevant, their participation had other important impacts on the policy being consulted for. Practitioner participation in the consultation process was found to have an educative function which was seen to be integral to the effective implementation of the resulting policy. The consultation process in this way served as the first stage of policy implementation.

Jennifer Smith-Merry

University of Edinburgh

School of Social and Political Studies

Edinburgh, Scotland

Jsmith16@staffmail.ed.ac.uk

Sophie Thunus

The origins of the therapeutic projects were the focus of researches in the framework of the European program "Knowledge and Policy". These researches have emphasized an increasing complexity of public action field, in which different actors, relying on political, administrative, or professional logics, advancing national or international considerations, are being involved in a global, coherent and innovative public action in mental health sector.

According to an experimental logic, the therapeutic projects are carried out through local devices typical of procedural public policy (Lascoumes, Le Bourhis, 2005). The two consultation devices in which and between which therapeutic projects are being carried out, respectively the "therapeutic dialogue" and the "transversal dialogue", give a unique opportunity to observe the inner working of these new policy settings, of these "merging scenes" and their dynamics.

Mandated to experiment locally the work conditions in networks and care circuits, the therapeutic dialogue brings together periodically the mental health professionals likely to be involved in the reinsertion of patients suffering from chronic and complex mental disorders.

The 82 local therapeutic projects are empirically evaluated at a national level through the transversal dialogue. Periodic meetings bring together representatives of the projects and of users' associations, which have themselves trained their own experts.

Both experimental levels have been the subject of case studies grounded on the periodic observation of the meetings and on interviews with participants. We found that:

-         different frames of action, cognitive and strategic, are being mobilized and confront with each other: layman versus professional discourse, medical versus social discourse, therapeutic versus administrative rationality

-         the confrontation of these discourses leads to controversies (Latour, 2007), giving opportunities for the creation of a common language as well as revealing potential difficulties related to the collective action in a (dis-)organized context (Friedberg, 1997)

-         action is made possible and thinkable by "investments in form" made by the participants (Latour, 2007)

Finally, these case studies show a process of reciprocal translation between the political and administrative programmes, defined by the central agencies and ministerial staff, and the discussion forums. Asking for action, these programmes are translated by the field players in order to render them possible and thinkable. Reciprocally, the participants in the transversal dialogue, looking for involvement in policy making process, translate their empirical recommendations into the programmes.

Concretely, this communication will first outline the two consultation devices mentioned above: therapeutic dialogue and transversal dialogue. Second, we will analyse the frames of action, types of knowledge and controversies mobilized at both levels. To conclude, we will discuss the interrelations between these "merging scenes" on the one hand, and between these scenes and "coordinating scenes" on the other hand.

Université de Liège

Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales

Sociologie des ressources humaines et des systèmes institutionnels

Université de Liège

Liège - Belgium

Sophie.Thunus@ulg.ac.be

Jarkko Bamberg and Pauliina Lehtonen (University of Tampere, Finland)

New tools for public participation has been designed and experimented for the guidance of development in cities. This paper introduces a case study that aimed at developing practices of public participation by utilising potential of information and communication technology (such as the Internet and GIS). The case study represents a participatory action research project that organised a citizen panel in a suburb, which has witnessed negative side-effects of urbanisation, such as increased unemployment and crime. The citizen panel tried to find meaningful ways for residents to affect the development of their neighbourhood. The residents were considered as experts having experiential knowledge of their lived environment. Hence the central aim was to articulate and mediate their knowledge to planners and civil servants that traditionally lean on scientific-technical knowledge. Public participation has often been labeled into particular stages of urban planning, where it has a legitimate role. However, we take public participation more broadly in this context to include varied forms of continuous interaction between residents, planners and other actors in the city government.

Based on the case study we propose that governance in cities takes place in settings that can be described as systems of fragmented knowledge. These are learning settings in which people, symbols, and technologies co-constitute understanding of social and organizational action. In this light we draw on a perspective of citizen participation where actors such as residents and city government act inside a shared system of fragmented knowledge that consists of various different practices. Actors interpret this system and various practices in local interaction from their viewpoints. We suggest that one of the key questions is to construct boundary infrastructures that can facilitate the movement and translation of different kinds of knowledge within merging scenes. The case study indicates that one of the characteristic features of boundary infrastructures is to use map as a translating device in communicating knowledge between residents and planners.

Jarkko Bamberg, Department of Regional Studies, University of Tampere, Finland, jarkko.bamberg@uta.fi

Pauliina Lehtonen, Journalism Research and Development Centre, University of Tampere, Finland, pauliina.lehtonen@uta.fi

Helena Leino (University of Tampere, Finland)

My aim in this paper is to examine practices of participatory knowledge production as boundary processes. The attempt is to open up the discussion of the potential of the new kinds of emerging scenes for cooperation and to consider the different types of knowledge that could be utilized through these cooperative practices. The resources for knowledge used in urban planning are gathered and operated in diverse cooperative groups, participatory workshops and participatory internet programmes. These spaces for increased interaction can be interpreted as boundary processes themselves; they offer a place where multiple knowledges are produced by different actors.

I am interested in the self-organizing practices that are developed by the situation at hand. Public participation in urban planning is about momentary action and fragile, ambiguous practices. There is a strong focus on the situational context. Participatory action is triggered by situations that require some sort of action from the actors. The situation at hand enables and constrains, it signals to the actor that certain actions are called for, but also that certain conventions, commitments, physical obstacles, normative beliefs, procedures and rules have to be taken into account (Wagenaar & Cook 2003). The same emphasis applies also on the nature of knowledge production; the situated knowledge speaks up for local, specific knowledge that has its value on particular situation at hand.

In this paper I discuss the complexity and also the richness of knowledge production that is revealed when the actors and their way of knowing are interlinked together.  The aim is also to contribute to the relationship between unofficial self-organizing participatory practices and the official proceedings of urban planning and decision making. 

Helena Leino, Senior Lecturer, Department of Regional Studies

University of Tampere, Finland

helena.leino@uta.fi

Catherine Mangez and Christian Maroy (Université Catholique de Louvain)

Our communication deals with the knowledge managing in a new merging scene in Belgium. The merging scene is a commission created in 2002 gathering actors from the education sector (various stakeholders, unions, schools federations, parent's associations, inspectors, civil servants and experts). The commission is empowered to produce recommendations about educative stakes.

Our analysis is a deep study of the process of an opinion's production in 2003-2004 about a minister's proposition around external evaluation devices. Our work is based on participant observations and documents analysis. Our study shows how civil servants who are in charge of the administrative support of the commission, manage the debates' agenda and the knowledge screening in the debates.

The Minister request was about two issues, first the capacity to evaluate "relative performance", and secondly a plan for a common examination at the end of primary education. What was most remarkable about the preparation of the commission recommendation was less the controversies concerning the procedures and modalities of the common exam than the manner in which the first part of the Minister's request was "buried". First the debates agenda was organized to talk primary about the second proposition and secondly the type of knowledge used to fuel the discussion was different in the two issues.

Scientific expertise was mainly called upon to deal with the "relative performance" proposal, from the outset object of the strongest criticisms and reservations. And the conclusion was to move aside the proposition because of the complexity of the matter. However, only experience-based knowledge was mobilized for the common exam proposition that was the most important in the eyes of institutional actors.

Catherine Mangez, Université Catholique de Louvain, Grsef, groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche sur la socialisation, l'éducation et la formation, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, Catherine.Mangez@uclouvain.be

Christian Maroy, Université Catholique de Louvain, Grsef, groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche sur la socialisation, l'éducation et la formation, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, Christian.Maroy@uclouvain.be

Roger-François Gauthier and Margaux le Gouvello (Science Po, Paris)

This presentation is based on a fieldwork and a report, written for the Know&Pol project in 2009.

In this paper, we analysed the case of the decisions that led to the "common core of knowledge and skills at the end of compulsory education" to address the issues of the public policy process, referring here to the notion of "scène", and the circulation of knowledge between these different scènes. 

The « common core » is a complex French education policy decision and one that is sufficiently "fleshed out" for analysis. In fact, the decision-making process started from political circles in 2003 and ended up in 2006 ; however, the "common core" was the object of more than one thousand dispatches from 2000 to 2006 by the AEF (Agence Education Formation - a French news agency specialised in  Education and training); this decision has also given way to a Law as well and as an Application Decree, an exceptional co-occurrence in French education policy.

Since this has seemed to be a particularly difficult decision to make (it took three decades indeed), the institution created in the meantime a great number of think tanks, commissions and planning groups with a wide range of statuses and varying outcomes that were so many types of scènes, which in retrospect are quite informative in terms of the choices that were at stake, for example regarding the knowledge used. Moreover, one can wonder to which extent the decision of the « common core » transformed/challenged the decision process by introducing new forms of governance in the field of education in France.

We have chosen to focus here on four main scenes involved in the decision-making process of the "common core", different by their position in the policy system, by their make up and also by the role they played with regard to the knowledge at hand : we make a first distinction between the scènes that were productive, in the sense they contributed to the "march towards the core" and the ones that had been for years rather fruitless or obstructive, this distinction being closely linked with the type of knowledge they were mobilizing and conveying.

• As to fruitless scènes, we have in mind those, like the Bourdieu-Gros Commission or the Conseil National des Programmes (CNP) that were dominated by content-based and often disciplines-based knowledge.
• As advocating scènes some appear as having been obstructive: the case of the Ministry of Education, and of most of the corporate bodies that belong to its sphere of influence: they stood firmly, although not always openly against the decision of the "common core". Others have on the opposite been active in favour of the "common core", as the Parliament was, and the informative Parliamentary mission called from the name of its Chairman Périssol Mission.
• Nothing would have happened without some coordinating scenes: in the case in point the Government played an arbitration role during all the decision-making process on the core, as well as the Haut-Conseil de l'Education (HCE), gathering people appointed by various political institutions.
• Specific was the role of a scène that can be called a merging one: the Thélot Commission (created by the President de la République) played a major role in the decision of instituting the core. Formed by a variety of actors, incorporating different types of knowledge, the Thélot Commission acted as a catalyst :  as such it both had the merit to say that the traditional actors from inside the educational institution were not in a position to propose a solution and not to define the "common core" itself.

We will analyse in this paper the role played by these different scènes in the decision-making process in order to understand which type of "knowledge" influenced the "common core", and to which extent this decision transformed or not the government model.

Roger-François Gauthier, Inspection générale de l'administration de l'éducation nationale et de la recherche, Consultant à l'UNESCO, roger-francois.gauthier@education.gouv.fr

Margaux le Gouvello, Observatoire sociologique du changement (OSC) (CNRS/Sciences-Po), margaux.legouvcello@sciences-po.org

Eszter Neumann (Eötvös Loránd University)

By looking at the case of the Hungarian expert board, the Round Table for Education and Child Opportunities, the paper discusses the meeting of actors coming from different cognitive worlds, various scientific disciplines and political positions. The analysis highlights the recent fabrication of a new scene, a stage where alternative policy paradigms got publicly pronounced and where novel forms of institutionalized expertise got constructed in the Hungarian education policy field. Dividing lines between argumentations and different logics of discourses concerning the public action on educational assessment and equal opportunities are scarcely enacted publicly, nor are performed as conflicting discursive positions. This scene offers an opportunity to study enacted, suppressed or reconciled differences between approaches concerning these public actions as well as the dynamics of how epistemologies relate to each other. In the following analysis, we will separate the positions of the negotiating partners, of the ignored outsiders, and also attempt to reconstruct the dividing lines between the discursive logics that were staged as if in alliance at the scene.

The scene gave space to a shift in the content and objectives of scientific argumentation as such in the policy-making process in Hungary: while previously experts argued for decentralized governance, here the scientific bases of a stronger state are laid, a state which governs through aligned liberal technologies of conduct. As a deliberative scene, it is an interpellation to what expertise previously meant in twofold way. First, ever since the end of the eighties when radical decentralization was carried out in public education, educational experts restrained themselves from urging comprehensive reform initiatives, or more precisely, top-down reform initiatives. Secondly, the composition of the expert board illustrates the recent recomposition of disciplines relevant to educational policy making: in this sense, this is the stage where territories get secured for alternative disciplinary knowledges of policy-expertise. Eventually, an alternative vision of social engineering is offered that is framed by the scientific promise of rational governance, and that assembles technologies of governance from technical solutions borrowed from the toolbox of New Public Management and from inscription devices offering the calculability of governmental intervention (Rose&Miller 1992, Maasen&Weingart 2005:2). The proposal for comprehensive reform that ultimately integrates education into the grand narrative of economic competitiveness is in itself an interpellation to the previous conceptualizations of education. 

Eszter Neumann, Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, neumann.eszter@gmail.com

Bernard Delvaux, Girsef-Université catholique de Louvain,

Processes of knowledge circulation, transformation and hybridization don't be the same in coordinating scenes (Parliament,...), advocating scenes (trade union,...), front line scenes (school,...), or merging scenes. Those merging scenes can be defined as scenes where there is a meeting between actors coming from various scenes and worlds, and bringing different types of knowledge. Those scenes without official function of coordination nevertheless play an important role in the course of public action.

In addition to traditional merging scenes such as media, there are now new and more interactive merging scenes, and especially consultation devices. The dissemination of this kind of scene is partly linked to the transformation of the government model. Various kinds of actors are contributing to the creation of such scenes, which affect not only processes of knowledge circulation, transformation and hybridization, but also processes of consensus building, decision making and regulation.

My communication will be built on the basis of the previous communications and of theoretical background. The aim is to provide a transversal analysis trying to define which are the convergences and the differences between the case studies, and how they can be understood. My analysis will be focused not only on the nature of the devices, the processes taking place in those devices or their impact, but also on the conceptual and theoretical references used by the researchers.

Bernard Delvaux, Girsef-Université catholique de Louvain, Grsef, groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche sur la socialisation, l'éducation et la formation, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, Bernard.delvaux@uclouvain.be

Cosmo Howard (University of Victoria, Canada)

Modern nation-states rely extensively on data to govern the complex social, economic and political systems that operate within their borders. Assembling data that is relevant, timely and of sufficient quality to aid official decisions has always been important, but in the age of "evidence-based decision making" it is regarded as an essential prerequisite of effective governance. To help meet policy makers' informational needs, governments invest considerable resources into national statistical agencies, which are tasked with producing and disseminating analyses of economic conditions, social issues and policy problems. In the past, these agencies enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the production of official statistics, but in recent decades their privileged position has been progressively eroded as new producers of government statistics have emerged in other parts of the state, including central agencies and policy ministries. Many of these new sources of official statistics are closely connected to policy and political processes and do not enjoy the arm's length independence traditionally afforded to statistical agencies. As a result, some critics (Hoffmann 1995; Holt 2007) argue that government statistics have achieved greater policy relevance at the expense of political independence, methodological rigour and public trust. 

In light of these developments, my project on Governance Challenges for National Statistical Agencies asks: how should we understand the relationships between politics, policy and knowledge in the context of the dispersal of statistical production to multiple organizations within state? This paper provides a systematic survey and synthesis of current understandings of these relationships. It draws upon two important strands of the contemporary governance literature. The first is the literature on post-bureaucractic administration and horizontal management, which is focused on the shift from hierarchical to networked relationships and offers a set of concepts and theories for exploring how statistical agencies are orientating themselves towards the policy process and to new rival producers of official statistics. The second "governmentality" literature explores how states have come to rely on statistics to govern subject populations, and makes the point that official statistics are not neutral or static, but shaped by prevailing policy discourses and political ideologies. A key innovation of this paper is to connect these two separate strands of the governance literature, and to suggest how key concepts such as "relevance", "rigour" and "independence" must be rethought in the context of distributed statistical governance.

Cosmo Howard (University of Victoria, Canada - howardc@uvic.ca)

David Pontille (CNRS, EHESS), Didier Torny (INRA)

In a growing number of countries, public administrations and agencies seek to systematically evaluate the scientific outputs of their universities and research institutions. The impact factor (IF), fashioned by the Institute for Scientific Information, was for a long time the gold standard for the ranking of scientific productions according to their forms of publication. Nevertheless, even when used, IF was less accepted and integrated into social sciences and humanities practices. In this paper, we will focus on the journals ratings produced by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the French Agency for Evaluation Research and Higher Education (AERES), and the Australian Research Council (ARC). In these three cases, the challenge is to shape alternative policy tools to the IF, which clearly favours the English-language productions, to evaluate and promote research in social sciences in a multilingual context. The manufacture of these rankings is based on the mobilization of experts and institutions to assess the quality of journals and rate them (A, B, C,).

Points of views on these journals ratings are heavily adversarial. Some advocate for a realistic account of scientific hierarchies, based on knowledge produced by the most relevant epistemic communities: ratings are objectified representations commonly shared, of inherently limited use, whose possible effects are sought. Others judge ratings as performative and based on criteria controlled by research management institutions. Thus, they are considered as policy tools which produce managerial standardized assessments and whose uses are dangerously manifold. To go beyond this opposition, we have analyzed the numerous texts produced by the three research evaluation agencies and the diverse public statements (editorials, petitions, points of view, scientific articles...) on ratings.

We will first stress the wide range of ratings processes, going from a fully open advisory process to the gathering of a few anonymous experts. Then, we will demonstrate that journals ratings draw on two different kinds of criteria, whether explicitly foreseen or published afterwards. On the one hand, experts take into account quantitative data on journals audience: board lineup, the number and national origins of submitting authors, journal broadcasting (number of subscriptions, downloading...). On the other hand, they strictly rely on procedural norms: reviewing process (single or double blind), unsolicited articles, number of referees, publication delay. Our analysis will also underline the role of journals themselves, which took part in the ratings controversies. Their criticisms resulted in a substantive revision of journals lists (ESF and AERES) and the production of a particular compromise around a 'scientific perimeter'. Henceforth, such a perimeter defines what sound academic knowledge is and reconfigures the politics of evaluation devoted to individuals, laboratories, universities or countries. These new ratings are gradually seen as coproduced by legitimate fractions of disciplinary communities. Therefore, they might have more impact on social sciences and humanities research than former bibliometric tools. 

David Pontille (CNRS, pontille@ehess.fr), Didier Torny (INRA, torny@ivry.inra.fr)

Luís Miguel Carvalho, Natércio Afonso , Estela Costa, Institute of Education, University of Lisbon

This presentation is focused on the growing use of regulatory instruments which entail the production and dissemination of knowledge, studying their production and diffusion and their use by the decision-makers for whom they are intended.

Our presentation brings together results of several studies on the fabrication, circulation and use of a policy-knowledge tool: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) produced by OECD.  These inquiries focused on the supranational construction of PISA and the different social and cognitive trajectories of the instrument in 6 countries: Belgium, France, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, and United Kingdom-Scotland.

The comparative analysis provided the opportunity to characterize the survey as a very powerful policy instrument whose characteristics allow for its successful penetration into very different policy-making regimes and very diverse political circumstances. These characteristics were identify as its credibility (resulting from its scientific and technical sophistication, but also from OECD reputation as a trustworthy "truth-teller"), its adaptability (because of its multipurpose nature allowing for adaptation to different political contexts, providing rationales and justifications for diverse and even opposite policies, therefore used as an "empty container" to support and to oppose the very same policy measures), and its pertinence towards a common set of policy trends (the raising awareness rhetoric, the modernization narrative, the discursive shift to comparison in the educational policy debate, the "naming and shaming" politics, and the cross-national concern about the relevance of context variables in the students achievement results).

The PISA tool is developed around conventions about what is "knowledge for policy", how it should be produced and what is the credible knowledge to mobilize into the survey framework. Thus, it considers the knowledge produced within the PISA world, how it is used by policy actors, the problems and solutions raised or endorsed concerning the educational systems and their appropriate governing, and which are activated in national public action. Due to this production processes, the PISA knowledge shows a significant level of flexibility, as it becomes more and more close to the audiences moving from "revelation" (the core results of the survey) to "explanation" (the interpretation of the results through relationships between variables), and to "condensation" (findings conceived as policy questions).

The PISA tool is defined as a multipurpose tool, a resource to legitimate the actions of those who refer to its results and its explanations. Structured around the concept of regulation, the study addresses the political and cultural specificities and the variability of PISA national receptions, but also the «attractiveness» of PISA as a space for knowledge creation and exchange and an "unavoidable" source of information for policy-making.

Defining PISA as a KRT means that it is conceived as an example of the complex and circular relationship between knowledge and policy: PISA as a policy instrument produces knowledge; PISA as a research instrument produces policy.

Luís Miguel Carvalho (lmcarvalho@ie.ul.pt), Natércio Afonso (natafonso@yahoo.com ), Estela Costa (ecosta@fpce.ul.pt ) Institute of Education, University of Lisbon

Eszter Berényi (Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest

The proposed paper discusses issues related to the fabrication of the first national student assessment system in Hungary, the "Assessment of Basic  Competences" ("ABC").  Policies on educational measurement are among the most knowledge intensive subfields of educational policymaking; and vice versa, educational measurement is the most "policy-sensitive" of all sub-fields of educational science. The rise of measurement regimes and the strengthening of the accountability approach is an important landmark on the visionary road towards the ideal of evidence based policy making accompanied by the politization of science. The ABC signs a clear shift in the knowledge/policy relationship in the Hungarian educational policy making: it presents several examples of how the boundaries between knowledge and policy are blurred in the process of postbureaucratic governance. When analysing the story of the ABC we will examine how the political and the knowledge aspects of this educational measurement mutually shaped each other; how coalitions and compromises were made between the main actors from the knowledge and policy fields; and how all these developments contributed to the emergence of special artefacts and hybrid actors. Several issues and concepts related to the ABC, such as  the so called "pedagogical added value" or the sample size  will be treated  here as belonging both to the  fields  of knowledge and  policy. Their importance cannot be understood without taking into consideration both of these fields as their meaning is constructed in both of these spheres at the same time. Our hypothesis is that the configuration of these concepts is what makes them so influential in the process of policy construction. The analysis of the story of the ABC draws heavily from the concept of "bricolage" (Ball 1998). Bricolage is a key concept for the interpretation of the different layers of meaning of the ABC, and it helps us understand how diverging expectations toward the ABC  as a knowledge based regulation tool can very well coexist, shape each other and eventually become aligned. 

Eszter Berényi (Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest, beresz@webstation.hu)  

Justin O. Parkhurst (Health Policy Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

It is well known that ideology influences political decisions, and may affect the selection of evidence in political argument. However, deeply held ideological and moral positions may equally shape the understanding of evidence itself, affecting the seemingly 'rational' construction of knowledge. This will have direct implications for the conclusions policy actors draw on how a given body of evidence leads to policy recommendations. This phenomenon is explored through an analysis of the HIV prevention policies constructed as part of the United States' 'President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief' (PEPFAR). Since 2003, PEPFAR has been one of the largest supporters of HIV/AIDS activities in low income countries. However, under the George W. Bush administration, it faced a high level of criticism over its HIV prevention strategy known as ABC (said to stand for Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms). Numerous critics claimed that PEPFAR's interpretation of ABC was ideologically driven, and undermined HIV prevention internationally. Supporters and official PEPFAR documentation argued the approach to be 'evidence-based', and derived from data on Uganda's successful HIV experience. Those critical of PEPFAR have drawn their own conclusions about the policy implications of Uganda's historical HIV experience and the meaning of ABC. This paper analyses discourse from both supporters and opponents of the Bush administration's HIV prevention strategies to investigate the understanding and uptake of evidence from a critical political perspective. It applies cognitive framing concepts to explore how underlying belief systems can lead different interpretations of evidence, leading to subsequent divergent policy arguments.

The study finds that two competing moral belief systems can explain many of the differences over what ABC is said to be, and how evidence is understood in practice. Actors believing in a single morally-correct way to behave tend to embrace understandings of ABC which emphasise abstinence for youth and fidelity in marriage. They are more critical of condom policies and legitimise their arguments with understandings of evidence which are internally consistent with their belief systems. In contrast, those possessing a core belief in freedom of lifestyle-choice demonstrate contrasting understandings of ABC, arguing it should be a comprehensive set of choices individuals can select from. Condom promotion is much more acceptable to this group, while promotion of abstinence or fidelity are problematic (dictating how to behave). Again, the understanding of evidence (such as the burden of proof of effectiveness of different interventions, or the lessons drawn from Uganda) appears to be linked to how internally consistent that evidence is with the underlying belief system.

Using such a cognitive-political framework can help to understand the political considerations behind the use of evidence in many controversial policy debates, illustrating that ideology not only influences preferences on policy outcomes, but also shapes the understanding of scientific evidence itself.

Justin O. Parkhurst (Health Policy Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Justin.parkhurst@lshtm.ac.uk)

Bori Fernezelyi, Julia Koltai, Sara Levendel

Knowledge-based regulatory instruments are typical and increasingly widespread forms where knowledge and power merge in the policy field. We define knowledge-based regulatory instrument as a mechanism, object, tool, or process specifically concerned with diffusing a particular kind of knowledge in order to shape the behaviour of actors in a given policy domain. In this paper, we endeavour to demonstrate the functioning of such an instrument through the analysis of the genealogy of the DRG system in the Hungarian health sector. Furthermore, we investigate the different interests, values, and views of the groups and individuals involved in the conception and promotion of the instrument.

In Hungary the financing of the hospital sector is based on the performance-based DRG system (disease related groups), which aims to rationalize the allocation of treatment costs and takes into consideration both medical and economic rationales. The rise of the DRG system is a typical case of the parallel evolution and later fusion of an expert knowledge system and political demand; From the 1970's the development of the computer sciences was adopted to facilitate administrative needs of the medical field and soon it became an evaluating tool. From the 1990's onwards political demand was rising for a more rational financing of the health sector. After the system change a health reform was needed and the most elaborate alternative for that was the Hungarian version of the DRG-system finally introduced in 1993. Though, the model originates from the United States it's not explicitly „best practice" as it was not adopted, but developed nearly independently. It is one of the first, and believed to be one of the most influential, among the health policy reforms after the political change in 1989.

Essentially DRG is a financing regulatory tool, thus it leans on economic rationales, but at the same time it is based on medical knowledge such as medical protocols and guidelines. This knowledge-based regulatory instrument that combines the knowledge of evidence based medicine and the economic aspects, induces self-regulation and optimal functioning in the in-patient service. 

Bori Fernezelyi (febori@gmail.com), Julia Koltai (Koltai.Juli@socio.mta.hu), Sara Levendel

(Levendel.Sara@socio.mta.hu)

Jennifer Smith-Merry (University of Edinburgh)

This paper will explore the relationship between the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe (WHO Europe) and Scotland in the context of mental health. It will examine why this relationship is fostered as an important one by both actors and the instruments through which they legitimise the relationship.

The paper begins by discussing the historical relationship between Scotland and WHO and the official relationships which regulate their interactions. It will then examine in detail Scottish involvement in WHO Europe's Ministerial Conference on Mental Health in Helsinki in January 2005 which resulted in the signing of the Mental Health Declaration for Europe and its accompanying Action Plan in order to determine how and why the relationship between the two actors is built.  The analysis draws on a series of interviews with key actors involved in the development of the Declaration and Action Plan alongside an analysis of related texts. Our main finding is that a mutually validating relationship between the two actors is created and perpetuated through personal communication, meetings and the joint production of documents. 

Jennifer Smith-Merry (Politics and International Relations, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, j.l.smith@ed.ac.uk )

Cerfontaine Gaëtan (FNRS -University of Liège)

This presentation proposal rests on empirical data collected through a European program named « Know and Pol ». The aim of our paper is to understand the process through which the recommendations emitted by the World Health Organization are translated in on-the-ground policy and practices in the Belgian mental health sector.

As for many countries, these recommendations and the care model they promote contrast on several points with the practices and the structure of the Belgian mental health sector. One element advocated by the WHO has in particular raised controversies and oppositions: the necessity to replace the traditional hospital-centered model by community cares within small ambulatory structures. Therein lies the principal criticism addressed to the Belgian mental health cares policy.

Through a focus on the reception of these recommendations and on a particular policy - "the therapeutic projects in mental health", which can be seen as the last tentative to reform the organization of the sector -, we will analyze a process through which "big ideas" are translated in concrete policies.

Indeed, in spite of the lack of legal constraint, these recommendations have proved to have some kind of normative capacity. Nowadays in Belgium, every text or political discourse (held by politicians, civil servants or representatives of the field actors) concerning the mental health policy acknowledges the WHO's recommendations and this, despite the fact that they could be seen as antagonist to some actors' interests. In order to understand this evolution, we shall refer to the Michel Callon's concept of "point of obligatory passage" which underlines the creative activity of the actors who do not just receive passively these norms but, on the contrary, who reinterpret and translate these ideas in new policy. Our presentation will underline (1) that in spite of the antagonism between those ideas and some actors' constituted interests, notably the representatives of the hospital organizations, these actors may reinterpret WHO norms strategically so as to fit with their own interests and the organizational context they are involved in. (2) We assume that such an interpretive work is possible because these recommendations do not provide a clear way to act but, can be used in order to imagine "new possible worlds". (3) By doing so, these actors are legitimizing WHO's recommendations and are reinforcing the possibility for other actors to use them in order to elaborate and legitimize new policies.

In conclusion, we'll see that the process of reform and the influence of these norms are far from being direct and linear but, on the contrary, are long, iterative and constituted of "reinforcing loops". At the methodological level, we'll discuss the possibility to observe the multi-level process of elaboration of a policy through the materials (texts, declarations, evaluations...) produced and mobilized by the different actors. Indeed, with the interviews and observations, these materials constitute one of the major parts of our data collection.

Cerfontaine Gaëtan (FNRS -University of Liège, G.Cerfontaine@ulg.ac.be)

André Bächtiger (University of Bern), Susumu Shikano (University of Konstanz), Seraina Pedrini (University of Bern) Mirjam Ryser (University of Bern)

This paper presents a re-developed measurement for the (deliberative) analysis of political processes. First, the new measure operationalizes the analysis of political communication in a way that incorporates classic and Habermasian-inspired concepts of deliberation (such as justification rationality and respect) and expansive forms of deliberation (such as story-telling and fair bargaining). Second, the new measure sets cut values for deliberative quality while simultaneously addressing the lack of uni-dimensionality in previous research on deliberative quality. To do so, we first aggregate the diverse deliberative standards into discourse types, whereby we distinguish among (1) proto-discourse, (2) conventional discourse, (3) competitive discourse, (4) cooperative discourse, and (5) rational discourse. The assignment of the different deliberative standards to discourse types is accomplished in a probabilistic fasion on the basis of the Item-Response-Model. Second, we also sequentialize the communication process. A sequential perspective not only unravels the dynamic nature of communication processes, it can also be ideally linked to a conception of discourse types: since it is not very likely that an entire communication process can be captured by a single discourse type, a sequential strategy might help to uncover the variety of discourse types in a communication process. To illustrate the empirical relevance of the discourse types and the sequenzialization strategy, we focus on two parliamentary debates in the Swiss first chamber in the 1990s.

André Bächtiger, University of Bern/University of Konstanz, baechtiger@ipw.unibe.ch

Susumu Shikano, University of Konstanz, susumu.shikano@uni-konstanz.de

Seraina Pedrini, University of Bern

Mirjam Ryser, University of Bern

Thomas Kalwitzki, (Carl-von-Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg), Wolfgang J. Luhan (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Bernhard Kittel, (Carl-von-Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg)

A growing number of social science experiments seek to examine the behavior of groups rather than individuals as decision makers. Though the majority of these experiments involve (and record) some sort of interaction, research has so far been limited to  the final decisions taken by the groups. The evaluation was to the largest part focused on testing the predictions from theoretical models, thereby excluding from consideration the communication process that led to this outcome. While the process of decision making remains unobservable (at least to social science) in the case of individual actors, communication in decision making groups represents a "black box" that can be opened using alternative and complementary approaches to analysis. This way, research may not only examine which decisions are taken but furthermore how and why these decisions were generated. We present an example of qualitative chat analysis of an experiment on turnout and strategic voting that demonstrates the capacity of a combined experimental-qualitative approach.

Thomas Kalwitzki, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg, thomas.kalwitzki@uni-oldenburg.de

Wolfgang J. Luhan, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, wolfgang.luhan@rub.de

Bernhard Kittel, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg, bernhard.kittel@uni-oldenburg.de

Frank Nullmeier, (University of Bremen), Tanja Pritzlaff, (University of Bremen)

Although sophisticated technological tools and innovations seem to provide an adequate answer to the growing complexity and scope of collective decision interactions, actual decision interactions for the most part still rely on face-to-face meetings. Apparently, face-to-face communication between agents involved in joint decisions is still looked upon as being the most reliable and effective tool compared to other forms of problem-solving interaction. Certain features inherent in face-to-face communication seem to function as elements of uniformity and stability across time and space. This finding is also supported by the fact that efforts to replace face-to-face decision communication with technically mediated forms of interaction or to recreate practices of collective decision-making using artificial intelligent systems have failed time and again. The aim of the paper is to show that typical practices can be identified at the micro-level of political face-to-face interaction that lead to stability, continuity and the production of trust in contexts of strategic interaction. A key feature of these face-to-face problem-solving practices is their triadic structure, i.e. the fact that at least three agents are simultaneously involved in these types of practices. The triad, not the dyad, may therefore be identified as the fundamental constellation of face-to-face collective decision-making.

Based on a comparison between results from a series of computer-mediated chat experiments conducted in an economic lab, face-to-face group experiments in a controlled setting and the analysis of audiovisual data from actual committee meetings at different levels, the paper presents examples of typical practices of face-to-face interaction that are significant for the achievement of collective decisions. As can be shown, the success and effectiveness of these problem-solving practices relies heavily on their triadic structure. It can also be shown that participants of computer-mediated chat experiments weren't able to perform these types of triadic practices or to substitute them in a successful way - not only due to the time delay in written communication, but also due to the fact that participants weren't able to reinforce the function of their respective interventions through elements of face-to-face communication like eye contact and nonverbal utterances.

Arata Yamamoto, University College London

Over the last three decades or so, the language of public participation, be it deliberative, communicative or collaborative, has become prevalent in both the theory and practice of policy making and planning. Yet, planners themselves continue to express scepticism towards public participation, often quoting the threat of NYMBY-ism and the need to have regard to just planning outcomes as well as procedures. Nevertheless, given this prevalence, the present paper argues that discourses and storylines of public participation themselves should be regarded as significant categories of political analysis. Accordingly from a Hajerian discourse analytic perspective, this paper firstly argues that the attitudes, motivations and actions of planners towards public participation are shaped within constantly shifting institutional context, or changing communicative relations between planning stakeholders. Subsequently, this paper further argues that forcing planners to accept unwanted participatory practices will only be de-legitimised by their manipulation of existing institutional context. This argument is then examined using qualitative empirical data gathered from interviews and published materials on the participatory processes that are established for the first London Plan making process at the Greater London Authority between 2000 and 2004. This paper concludes by claiming that stakeholders in pursuit of more deliberative processes need to accommodate unequal communicative relations between planning stakeholders in their political strategy and to consider whether their planning goals and interests might be better served by expressing them using ideas, concepts and discursive categories that are unrelated to the prevailing perception of public participation. 

Arata Yamamoto, University College London, ucftaya@ucl.ac.uk

Myrte Berendse, Hanneke Duijnhoven, Sander Merkus (VU University Amsterdam)

Current examples of problems concerning the development of infrastructure in the Netherlands (and abroad) indicate the need for changes in the planning of infrastructural projects. From a societal perspective, costs-overruns, delays, safety risks and other issues have become increasingly problematic. The discourse of change emanating from public inquiry reports concerned with infrastructure development reflect a concern regarding the need for changes in the "administrative culture" surrounding decision-making processes. However, until now, there have been relatively few systematic attempts to capture the backstage dynamics of administrative culture. From an interpretive perspective, (administrative) culture is approached as a process of sensemaking (Weick, 1995; Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2006), with a strong focus on the daily practices of actors at the micro level of organizations. From such a perspective, processes of decision-making are characterized by a complex interplay of problems, interests, polyphonic interpretations, and power struggles, especially when there are many different (public and private) partners (Teisman & Klijn, 2002). The growing body of narrative analyses in organization studies and other fields conceptualizes expressions of culture as narrative accounts. This conceptualization is particularly suited for the analysis of decision-making processes in administrative settings because throughout such processes actors continuously engage in negotiations of meaning (Berendse et al., 2006; Van Hulst, 2008). In this paper we focus on the reconstruction of a completed decision-making process in the Netherlands: the Dutch Zuider Zee Line. The project was about creating a fast public transport connection between Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in the urban West and the more isolated city of Groningen in the North. In this paper we focus on the negotiations among representatives of the central government and the regional authorities regarding the signing of the public co-operation agreement before starting the tender procedure. By looking at the Zuider Zee Line as a narrative construct, we set out to understand the process through which­­ actors in administrative settings constantly construct and reconstruct various versions of the aim and relevance of the project against the background of their own values, interests and agenda.

Myrte Berendse, VU University Amsterdam, m.berendse@fsw.vu.nl

Hanneke Duijnhoven, VU University Amsterdam, hl.duijnhoven@fsw.vu.nl

Sander Merkus, VU University Amsterdam, s.merkus@fsw.vu.nl

Huub Dijstelbloem, University of Amsterdam

The governance of risk is one of those area's where deliberative and participative initiatives have been used widely to re-establish the relationship of the state with citizens and citizens-groups, to narrow the 'gap' between the social and the political order. This paper will analyze such a case of collective decision-making under conditions of uncertainty by taking a closer look at the policy-making process and its deficits in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Netherlands (1983). It will do so by making use of the currently rediscovered insights of the American philosopher John Dewey. In 1927, Dewey already famously described the problem of legitimacy of political institutions that are running behind social change. His solution was that if political institutions fail to represent the people, they should embrace a new task and search for new publics. This public is not the same as the pre-existing demos, but comes into being as a consequence of new social or technological issues and is as volatile as a demon. This paper, therefore, will search for neglected publics. The Dutch response to HIV/AIDS has become regarded as a fine example of a successful attempt of collective decision-making. The co-operation between public authorities, health organizations, medical professionals, blood banks and social organizations, particularly the gay movement, helped establish a widely supported public health approach. Compared with other countries, deeply dividing social conflicts such as discrimination and stigmatization of homosexuals, were avoided. However, the Netherlands had their blood scandal too. The Dutch Ministry of Health failed to protect patients with hemophilia from the threat of infection with HIV through blood products. In a critical report the Netherlands's Ombudsman  accused the government of being too passive and ill informed and of not reacting quickly enough to the facts. The claim of this paper is that, would the policy-process have been directed to the search for new publics, another outcome was possible. That will be shown by a reconstruction of two forms of representation that were present in the policy-process: the scientific investigation of the causes of AIDS, the spread of the epidemic and the determination of the risk groups; and the political institutionalization of the several social groups, professionals, organization, and authorities involved in the process. This reconstruction demonstrates that the positions of the different groups and their mutual relationships not only depended on their institutional role but also on their relationship with the blood-supply and their specific perception of risk. The conclusion is that to successfully explain the failure of the policy process, it is insufficient to reduce it to a 'social process'. Instead it is argued that the crucial factor was the relationship of the new publics with the blood-supply and the meaning these groups attached to the risks involved. Only by taking this material conditions into account, publics can be adequately involved in policy-processes.  

Huub Dijstelbloem, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, dijstelbloem@wrr.nl

Silvia von Steinsdorff, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,

Research into the internal decision-making process of constitutional courts as well as the desired outcome of a constitutional judge's decision has been dominated by two traditionally separated views: a judicial and a political perspective. The political scientific explanatory model for a constitutional judge's decision behavior is based on the supposition that the central motive of a constitutional judge is the implementation of his/her political position. This very one-dimensional view however neglects the importance of constitutional court working procedures in the mechanism of judicial decisions. Therefore "(t)he (positive, effective, defacto) behavior should be studied to conclude the similarly-arranged norms and values of behavioral codes. Causes for behavioral regularity are not surmised from the motives, intentions, and norms of actors but from the structural embedding." (Jansen 2006, 23) The combination of these perspectives (both sides have convincing empirical proof to verify their existence) has not yet been achieved. A model for the motivation as well the process behind a constitutional judges' decision must include the double logic behind such a decision. To analytically comprehend the two logics, it is reasonable for each decision model to construct the entire decision process with the help of the following three aspects: 1) the decisionmaker, 2) the opinion-shaping and decision-making process and (3) the type of decision. The basis of such an abstract model (inclusive of the different variables of decision-making) also involves developing a typology of the logic behind constitutional legal decisions in which, according to the arrangement of different indicators, the political or juridical aspects may appear more strongly in the foreground. Ideally the study of European constitutional courts will position or even cluster itself within this typology. The goal is to establish more types and thereby to assess differently the independent variables that affect the decision-making process. Three basic types tentatively emerge against the background of the current state of knowledge but, according to the level of abstraction, more sub-categories will become apparent. The focus of this paper will be the theoretical outline for our model and the presentation of our actual model of the internal decision making process. 

Silvia von Steinsdorff, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, silvia.von.steinsdorff@cms.hu-berlin.de

Katharina Zahradnik, University of Vienna

One of the key principles of modern democracies is that each voter's vote should weigh the same in parliamentary elections. Equality in the power of votes is largely regarded as an essential foundation for establishing equality in representation and is widely assumed to be guaranteed by the principle of one-citizen/one-vote. However, some features that are characteristic for the competitive process of parliamentary elections give reason to question this presumed equality in the power of votes. Research on party competition tells us that for a party that is striving for electoral success it is crucial to activate and convince those groups of voters among their constituencies that have high electoral participation rates. From this we can expect that parties might be more attentive to the preferences of those segments of voters among their electorate that weigh more decisively on a party's electoral success. This raises the question of whether - over time - parties represent the policy preferences of all of their voters equally well, or whether particular segments within a party's electorate are persistently privileged over others. By looking into measurements of ideological distance and by using the example of three country cases the paper presents findings on how parties represent different segments within their actual constituencies and how patterns of congruence between parties and their voters vary across time and context.

Katharina Zahradnik, Institute for Advanced Studies and University of Vienna, katharina.zahradnik@ihs.ac.at

Akua O Britwum

Using case study findings on the six affiliates of the Ghana Trades Union Congress this paper will examine the forms of democratic opportunities created for women in representative structures through gender democracy strategies and identify the processes that lend support to women's efforts to expand their space within their trade unions. The paper will in addition examine how women's consciousness can form the basis for the development of power and authority for transforming union structures in their interests. Whilst gender democracy strategies might present limited opportunities for women trade union members their realisation that union is about them and that they have a right to demand that their needs are met is important site for building power to the challenge union patriarchal structures. This should provide the ingredient that should propel women to assert their right of ownership of their unions. 

(by Akua O Britwum)

Doris Wydra & Helga Pülzl (University of Salzburg)

"Tomorrow you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that puts reason against reason, and city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need to hope". - "The current political, economic and social crisis is the sad finish of the orange governmental work. Their lies, disposition to engage in venture and corruption have set our country back for years".

 These are statements from two presidential candidates, the first by Barack Obama during his electoral campaign in 2008, the second by Victor Yanukovych, running for the Ukrainian presidency in 2010. Each of these campaigns was situated in a very special emotional setting, and although both mobilized hope and fear, they did so in a very different way: we argue that this special mixture of emotions, the different "emotional work" of the main proponents and the embeddedness of these emotions in a narrative on "necessary change" constructed an electoral background that was decisive for the outcome. We ask the question how the political actors employ emotions and when, thus seeing emotions as part of the repertoire of rhetoric, as a form of rhetorical practice that takes effect in the world (Fischer, Miller, Sidney 2007; 240). The emphasis on hope allowed a decision for Obama, while the emphasis on fear and disappointment led to a decision against Jushchenko. By choosing the American and Ukrainian cases for our analysis we not only want to highlight the differences of the emotional setting between these two electoral campaigns (where one could argue that Obama was building hope and Janukovych relied on fear) but also the role of emotions as such in electoral campaigns, how an "emotional understanding of issues" is constructed and how emotions feed into stories, political necessities and economic developments. As Fischer (2009; 171) argues, people understand their environment through the social meanings they assign to the elements that constitute it and these meanings are basic to the mobilizations of support for political action and the political language is used to construct and reconstruct the world. But these different meanings are coupled with emotions and political language touches upon these emotions and mobilizes them. The acceptability of a policy argument does not only depend on how it succeeds to rationalize a situation to its intended audience but also in how effectively it triggers the emotions. Policy and with this regard electoral campaigns, is not only a struggle over ideas and meanings (Stone 2002), but also a struggle over emotions.

Manisha Sinha (MCT, India)

In a functional democracy, there are many different actors exerting influence on a policy. There are also instances when a policy has to achieve one of two opposing, equally valid values. One such instance is the debate on development versus environment, between a certain loss of a way of life for some and probable future gain in quality of life for others. In such a situation how does policy get formed? Is it a result of the numbers involved, of established power dynamics, of pressure brought to bear by any one constituent? Or do emotions play a role in determining and maintaining a course and if so, whose emotions? Using the drowning of Manibeli village as part of the Narmada Dam Project in Gujarat, India, this paper examines the significance of emotions in situations where policy makers have to prioritise and choose between two subjective value based outcomes.

The Narmada Dam Project has remained one of the most controversial big dam projects throwing up concerns and questions around rights of ownership of land and resources, rehabilitation and the facts and ethics of dam building in general. The multiplicity of actors include the dispossessed, dam beneficiaries, environment and human rights activists, the media, three different state governments, the national government of India and various international donor countries and organisations. In the face of so many disparate interests, intense national and international social, political and financial pressure, the policy towards building the dam and flooding inhabited villages like Manibeli, remained consistent over some two decades and several political changes.

When policy choices impact multiple lives so directly, it is important to understand how a policy gets formed and maintains support. Stakeholders put both facts and values forward in support of their varied positions, but acceptance of these is often subjective. Yet for a policy line to be clearly and consistently followed over a long term period, there needs to exist an emotional identification with that policy line. An understanding of how such an emotional identification is created and sustained, can perhaps help to simulate possible policy outcomes in situations where similar emotional triggers are present or can be feasibly introduced.

Since emotions need not be directly or honestly expressed in policy situations, the question of identification and measurement of emotions underlying policy positions is troublesome. In this paper, existing psychology based models of basic emotions and their associated strategies and effects are used to help analyse documents, speeches and writings of key policy actors to arrive at possible underlying emotional states of those involved. This is then examined to see whether it remains consistent over time and people and also what type of policy events stimulated such responses. Based on this analysis, the paper examines the importance of emotions in choosing between different policy value - outcomes which significantly and differentially impact the lives of those affected.

Name: Manisha Sinha

Institutional Affiliation: Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Govt. of India

Email: rkvedic14@yahoo.com

Guillaumette Haughton (University of Sheffield)

Many of the non-professional relationships that stakeholders have to sites can be understood as relationships to a 'place' (rather than a 'space' or an 'environment' (Devine-Wright, 2009:427)).  The assumptions and expectations that stakeholders have of these places are informed by the ways in which they have experience of the place, through both personal and collective social memory, which forms the basis for local knowledge of a site. Change to a site (or place disruption (Devine-Wright, 2009:428)) changes the relationship that stakeholders have to that place, and generates an emotional response. Whilst the policy processes that result in change to a site struggle to explicitly acknowledge the significance of such emotional responses from non-professional stakeholders, these emotive place-based discourses appear to be employed in practice in consultative processes by professional and non-professional stakeholders.  The policy processes offer much greater legitimacy to evidence-based expert knowledge, and fail to acknowledge the role that emotions play, despite their existence within the process. This suggests that a different understanding of the workings of policy processes is needed, incorporating the component of "pathos", as put forward by Fischer (2009:275). Urban river corridors are an interesting setting in which to consider these issues, because of the breadth of stakeholder groups and the complex notion of 'interests' in this setting, particularly with regard to issues of scale. This paper will draw on findings from case studies exploring the decision-making processes that resulted in change to two river corridor sites that are part of the Don catchment in South Yorkshire. By using interviews to explore the experiences and emotions of both professional and non-professional stakeholders, the research shows that whilst the processes make no formal recognition of emotions, they play a significant role in the way that expertise is mobilised within the process to influence outcomes.

Guillaumette Haughton (g.haughton@sheffield.ac.uk)

PhD Student, Department of Town and Regional Planning and URSULA Project

University of Sheffield

Jasper Eshuis (University Rotterdam)

Branding is a strategy that is increasingly used by governments to gain support from multiple actors and tempt them to engage and invest in the development and implementation of policies. Branding is a form of governance which is not aimed particularly at managing perceptions through the rational, but through the emotional and psychological. This paper explores the application of branding in governance processes and how it is related to participation of citizens and the inclusion of their emotions.

The paper theoretically distinguishes two approaches to branding and connects these to different levels of participation. On basis of branding theory, the paper argues that theoretically, branding can be a strategy to connect citizens with places and plans by drawing upon the emotional and psychological.

We empirically research how branding was applied in two communities in the Netherlands. The cases show how branding brought feelings and emotions into the governance process. The cases show large differences when it comes to participation of citizens. Branding can be used as a participatory strategy, but it can also be employed in less participatory ways.

Dr. J. (Jasper) Eshuis, Ph.D.

Senior Research Fellow 

Erasmus University Rotterdam, Public Administration

P.O. Box 1738

3000 DR Rotterdam

The Netherlands

Eshuis@fsw.eur.nl