Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy, and the Public Sphere

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

Umut Korkut is a Reader in Politics at Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. In addition to two other books with Palgrave, he has published inPolitical Geography, Europe-Asia Studies, Eurasian Geography and Economics,Social Politics, Parliamentary Affairs, Nationalities Papers,Economic and Industrial Democracy, and East European Quarterly, among others.

Kesi Mahendran is Enactments Programme Director within the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance and the Open University, UK. She is a social psychologist who is published on dialogical approaches to mobility, non-mobility, integration and citizenship.

Gregg Bucken-Knapp is Associate Professor in Political Science in the School of Public Administration at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His articles have appeared in Journal of European Public Policy, Comparative Public Policy and Human Rights Review and his books have been published by Palgrave Macmillan, State University of New York Press and Lexington Books, among others.

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