Risk, Fear and Control: Deconstructing the Discourses of New Labour's Economic Policy

The form and nature of state intervention in economic and social affairs has changed significantly in recent decades. Nation-states, it is argued, no longer possess the capacities to control the social and economic systems that operate within their territories. Increasingly, they are forced to develop new strategies and techniques of government which use particular discourses and practices to define, mobilise and activate policy communities and other actors in order to make policy measures effective. Drawing on policy papers and ministerial statements, this paper critically examines the discourses and ways of thinking that underpin economic development policies in the UK. The study argues that such discourses are characterised by the language of change, fear and risk which are used as discursive weapons against alternative discourses or forms of action. Global economic and social trends are used selectively and particular 'others', such as those in high-performing regions of the world and workers in less developed areas of the world, are used as sources of threat and danger to be overcome by the reform of internal social, economic and political-institutional systems. Deconstructing and reconstructing such discourses is critical to the establishment of alternative, broader and more effective, policy programmes and agendas.