Discourse, policy and the environment: hegemony, statements and the analysis of U.K. airport expansion

ABSTRACT

Building on the work of Laclau and Mouffe and others, this article develops a distinctively poststructuralist approach to the analysis of policy discourse in the field of environmental politics. Despite advances, there remain persistent critiques of the approach. Some claim that its theoretical assumptions are either too ideational or insufficiently attuned to the linguistic aspect of discourse analysis. Others pinpoint methodological difficulties in operationalizing the approach and generating effective research strategies. Addressing such critiques, we seek to articulate elements of Laclau and Mouffe’s post-Marxist theory of hegemony with insights gleaned from Foucault’s archaeology of discourse, more specifically his idea of the statement. When supplemented with the logic of hegemony, we argue that describing and mapping statements of various types, as they appear and disappear, circulate and change, in relation to particular policy problems in specific historical contexts, provides vital clues for delimiting competing discursive formations. It also enables researchers to detect and explicate the underlying rules that made them possible and brought them into being. We illustrate such claims through an empirical analysis of three exemplary statements in aviation policy in the United Kingdom, demonstrating how the critical evaluation of these statements offers a lens through which to examine the continuities and discontinuities of on-going hegemonic struggles.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse
• airport expansion
• statements
• Foucault
• Laclau
• Mouffe

Acknowledgements

This article has benefitted from a number of helpful commentaries and critiques. In particular, we would like to thank Peter Feindt, Reiner Keller and Doug Torgerson, three anonymous reviewers of the original paper, and the participants at the ‘Discourse Power and Environmental Policy’ workshop, which was convened in Freiburg in October 2014, for their constructive engagement with our ideas. Of course, we accept full responsibility for the arguments and claims finally advanced.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Steven Griggs is Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Politics and Public Policy, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

David Howarth is Professor of Social and Political Theory in the Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, UK.