The Dynamics of Justification in Policy Reform: Insights from Water Policy Debates in Ireland

ABSTRACT

Policy reform can be complex and fraught with contending arguments. Although much research has been conducted into the politics of coalition formation, less attention has been devoted to legitimating logics in policy reform. Drawing on the work of Boltanski and Thévenot, this exploratory study addresses this deficit by examining the influence of justifications deployed in policy debates. The paper analyses the role of shifting reasoning in contentious debates concerning attempts to reform water policy, including the introduction of domestic water charges in Ireland. Employing data from parliamentary deliberations, the paper traces the changing forms of justification used by those favouring and opposing the reforms. This examination suggests the importance of aligning an argument’s content with the shifting context into which it is introduced. The paper highlights the benefits of an investigative approach concerning policy justification for understanding policy reform dynamics at the intersection of politics and environmental communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy reform
• environmental communication
• environmental policy
• water charges
• policy justification

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to all of the MSc Environmental Policy class 2015–2016 at University College Dublin whose participation in a wider project on this topic assisted in this paper’s development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Data from 2016 are excluded as only one month was referenced after the dissolution of Dáil Éireann.

2 For example, in one survey of people protesting against the introduction of water charges, over half of the survey respondents reported having never engaged in protest before (Hearne, 2015a).

3 This reflected the approval of a Water Charges Scheme, based on metered charges, by the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER); large-scale public protests in response to potential scale of charges and the passing of Water Services Act 2014. This legislative change, responding to public opposition, sought to restrict the original charging parameters and obliged the charging scheme to be recalculated with household costs reduced to fixed amounts.