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

TLDR: This paper developed a distinctively poststructuralist approach to the analysis of policy discourse in the field of environmental politics, building on the work of Laclau and Mouffe and others.

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. De...

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DISCOURSE, POLICY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: HEGEMONY,
STATEMENTS AND THE ANALYSIS OF UK AIRPORT EXPANSION
STEVEN GRIGGS AND DAVID HOWARTH
JOURNAL ARTICLE
How to cite: Steven Griggs and David Howarth (2017) ‘Discourse, policy and the
environment: hegemony, statements and the analysis of UK airport expansion’,
Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, DOI: 10.1080/1523908X.2016.1266930
Version: Accepted Manuscript
Link to article on publisher’s website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2016.1266930

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DISCOURSE, POLICY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: HEGEMONY,
STATEMENTS AND THE ANALYSIS OF UK 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 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.
Key words
discourse; airport expansion; statements; Foucault; Laclau and Mouffe

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Building on the work of Laclau and Mouffe and others, this article develops a
distinctively poststructuralist approach to policy discourse in the field of
environmental politics.
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Despite important theoretical advances, there remain
persistent critiques of the approach, both theoretical and methodological. On the one
hand, it is alleged that its theoretical assumptions are either too ideational or
insufficiently attuned to the linguistic aspect of discourse analysis. On the other hand,
it is claimed that there are difficulties in operationalizing the approach and thus
generating effective research strategies (e.g. Bevir and Rhodes, 2004; Wagenaar,
2011).
While some of these criticisms are wide of the mark, they do raise a crucial question
about the specificity of discourse analysis within a poststructuralist approach to
environmental policy research. Its distinctive concern with the emergence and
transformation of particular discourses is often lost amidst a concern for philosophical
issues and wider social processes. Paradoxically, therefore, an approach that extols the
importance of the linguistic model in rethinking policymaking practices often occludes
the specific materiality of language in its method.
We respond to this paradox by articulating elements of Laclau and Mouffe’s post-
Marxist theory of hegemony with insights gleaned from Foucault’s concept of the
statement. Foucault’s different approaches to discourse analysis have been widely
used in policy research, including the environmental field (e.g. Hajer, 1995; Keller,
2011; 2013; Litfin, 1995). Yet such work has not been explicitly integrated into a post-
Marxist perspective and there remain unanswered questions about different aspects of

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Foucault’s problematic, especially his analysis of statements, which he developed in
the ‘archaeological’ phase of his writings (e.g. Foucault, 1972).
Our article thus begins by elaborating our approach to discourse and hegemony before
turning to its implications for the evaluation of environmental policy change. We then
critically examine Foucault’s idea of the statement, before supplementing the
analytical focus on statements with the logic of hegemony. The value of the approach
is then illustrated through an interpretation of key policy reversals in United Kingdom
(UK) aviation policy, where environmental demands and statements have come to
play a crucial role.
It is our contention that airport expansions and the aviation industry have become
something of a paradigm case of the ‘wickedness of climate change’ (Hulme, 2009, p.
335). Not only do they exemplify ‘traditional’ environmental issues, such as air and
noise pollution, but they are strongly connected to the problem of rising carbon
emissions. Here, we select and analyse three exemplary statements that structured the
case of UK aviation policy: the search for ‘a balanced approach’, ‘a genuinely
sustainable framework’, and the need to ‘deliver the maximum connectivity bang for
each of our carbon bucks’. Such statements are then used to elucidate the underlying
discursive formations that made them possible, while also assisting us to account for
the shifts between key policy discourses.
DISCOURSE AND HEGEMONY

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We begin with the claim that discourse is not reducible to the spoken word, the written
text, or communicative actions, but is grounded on a materialist conception of social
relations, in which the sharp opposition between reality and symbolic representations
is weakened (Howarth, 2013; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, pp. 111-112). This
assumption gives rise to four ontological postulates. First, we reject a purely linguistic
or ‘cognitive’ approach to discourse by defining it as ‘an articulatory practice’ that
constitutes the pattern and meaning of social relations (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p.
96). Discourse is a practice because it is produced by subjects who link together
contingent elements - words and things, rules and resources - into relational systems.
It is articulatory because the identities of the elements are modified in the process of
constructing these linkages and relational totalities.
Secondly, the results of articulatory practices are incomplete systems of meaning and
activity, which are delimited by the exclusion of certain elements (Laclau, 2005;
Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). A discourse thus includes words, things, (human and non-
human) agents and actions, and their constitution institutes divisions with rival
assemblages. Thirdly, a key condition of this approach is that all such elements are
contingent and unfixed – no object or entity is determined by an essence - so that their
identity is only partially fixed by articulatory practices.
A fourth postulate relates to the particular spaces within which contingent elements
are connected together. Such ‘fields of discursivity’ constitute a terrain in which the
construction and deconstruction of discourses takes place, and they may be related to
different levels of analysis, deeper institutional systems and sub-systems that exist in a
given context. But though such spaces are relatively sedimented in any given

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Discourse, policy and the environment: hegemony, statements and the analysis of uk airport expansion" ?

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. When supplemented with the logic of hegemony, the authors 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. The authors 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. 

Q2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Discourse, policy and the environment: hegemony, statements and the analysis of uk airport expansion" ?

Nonetheless, as the authors also make clear in their account, the focus on statements does not provide a full explanation of the outcome of hegemonic struggles. In short, in their view, future empirical research should continue to find ways of integrating the analysis of statements within a poststructuralist approach to policy analysis by generating more empirical and longitudinal applications in different environmental policy sectors, and by conducting comparative studies across sectors and within international environmental policy regimes. In this way, the limits of Foucault ’ s narrow linguistic analysis of the emergence, disappearance and transformation of statements can be discerned. 

Q3. What is the meaning of policy statements?

In short, policy statements form a subset of serious speech acts that operate as public declarations, which are open to scrutiny and contestation. 

Q4. What was the purpose of the ‘balanced approach’ statement?

in a complex interplay of equivalence and difference, the ‘balanced approach’ statement sought to redefine the previously opposed demands for aviation growth, on the one hand, and environmental protection, on the other, as compatible outcomes, which were capable of being mediated or ‘balanced’. 

Q5. How many in-depth interviews did the authors conduct?

the authors conducted more than thirty in-depth semistructured interviews with local activists, aviation industry representatives, policy officers, and environmental lobbyists. 

Q6. What is the main theme of Foucault’s archaeological project?

A vital aspect of Foucault’s archaeological project is to question taken-for-granted systems of statements (or discourses), because they are seemingly unified by referenceto a common object, style, author, way of speaking, and so forth (Foucault, 1972, pp. 21-30). 

Q7. What is the central theme of Foucault’s archaeological approach?

In the Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault makes it clear that ‘the central theme’ of his archaeological approach is an ‘enunciative function’ called the statement (Foucault, 1972, pp. 106, 114). 

Q8. Why does Foucault emphasize the rareness of statements?

This is because statements are surrounded by a restrictive ensemble of formation rules, which exclude potential candidates for consideration as statements, as well as ruling out statements that do not fit into a particular discourse (Foucault, 1981, p. 52). 

Q9. How can the authors chart the relationship between and within discourses?

similarities, and resonances between and within discourses, can thus be charted by focussing on the repetition/alteration of key statements, that is to say, their iterability, in different institutional contexts. 

Q10. What did the authors consider as the extent to which statements were linked to a network of other statements?

because statements are relational entities, the authors considered the extent to which statements were linked to a network of other statements, thus establishing ‘a specific link with something else’ 

Q11. What are the implications of Foucault’s conception of rules?

Other commentators have also raised questions about the normative implications of Foucault’s conception of rules, where they can be taken to operate as norms to which subjects should conform if their statements are to be regarded as legitimate and taken seriously (e.g. Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982). 

Q12. What is the purpose of the focus on statements?

The focus on statements should thus be supplemented by the analysis of rhetoric and arguments, propositions and ordinary speech acts, as well as the complex and interacting logics of equivalence and difference that operate in the wider society. 

Q13. What was the reason the airports commission came out in favour of a third runway?

Not unexpectedly, reporting in July 2015, the Airports Commission came out in favour of a third runway at Heathrow, thus potentially laying the ground for the reversal of the 2010 policy commitment of the Cameron government (Airports Commission, 2015). 

Q14. What did the authors do to examine the way in which statements exercise an ‘enunciative function’?

the authors paid attention to the way in which statements exercise an ‘enunciative function’, which partly constitute the objects and things they articulate, while structuring the practices of debate and contestation with which they are connected (for example, by positioning subjects who can legitimately speak on an issue).