DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: A CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH
2.4. ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS AND DISCOURSE
2.4.1. The policy-making process: a discursive arena
Environmental policy-making has been defined by Hajer (1995:2) as “the socially accepted set of practices through which we try to face what has become known as the ecological crisis”. It is generally understood that people develop policies to create a coherent approach to solving problems. Hajer (1995:15) revises this statement by stating that policy-making should rather be seen as a “set of practices that are meant to process fragmented and contradictory statements to be able to create the sorts of problems that institutions can handle and for which solutions can be found”. Policy-making, therefore, is about constructing problems and finding acceptable solutions for preconceived problems. More generally, Giddens (1984, cited in Healy 1999:27) defines the policy process as “the product of complex social relationships through which political communities articulate ideas and frames of reference which then guide the way collective resources (allocatory power) and rules (regulatory power) are deployed”. This definition articulates a number of interconnected issues encapsulated in the policy process. In so doing, it creates a foundation for discussions about PFM and its implementation in the southern Cape, which is also a policy process. The issues summarised in Giddens’ statement are introduced in the section below and empirically explored in the results and analysis (Chapters Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve).
Firstly, Giddens (1984, cited in Healy 1999) refers to the political communities who play an influential role in shaping the outcomes of the policy process. He is careful to use the plural,
‘communities’ as opposed to ‘community’, which indicates that there is often more than one grouping, or coalition of groups and individuals, who attempt to shape a political process.
More often than not, the policy process is a struggle where actors from particular coalitions use various tools to influence the process, to define what the (environmental) problem is, what it means, and to produce an outcome that is aligned to their political perspective, ideology or belief system and which could then become hegemonic.
Secondly, Giddens (1984, cited in Healy 1999) highlights the role of discourse in the policy process when he observes that the policy process necessitates an articulation of “ideas and frames of reference”. In other words, discourse is employed in the policy process as a means of communicating these ideas and frames of reference. In addition to the influence of institutional structures, the resources of actors, and other variables of political analysis, discourse is viewed by many theorists to be a key driver in environmental politics. According to Weiland (2003:4),
“discourses are suggested to play a crucial role in the political process: they represent the arena in which political actors try to push through their interpretation of reality”. Cultural politics is an approach that is concerned with analysis of the discursive construction of (environmental) issues and is defined as the “domain in which meanings are constructed, negotiated and resisted” (Johnston et al., 1981:115). This approach is helpful because it contextualises and is thus able to explain environmental discourse, the subject of this research, and the discursive changes that take place within politics. There are many claims and concerns about what environmental problems really are, but it is through political processes that particular claims by actors and coalitions gain credence above competing claims from other actors and coalitions.
According to Hajer (1996:256), cultural politics “asks why certain aspects of reality are singled out as ‘our common problems’ and wonders what sort of society is being created in the name of protecting nature”.
Hajer’s (1996) point about actors pushing their ‘interpretation of reality’ relates to a third aspect of Giddens’ (1984, cited in Healy 1999) definition, namely his notion of ‘frames of reference’. Marvin Minsky, according to Rein and Schön (1993), first used the idea of a
‘frame’ in 1978, with regard to the subject of artificial intelligence, to refer to a specific way of representing knowledge. Usage of the term has since broadened and its meaning become equated with terms such as paradigms and mental constructs. Hajer’s (1996) and Giddens’
(1984, cited in Healy 1999) concept of a ‘frame of reference’ suggest that not everyone approaches an environmental problem from the same perspective. Rein and Schön (1993:145) write that “participants construct the problems of their problematic policy situations through frames in which facts, values, theories, and interests are integrated”. For example, people may have different perceptions about nature that are a result of their cultural or social differences.
One culture may believe that indigenous forests are fragile ecosystems that are susceptible to disturbance, whilst another culture may view forests as being robust and able to cope with extensive use. These different, often conflicting, frames of reference result in a difference in the way that people believe the people-forest interface should be managed. The environment and environmental problems are thus socially constructed realities. Implicit in this statement is the postmodern and post positivist assumption that there is no ‘grand narrative’ about what the issue is or how it should be addressed; rather there are discursive realities that are constructed using discursive practices. These discursive practices could, for example, be storylines, myths and metaphors, or ideas and images that structure or frame reality. Rein and Schön (1977, cited in Rein and Schön 1993:148) suggest that:
“Policy frames and their underlying appreciative systems…are revealed through stories participants are disposed of to tell about policy situations. These problem-setting stories, frequently based on generative metaphors, link causal accounts of policy problems to particular proposals for actions to facilitate the normative leap from ‘is’ to ‘ought’”.
Therefore, through studying these discursive practices, what Hajer (1995) refers to as terms of policy discourse, one can identify policy frames (paradigms or mental constructs). It is suggested that this anti-realist approach adopted when engaging in cultural politics does not negate a material or physical reality (for example that a landfill site is polluting groundwater systems). This approach assumes that an objective reality exists and actual events take place, whether we talk about them or not; but constructivism does suggest that the significance given to that physical reality within social and political processes is dependent on how the event is constituted in or constructed by (environmental) discourse. In other words, language is no longer understood to be a neutral descriptive medium, but is rather an active agent in creating or constructing the world or reality that individuals and society experience. As Goodwin (1998:482) remarks, “language and discourse…can be seen as instruments of power, in enabling some statements to be made and excluding others from consideration”. Language therefore has power to shape the world or reality that is experienced.
The final issue to be raised from Giddens’ (1984) definition is the role of power within the policy process. It cannot be disputed that power is unequally distributed within society and, following a Foucauldian perspective, power is implicated in discourse and the policy process (Foucault, 1990; Richardson, 1996). Relations of power are at work in the construction of environmental problems where particular actors exert an influence over the process more so than others. Foucault (1976, cited in Hajer, 1995:49) maintained that “power is not a feature of an institution (i.e. a sovereign) but [is] defined relationally”. This implies therefore that both institutions and actors are implicated in discourses. Actors or subjects are part of the discursive context; they do not enter the policy arena with a preconceived idea, which they express verbatim through language. Rather, the actor functions within a particular context, which comprises regulated practices that shape the actor’s ideas. Also, entering into a particular discourse may make the expression (and subsequent acceptance) of alternative discourses and/or arguments unfeasible. To this extent,
“Discourses imply exclusionary systems because they only authorise certain people to participate in a discourse; they come with discursive forms of internal discipline through which a discursive order is maintained; and finally there are
also certain rules regarding the conditions under which a discourse can be drawn upon” (Hajer, 1995:49).
This is not to say that political institutions do not exert power over the political processes, they do, but this power is exerted covertly through discourse rather than by virtue of what their institution represents politically (such as a sovereign). Actors therefore have a powerful role within political institutions in influencing the power of the institution through their discourse.
Brosius (1999), in an article written about environmental politics in the Malaysian rain forest, reflects that the realm of environmental politics has been incorporated into institutions for various levels of environmental governance, from local to global. Although remarking that it is in many respects a positive development, Brosius (1999) is critical of the process of environmental institutionalisation that is occurring on a remarkable scale. Environmental institutionalisation is reflected in the proliferation of international protocols, conventions and action plans; a plethora of acronyms describing national policies and plans that are dedicated to various environmental concerns; and the significant growth in the professional field of environmental management and environmental studies programs at universities. All these initiatives “support[s] regimes for the institutionalisation of environmental surveillance and governance” (Brosius, 1999:38). These institutions regulate which forms of discourse are acceptable and which actors should be advantaged over others. Critical of the value of these institutions in addressing environmental problems, Brosius (1999:38) argues that:
“Apparently designed to advance an environmental agenda, such institutions in fact often obstruct meaningful change through endless negotiation, legalistic evasion, compromise among ‘stakeholders’, and the creation of unwieldy projects aimed at top-down environmental management. More importantly, however, they insinuate and naturalise a discourse that excludes moral or political imperatives in favour of indifferent bureaucratic and technoscientific forms of institutionally created and validated intervention”.
In this way institutions exert power on a policy process. Power, it would seem, is not an automatic function of an institution but rather the outcome of discursive interaction between actors within the institution, which in turn shapes the policy outcome. This influence is understood by Hajer (1995; 1996) and others to be an argumentative struggle between various discourse coalitions within the policy network to assert a particular discourse.
It is evident that environmental politics and the policy-process is not a simplistic arena wherein policies, legislation and regulations are composed in a technical manner, but is rather a domain in which actors, who are often part of a discourse coalition, struggle to assert their position
through discursive practices, and in which particular interpretations of reality or frames are constructed, negotiated and resisted.