Discursive content and process

Discursive institutionalism is interested in the content of ideas, but also in the way ideas are communicated and exchanged as a stimulus for political change (Schmidt 2010, pp. 2-3).

Discursive practices are informed by ideas at the systemic and cross-jurisdictional level, down to organisational and even sub-organisational levels, generating what Hajer calls

‘communicative networks among actors with different or at best overlapping perceptions and understandings’. The way such networks operate, and the content of their frameworks and

36 In correspondence with me, Professor Schmidt confirmed that she ‘had not seen a piece on DI focused on intergovernmental relations in a federal system per se’ (correspondence dated 23/2/17)

outputs, are ‘the prime vehicles of change’ in the multi-jurisdictional governance frameworks of interest to my research (Hajer 1995, p. 63) and form the basis of the findings detailed in Chapters 4 and 5. For example, the networks discussed in Chapter 5 illustrate Hajer’s notion of ‘discourse coalitions’ as particular communicative networks bound by a common set of

‘story lines’ and acting on that understanding (1995, p. 58ff.).

The federal system offers a fruitful and varied set of discourses for examination, and consequently the different forms such discursive content and discursive practice can take, and the interplay between them, are a useful element in the discursive methodology employed here.

Discursive institutionalism sees federal structures as embodiments of ideas which, in Blyth’s terms, ‘give substance to interests and determine the form and content of new institutions’ (as discussed in Bell 2011, p. 887). Federalism as an ‘idea’ is more than just a set of constitutional, legal and political structures and processes that determine the interests and motives of the political and bureaucratic actors within it; it is, in Hay’s terms, an ‘irredeemably ideational’

environment (2011, p. 67) in which ideas and discourses are an engine of change during periods of both uncertainty and crisis (eg Blyth, 2002) and stability (eg Carstensen, 2011).

Discourse as content and as process operates at different levels of generality and influence that Schmidt categorises as ‘policies, programs, and philosophies’ (2008, p. 306). These help explain one of the key themes emerging from my interviews, the way public servants draw from higher-level federal perspectives and narratives, and the policies and programs these generate (‘states’ rights’, ‘subsidiarity’, ‘harmonisation’, ‘cooperative federalism’ and so on).

They then apply these to specific policy processes using ‘paradigms that reflect underlying assumptions or organizing principles’ (Schmidt 2008, p. 306). These policy solutions correspond closely to the ideational strategies adopted by actors in a federal dynamics framework.

It is also important to note that, as potential areas for the exercise of agency, policy ideas are more labile, or at least open to change, than programmatic ideas, and both policy and program ideas change more rapidly than the more fundamental philosophies from which they emerge (Schmidt 2011, p. 108). Some of these ideas operate at Schmidt’s higher ‘philosophical’ level and some at lower programmatic and policy levels, allowing us to see individual agency working differently and with wider or narrow possibilities at these different levels. For example, Deem et al. find that public servants make a clear distinction between their view of

subsidiarity in principle (corresponding to a ‘philosophical’ paradigm in Schmidt’s terms), and their more practical concerns and approaches when thinking about particular policy problems (2015, p. 432). At the meso-level and particularly at the issue-based policy levels, the potential for agency is at its widest and hence the possibilities for change are also most apparent.

My approach has therefore been to examine how these discursive levels are reflected in the way the interviewees understand their roles and are guided by norms and values that are not uni-dimensional but require choices to be made amongst them (such choices themselves representing a form of agency).

Discursive institutionalists also distinguish coordinative discourse, between ‘individuals and groups at the center of policy construction who are involved in the creation, elaboration, and justification of policy and programmatic ideas… on the basis of shared cognitive and normative ideas about a common policy enterprise’ from communicative discourse, a political process involving ‘the presentation, deliberation, and legitimation of political ideas to the general public’ (Schmidt 2008, p. 310). Again, such differences generate a potential space for the exercise of agency where different governments adopt different ‘communicative discourses’, or different coordinative and communicative discourses, requiring a ‘discursive space’ in which to sort this out.

Differentiating between these discursive forms and levels suggests one approach to the problem of change occurring in federal systems despite apparent systemic stability. Different rates of change are recognised at different levels of the ideational layer, suggesting at least the possibility of a systemic capability for incremental improvement and individual creativity, even if overall change in the federal system is glacial and highly exposed to political interests and dynamics.³⁷ As illustrated in the findings that follow, change occurs as individuals engaged in intergovernmental management generate cognitive and normative ideas about their work that are disseminated and guide the work of others; or, in terms of content, where different elements are added to existing ideas, ‘thereby bringing about change in ideas incrementally even in times of stability, and not just at critical junctures during ‘paradigm’ shifts’ (Schmidt 2010, p. 14).

37 For example, Schmidt (2017a, p. 460) argues that rapidly changing policy ideas in the Eurozone crisis

‘demonstrate the creativity of agents’ ideas, beyond what might have been expected within the context of long-accepted frames and paradigms, let al.one the deeper, slowly evolving philosophical ideas’.