Abstract
Discourse network analysis (DNA) is a combination of network analysis and qualitative content analysis. DNA has been applied to various policy processes and debates to show how policy actors are related at the discursive level, complementing coordination relations among them that are often analysed in the application of the policy networks approach. This editorial takes stock of the theoretical and methodological research frontiers in DNA and summarises the contributions of the eleven articles in the thematic issue on “Policy Debates and Discourse Network Analysis” in <em>Politics and Governance</em>.
Highlights
In the study of policy processes, many theories and frameworks (Weible & Sabatier, 2017) revolve around a number of common themes: political actors; coalitions in which these actors organise in order to influence policy making; the networks through which they engage with, and perceive, each other; the issues, topics, policy sectors, problems, or policy domains they are concerned with; actors’ beliefs and interpretations and resulting belief systems, discourses, and narratives with regard to policy problems; the timing of decisions and opportunities; actors’ resources and their resulting power and reputation; as well as institutions, broadly understood as the set of rules of the system, and their constraining or enabling forces
A strong empirical tradition in this field is the study of policy networks, which focuses on the information flows, collaboration, and exchange of resources among political actors in order to explain who gets to influence policy outcomes in any given policy domain or subsystem (Kenis & Schneider, 1991; Leifeld & Schneider, 2012)
Despite an early focus of these approaches on policy beliefs, the tools of policy network analysis were increasingly borrowed to replace the study of belief systems in advocacy coalitions by the study of coordination (e.g., Ingold, 2011; Schlager, 1995)
Summary
In the study of policy processes, many theories and frameworks (Weible & Sabatier, 2017) revolve around a number of common themes: political actors (such as interest groups, government agencies, legislators, and scientific actors); coalitions in which these actors organise in order to influence policy making; the networks through which they engage with, and perceive, each other; the issues, topics, policy sectors, problems, or policy domains they are concerned with; actors’ beliefs and interpretations and resulting belief systems, discourses, and narratives with regard to policy problems; the timing of decisions and opportunities; actors’ resources and their resulting power and reputation; as well as institutions, broadly understood as the set of rules of the system, and their constraining or enabling forces. DNA is an attempt at measuring actors’ policy beliefs and discourses systematically using text sources and moulding them into a data format that is compatible with policy network analysis This endeavour serves to facilitate the joint analysis of material policy networks (the ‘coordination layer’) and ideational networks among the same actors (the ‘discursive layer’ or belief layer of subsystem politics). The more concepts any two actors agree on (positively or negatively), the larger the tie weight becomes that connects the two actors, normalised by the average number of concepts the two actors use overall This kind of network effectively mirrors the coordination relations found in the study of policy networks: Both kinds of networks are based on actors in a policy domain, and both kinds of networks can exhibit coalitions of actors as densely interconnected parts of the network
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