Official Policy Discourse Research Articles

China’s Digital Silk Road: Challenges and Opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a Beijing-led format for international cooperation through the building of land and sea corridors connecting China with other countries and regions. One of its pillars is the Digital Silk Road (DSR), which aims to reduce the digital divide and improve the digital connectivity of the participating countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the DSR’s activation, which makes it urgent to study its practical implementation in different regions. The aim of this article is to analyze the conceptual foundations of the DSR and its implementation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The study relies on the technology leadership theory, which allows considering the DSR as an alternative format of cooperation used by China to reform digital international relations. Since it challenges the technological dominance of the West, especially the United States, the power transition theory is also of heuristic value. The methodological basis of the research covers a wide range of general scientific methods of political analysis. The primary sources of empirical analysis are government documents, papers of think tanks, international organizations and forums, statistical data, interactive maps, speeches by officials, etc. In the course of the study, the following objectives are achieved: to trace the evolution of the DSR concept in the official policy discourse; to systematize scientific works on the issue; to highlight key elements of the initiative; to identify opportunities and limitations for its implementation in the LAC region; to present the US response to the intensification of Sino-LAC digital cooperation. It is concluded that the DSR plays an important role in achieving the strategic objective of transforming China into a technological superpower. Therefore, it is highly likely to become a backbone of cooperation under the BRI.

Policy reconfiguration as enactment in the strategy of recontextualized neoliberalism: Paradigmatic shift in teacher education policy reform

Drawing on Bernstein's notion of policy recontextualization, this study analyzes the exercise of neoliberal governmentality in the case of teacher education policy reform in Taiwan by analyzing data collected from official documents, meeting minutes, articles of legislation and media reports. The findings show that senior policymakers actively engaged in policy reconfiguration through paradigmatic adjustment. The resulting ‘recontextualized neoliberalism’ suggests that agents in the pedagogical recontextualizing field, through public activism in education, are speaking back to official policy discourses and forcing a softening of neoliberal market agendas in education.11The authors would like to express their appreciation to Dr. Parlo Singh of Griffith University for her insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

(Un)Doing rights: Adivasi participation in governance discourses in an area of civil unrest in India

ABSTRACT This paper draws on recent empirical research into indigenous Adivasi identities in India to explore Adivasi participation and demands for community rights within local structures of governance in a village context. I examine the multiple articulations of rights by the Adivasis that they consider crucial for community development in the backdrop of protracted violence and conflict. This paper engages with the local context of civil unrest by drawing attention to the Maoist movement, its assumed opposition to rights in official policy discourses and its relevance to the Adivasi lives. In particular, I analyse the ways in which the Adivasis engage with the local power relations with respect to the state, the Maoists and other community groups to make demands for everyday survival and gain access to resources. Linked to this, I attend to the modes of collective (dis)engagement, social and political participation of the Adivasis in governance forums to (re)claim the rights to land, forest, safety and overall community development that were denied to them as a group historically. These rights, I argue, are deemed necessary by the community in ensuring equal citizenship, social inclusion and in realising their specific struggles for human rights within the local context of violence.

When ‘unintended effects’ reveal hidden intentions: Implications of ‘mutual benefit’ discourses for evaluating development cooperation

This article’s starting point is that the dichotomy between intended and unintended effects is linked to official policy discourse on the overall purpose and objectives of development cooperation. It describes and discusses recent policy trends that move away from emphasizing developing country benefits toward the pursuit of ‘mutual benefit’ as the key motivating factor and aim for development cooperation as an area of public policy. A mix of motivations has always driven development cooperation, yet the current policy trend differs in that such motivations are made explicit. As a consequence, recent policies suggest that these different interests represent ‘win-wins’ rather than trade-offs and conceptualize a common development agenda for the donor and recipient countries. Given that political discourse promotes and prepares legal and accountability systems, public scrutiny and independent evaluation are a few steps behind and largely restricted to analyzing benefits for developing countries. The article argues that articulating all goals of development cooperation can facilitate evaluation practice in this changed setting, as effects considered to be ‘unintended’ from the perspective of promoting development goals may, in fact, be intentional or anticipated from a mutual benefit perspective.

The Social Life of Data: The Production of Political Facts in EU Policy Governance

Data presented in European Union documents have a social life of their own; they are collected, analyzed, disseminated, used, and reused. Along the way, data interact with different external elements—economic, social, and political actors, positions, and preferences—transforming their potential for different contexts and meanings. The Directorates-General are significant data actors, involved in both data-gathering and fact dissemination stages of data's social life and controlling the flows of data through the EU. This article focuses on the social life of two sets of data, tracing the evolution of these datasets into political discourses about disaster response and migration, and arguing that data never speak for themselves but rather evolve into facts through networks, which shape official policy discourses.

Towards an actor-oriented approach to social exclusion: a critical review of contemporary exclusion research in a Swedish social work context

ABSTRACTSocial exclusion has emerged as a key concept within Swedish social work research during the last decade. Yet, despite the plethora of conceptualisations put forward there is a dearth of critical discussion on potential pitfalls and limitations following this fragmentation. This article investigates the deployment of social exclusion in national social work research during the period 1999–2016. Three separate but linked research strands are identified: (1) a policy-absorbed approach, characterised by conceptual and analytical closeness to the Swedish policy discourse on exclusion, (2) a diluted approach, characterised by conceptual confusion and conflation and (3) an autonomous approach, distinguished by its conceptual and analytical distance from the official policy discourse on exclusion. Based on presented findings, we argue that there is need for an actor-oriented approach to social exclusion within social work research. We conclude with proposing a multi-level analytical framework that involves studying the sequence of events leading up to people being denied access to social, economic, material, cultural and/or political resources.

Modernisation, Migration, and Mobilisation: Relinking Internal and International Migrations in the ‘Migration and Development Nexus’

AbstractThere is growing enthusiasm in academic and policy circles for the positive role that international migrants can play in the development of their home countries and communities. Supranational development organisations, national governments, and other institutions have scrambled to assess the linkages between ‘migration and development’ and to implement new policies and programs to more effectively ‘capture’ transnational remittances in order promote greater development outcomes. This international ‘migration and development’ (MAD) paradigm nevertheless draws heavily on older development models, grounded in modernisation theory, which promoted rapid internal rural‐to‐urban migration. Yet, these connections are rarely acknowledged or analysed within official policy discourses; rather, this MAD nexus is regularly depicted as a new paradigm, one that exists without historical or ideological context. This paper traces out the conceptual connections between past and contemporary linkages of MAD theory. I argue that relinking internal and international migrations literature in development reveals the ways in which modernisation theories that rest on problematic contrasts between modernity/tradition and development/backwardness are unconsciously replicated within current policy discourses. I argue that a return to a close interrogation of the concept of development – as defined by migrant actors themselves – has the potential to both bridge the divide within migration studies and to productively critique migration and development policy discourses in ways that do not elide their historical emergence and political effects. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pedagogising the university: on higher education policy implementation and its effects on social relations

This paper aims at providing a theoretical and empirical discussion on the concept of pedagogisation which derives from the hypothesis of a new era of ‘totally pedagogised society’ in Basil Bernstein’s work. The article is based on empirical research on higher education policy, with a focus on the implementation of curriculum change policy in French universities. Observations provided by this research show that current orientations of policy, such as efficiency-oriented policy discourses and quality-assurance mechanisms, entail social effects on the organisation of work in universities towards pedagogisation, that is the positioning of the University itself and of its agents into pedagogic relations. Pedagogisation refers to the establishment of a certain type of social relation which involves an attempt to modify the sociocognitive and practical frameworks of social agents engaged in practice. The paper argues that the concept proves to have a descriptive potential in how power relations and social control operate within processes of policy implementation. First, it provides understanding of how categories of reform circulate from official policy discourse to local practices. Second, it enables to consider consequences on communication and social relations between agents/agencies, especially in regards to the conditions of their participation and contribution in the construction of the higher education debate.

In-service training programmes for mathematics teachers nested in transnational policy discourses

Results in mathematics on international knowledge surveys like Programme for International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study have become one of the most important factors for the perceived success or failure of schools and even entire education systems in the policy arena. In this article, we explore the complex recontextualising processes that occur when translating educational policy into actual programmes for teachers’ education. First, the transnational education policy discourse(s) of teachers’ in-service training with a focus on mathematics will be explored. Second, we examine how this transnational discourse is recontextualised in a national policy discourse resulting in a national reform programme for in-service training of mathematics teachers in Sweden. In a third step, concrete teacher training courses in mathematics are examined. The result shows a convergence between the official policy discourse and the pedagogic recontextualising field in terms of a broad teaching repertoire and peer discussions about reflections on certain common objects of learning.

Interrogating early school leaving, youth unemployment and NEETs: Understanding local contexts in two english regions

In England, early school leaving is not part of the official policy discourse; the focus instead is on reducing youth unemployment and the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). The overall aim of this paper is to examine the key issues at stake in the changing policy landscape relating to education and youth unemployment in England, and to explore the challenges facing young people in the context of localised socio-economic factors. Drawing on the academic literature, official statistics and qualitative data from our fieldwork in two English regions, we explore the differences between the concepts of ESL, NEETs and youth unemployment and interrogate the efficacy of these terms to capture vulnerability patterns in youth transitions. In addition, the paper argues that educational policies and outcomes need to be understood in relation to economic opportunity structures not just nationally but also at regional levels. Our data suggests that although educational attainment has a positive impact on labour market outcomes, it is unlikely that education policy initiatives alone will solve the issue of large-scale youth unemployment.

Trajectories towards failure: considerations regarding post-16 transitions within the UK Sport-Education sector

This paper offers insights into the increasing dichotomy that exists between official forms of opportunity and access and the actual ‘lived experience’ of young peoples' trajectories towards careers in the UK's market-orientated Sport-Fitness and Physical Education employment sectors. It does so by drawing on data generated by an 18-month ethnographic study to provide a case study of two students who chose to make the transition from a Foundation Degree in Sport Coaching (FdSc) onto a ‘Top Up’ Bachelor of Science (BSc) Sports Science and Coaching qualification. The paper illustrates their experiences of this transition in relation to the following phases of their trajectory (1) facilitators of transition (2) managing expectations (3) transformation and (4) isolation. The findings highlight how, for some individuals, current transitions facilitate a critical distance between individual dispositions towards education and the positions and practices of higher education. We suggest that education and employers must further listen to the voices and experiences of students that transcend the rhetorics of official policy discourse to facilitate a process in which the conditions of transition may begin to be reimagined.

The geography of multiple scarcities: Urban development and water problems in Lima, Peru

The paper discusses the contradictory evolution of water services and the politicised nature of water scarcity in Lima, the capital of Peru. It initially claims that water scarcity cannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon, but it is inserted in a wider multiplicity of scarcities that characterise contemporary urban development. The naturalisation of scarcity in the official policy discourse is then criticised for its tendency to overlook interconnected mechanisms of political differentiation and socioeconomic exploitation that influence the allocation and use of water. Against such reductionist readings, the analysis employs a non-essentialist interpretation of multiple scarcities related to water and emphasises the need to address the totality of the experience of scarcity. Based on qualitative fieldwork, which explored recent institutional reforms and the daily struggle for water in the periphery of Lima, three fundamental reasons were identified for the persistence of water scarcity: first, the expansion of water problems as a result of the poor quality of housing and the discriminatory practices against low-income residents; second, the modest improvements in water services provided by public investment programmes, which have primarily aimed to answer political and electoral demands of the ruling party; and third, the technocratic basis of new management approaches and the systematic exclusion of grassroots communities from the decision-making process. Genuine responses to the mounting water problems of Lima require a more critical appreciation of the production of circumstantial abundances and totalising scarcities in the city.

Foreseeing the Future of Second Home Tourism. The Case of Finnish Media and Policy Discourse

Second homes have been interpreted as a significant indicator of the development of new patterns of mobility and dwelling in Western countries. However, changes in population distribution, population composition, family structures and tourism preferences pose a reason to challenge the general assumption that second home tourism would continue unchanged in the future. This paper reviews representations of the future of second home tourism in the Finnish media and policy discourse. Mainstream trends and emerging weak signals are recognized and further analysed in reference to the international context. As a result of the analysis four distinctive themes related to the future of second home tourism are distinguished: dual dwelling, internationalization, alternative forms and regional differentiation. These themes suggest a change in the traditional Finnish second home culture, often portrayed as a personal and national utopia. With the exception of dual dwelling, all the themes have so far been overlooked in the official policy discourse. The paper addresses a new theme in Finnish as well as international second home literature as so far only little has been published on the long term future of second home tourism.

The “Middle Power” Concept in Australian Foreign Policy

During the early 1990s, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments promoted Australia's diplomatic credentials as an activist and independent middle power. Labor claimed that by acting as a middle power Australia was constructing a novel diplomatic response to the challenges of the post‐Cold War world. But a closer reading of the official foreign policy record since 1945 reveals that previous conservative governments have also taken a similar view of Australia's place and position on the international stage. This essay traces the historical evolution of the middle power concept in Australian foreign policy and concludes with an assessment of the Howard government's more recent reluctance to use this label and its implications for Australia's future middle power credentials. Although its use has waxed and waned in official policy discourse and it is more commonly associated with Labor governments, the middle power concept itself and the general diplomatic style it conveys have been one of the most durable and consistent elements of Australia's diplomatic practice.

Struggles Around the Commodification of Daily Life in South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa has seen the emergence of new social and community movements making demands on the African National Congress government to deliver on its promise of ‘a better life for all’. In these struggles, the identity of ‘the poor’ has been increasingly mobilised, both by movements reminding the state of its obligations to its people, and in official policy discourse seeking to introduce neoliberal macro-economic changes. This paper explores how the category of ‘the poor’ is mobilised in struggles for basic services in urban areas in South Africa, and in state policy that seeks to draw poor people into agreements to pay for services. In doing this, it explores the possibilities inherent in capitalist society for change and the building of relations that challenge or subvert the dominant logic of commodification and, in turn, of capital.

Canadian Multiculturalism Ideology: Mere Tolerance or Full Acceptance

September 11, 2001 will forever be etched in the memory of Canadians who were deeply affected by the events of that day. This cataclysmic occurrence had a pivotal place not only upon the private troubles of those directly related but also upon the public issues and the consequent public policies of all of us who may not have been as directly touched. Such a life-changing experience will impinge upon the politics of our entire nation. The terrorist act was a political statement at one level which must be addressed politically as well It is noteworthy, given this context of the terrorist attack in the nation to the South, that October 8, 2001 represented the thirtieth anniversary of the political declaration of multiculturalism as a public state policy within Canada What difference does the official policy discourse and ideology of multiculturalism make in the political response to the ethnocultural and racial diversity within and without its national borders?

Sex in Health Education: Official Guidance for Schools in England, 1928–1977

Abstract This article examines official policy discourses on sex within the health education curriculum of schools during the period 1928–77. The article begins with an account of the origins of sex education in schools, and of why, in the early twentieth century, its inclusion in the health education curriculum was problematical. In the main section, the article examines the content of consecutive editions of the government published “handbooks of health education”, and of an important supplementary guidance pamphlet, published during the Second World War. It traces the gradual shifts over time in official discourses of “sex education”, and in the sets of understandings about children, sexuality and the role of parents, for example, which underlay them. The shifts in official guidance discourses on sex within the health education curriculum of schools are explained through locating changes in their broader social and political contexts, especially the impact of the Second World War on sexual morality and the post‐war emergence of youth as a significant social grouping. The article concludes by evaluating the handbooks as a source for the history of school‐based health and sex education and by drawing attention to the wider historical and sociological significance of official discourses on sex education.