Poststructural Policy Analysis Research Articles

‘The right to fall in love and kiss without consequences’: on racialized Muslim women, ‘mixed’ intimacies, and Dutch sexual exceptionalism

ABSTRACT What does political concern with ‘mixed’ intimacies articulate about the nation? This article unpacks this question by analysing a Dutch poster campaign on self-determination, organized by the Rotterdam municipality and a feminist NGO, that visualized ‘mixed’ couples intimately kissing. It uses a visual analysis of the posters, combined with a post-structural policy analysis of a variety of documents that were essential to the production of this campaign. First, the article argues that the campaign centred on the racialized figure of the Muslim woman, problematizing her self-determination through a framework of liberal-secular notions of freedom and agency. Then, by historicizing the Dutch preoccupation with ‘mixed’ intimacies as a mode of (colonial) governance, the article accounts for how the campaign engages with particular kinds of ‘mixing’ to underscore Dutch sexual exceptionalism. The article argues the campaign can be seen as part of the contemporary configuration of the Dutch ‘Muslim Question’, mobilizing the intimate lives of racialized Muslim women to problematize Muslims as deviant populations. Overall, this article explores how representations of, and discourses on ‘mixed’ intimacies can be used as prisms to study the gendered and racialized state management of population, as well as (shifting) imaginaries of the nation in the Netherlands.

Repurposing public education: governmental rationality of education export in Finland through public education problematisations

ABSTRACT The Finnish government’s education export (FGEE) programme, which was initiated in 2010, seeks to promote and coordinate education as an export product. Until recently, research on the Finnish education export has focused on individual education sectors, with only passing consideration of the governmental rationality of education export. Drawing on Bacchi’s (2009) post-structural policy analysis, I use the FGEE documents as a material starting point, as ‘practical texts’ (Bacchi 2009, 34; Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, 34) to study how education export discourse problematises public education and produces a contextualised governmental rationality. Contributing to the growing body of knowledge on emerging global, national, and local public – private structures, the paper illustrates how minor policy strands such as the FGEE programme can be seen as production sites in which education practices and their governmental rationalities are constructed.

Declined quality? A poststructural policy analysis of the ‘quality problem’ in Taiwanese higher education

ABSTRACT The tension between broadening university capacity and maintaining quality is a global phenomenon. While numerous studies have analysed the enactments of various policies that aimed to address declining university quality, few have examined the underlying beliefs that define what is conceptualised as a ‘quality problem’ within the policy proposals. Utilising Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) approach, this study provides a nuanced analysis of this issue, centring on an underexplored aspect: how the ‘quality’ is made to be a particular kind of problem within a specific policy. Specifically, it scrutinises an uncommon policy in Taiwan – proposing the reduction of university places as a solution to declining quality – to critically analyse what quality is established as ‘reality’ that set limits on how higher education can be thought. A central thesis of this analysis is that higher education system comes into existence through ongoing formation as specific kind of object rather than existing as a fixed entity. Understanding the construction of quality problem and the objectification of higher education requires a critical examination of the underlying assumptions and a detailed mapping of heterogeneous practices that create forms of authority for certain perceptions of ‘quality’ accepted as true.

Poststructural Analysis of Anti-LGBTQ + Educational Policies

We draw on several critical paradigms, disciplines, and theories to interrogate 13 anti-LGBTQ+ educational policy texts. Using Institutional Theory (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; Carpenter & Feroz, 2001) and Poststructural Policy Analysis (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016), we explore how these texts may cause separations between policy and practice, how they construct “teachers” and “students” as subjects and objects of the state, and how they promote cisheteropatriarchy. The terms reactive evasion and identity evasiveness are presented to describe central discursive mechanisms in the texts. The term identity specificity, or the humanizing practices of recognizing diverse identities, is coined as a fundamental component of educational quality. We situate our work as an enunciation of critical resistance within anti-oppressive discourses and assert three main arguments: (a) these dictates will adversely affect educational institutions; (b) a fundamental component of educational quality is identity specificity; and (c) policy not centered on the humanizing testimony of those about whom that policy is generated reinforces oppressive regimes.

Digital compliance or professional competence? Representations of teachers and digital futures in the Norwegian Qualification Framework

ABSTRACT This paper presents a document analysis of the Norwegian qualification framework Professional Digital Competence Framework for Teachers (PDC) to explore the underlying assumptions within the policy. Employing a post-structural policy analysis, the paper analyses the representation of the ‘problem’ of PDC by asking what the document does in relation to teachers’ professionalism. To do this, the analysis explores the underlying assumptions of the policy document and its construction of the problem. The paper argues that the policy document is constructing a particular image of a digital future and presenting the teacher as the ‘problem’ in realising this imagined future. The paper discusses the discursive effects of this policy and explores the implications for the teaching profession.

Problematising the potentials of music programs to address Australia’s youth justice policy problems

ABSTRACT Reflecting an international shift from punitive to more rehabilitative responses to youth offending, many Australian youth justice systems are undergoing significant revision and reform. The urgency of these changes are intensified by longstanding inequities pertaining to the gross overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and documented violations of human rights within Australian youth detention centres. As state and territory jurisdictions strive towards more child-centred practices, music programmes have been seen to provide transformative experiences for incarcerated young people through opportunities to express themselves and form positive relationships with others. In considering the potentials of music programmes to contribute towards such a child-centred youth justice ‘solution’, this article reports a poststructural policy analysis of Australian youth justice policy texts that produce child-centredness in particular ways. Music programmes are thus positioned as inherently political endeavours that hold potential to reinforce or disrupt policy problems, with implications for equity and justice.

In pursuit of equity vocational education and training and social justice

ABSTRACT The paper problematises conceptualisations of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and its relationship to social justice by examining a number of debates. It explores a post-structural policy analysis which is sensitive to the manner in which, through research, we constitute the object of our inquiry and as a result of this process subtly change it. This initial discussion leads into an examination of hegemonic constructions of VET. Subsequently, the paper addresses the contours of inequality as they apply to VET and English further education. This is followed by an examination of conceptualisations of equity, equality and meritocracy. In conclusion, the paper poses a question – how far can VET be shifted from its occupational moorings in order to contribute towards a socially just society, or is it compromised by its close association with the needs of capital and employers? This is not merely an empirical but also a political question that hinges on conceptualisations of social justice and power as well as the manner in which these are addressed in the struggle for a fairer more just society.

Is older entrepreneurship being silenced? A policy analysis of Finnish government programmes

ABSTRACT This post-structural policy analysis examines Finnish government programmes through the lens of neoliberal governmentality and the concepts of the entrepreneurial self and active ageing. In the context of Finland, as a Nordic welfare state in transition to a competition-state model, this study examines how government programmes construct an ageing workforce, especially regarding older entrepreneurship. The results suggest that older people are not only constructed as a difficult-to-employ workforce but also as passive and vulnerable care recipients. Furthermore, as a construction, older entrepreneurship is absent from the studied documents, suggesting that the older entrepreneurship is a marginalized group that has been silenced. This article increases knowledge about this silencing in terms of governmentality and provides perspectives via which to develop a more inclusive entrepreneurship policy.

Politics and fantasy in UK alcohol policy: a critical logics approach

ABSTRACT The Scottish Government’s policy of minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol has received significant scholarly attention. Much of the focus of this literature has been on the efforts by sections of the alcohol industry to oppose the policy, including attempts to ‘frame’ key terms of the debate and an understanding of its legitimacy and effects within the wider field of interpretative policy analysis. The present article builds on these studies by re-conceptualizing the MUP debate through the lens of post-structuralist discourse theory and the logics of critical explanation that emerge from this. It argues that the success and failure of MUP (as a projected social logic) can be understood through the shifting coalitions of actors that emerged (political logics) and the affective hold that industry narratives were able to exert (fantasmatic logics) in this context. While focused on UK alcohol policy, the article speaks to a wider research agenda on the ‘commercial determinants of health’ and, through the application of the critical logics approach, offers new analytical insights beyond those provided by existing models of industry influence. Similarly, it contributes to the field of post-structural policy analysis through its novel focus on the role of commercial entities as health policy actors.

The weaponisation of ‘trauma-informed’ discourse in prison policy: An abolition feminist critique

Taking an abolition feminist standpoint, this article develops a critique of the absorption of the language of ‘trauma-informed practice’ into gendered penal policy. We use Carol Bacchi's methodology for post-structural policy analysis, which centres around the question, ‘what is the problem represented to be?’, and apply it to an Australian correctional policy document designed to inform practice in the Victorian women's prison system: Strengthening Connections. We find that the policy constructs criminalised women's trauma as an individual psychological pathology that causes ‘criminal offending’ and makes them vulnerable to further harm. In effect, the prison is framed as both necessary for the protection of the community and for the protection of criminalised women themselves. We argue that these discursive distortions sanitise the structural violence of the prison and revalorise the carceral state under the guises of rehabilitation and therapy. Our contribution highlights broader implications and challenges for criminological research that engages attempts to ‘soften’ carceral conditions without reckoning with their capacity to entrench gendered carceralism.

Solving ‘the Uniform Issue’: Gender and Professional Identity in the Swedish Military

This article contributes empirical knowledge about the shifting ways in which the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) has articulated and addressed ‘the uniform issue’, that is, matters concerning servicewomen’s access to adequate uniforms and other equipment, since the 1980s. Drawing on analytical tools employed within post-structural policy analysis, we demonstrate how ‘the uniform issue’ has gone from being articulated as a problem for servicewomen, and to be solved by servicewomen, to a problem for the SAF in its pursuit to become an attractive employer and a legitimate public authority. By shedding light on how ‘the uniform issue’ has been problematized in shifting ways since Swedish women first were allowed to serve in all military positions, this article also contributes important insights into broader scholarly debates about workplace discrimination, gender equality, and gendered occupational identities in military work.

Exploring the Inherent Tensions at the Nexus of Education for Sustainable Development and Neoliberalism

To overcome the anthropogenic and global issues facing humanity today, young people will require a level of democracy, citizenship and altruism that is lacking in our current education system and is often antagonistic to the dominant neoliberal values, structures and underlying assumptions of our increasingly globalized education systems. This article explores the inherent tension between education for sustainable development within a neoliberal political and economic system, through conducting post-structural policy analysis on SDG 4—Target 4.7. This process highlights a highly politicized education development agenda that problematizes both the current state of the world and global education systems as failing to equip young people with the knowledge and skill necessary to promote sustainable development. This leads to a range of discursive and lived effects including the increased reliance on transnational organizations, increasing performativity in schools and the subjectification of teachers and students.

The Utility of Constructivist Grounded Theory in Critical Policy Analysis

Constructivist grounded theory (CGT) has gained traction as a popular method across various fields in both the social and natural sciences. Its acclaim lies in its constructivist and pragmatist heritages that emphasize flexibility, co-construction and subjectivity. Despite its general appeal, CGT remain largely unexplored in the area of critical policy analysis. Using data from an alcohol policy dissertation in Botswana, this paper applies CGT to What’s the Problem Represented to Be (WPR), a Foucauldian-inspired poststructural policy analysis framework. WPR served as a framework while CGT provided strategies to do it. The paper demonstrates the utility of CGT as a useful strategy in critical policy analysis. The practice of CGT aligns with critical policy studies that consider subjectivity, temporality and reject value-free enquiry. Furthermore, CGT aligns with policy analysis studies that explicate human experience and meanings. The implications of deploying CGT to critical policy analysis are outlined in the paper.

Understanding Gender Expertise in the Post-Truth Era: Media Representations of Gender-Based Analysis Plus in Canada

In this paper, we explore the post-truth era as a contextual factor in how gender expertise is constituted, challenged, and defended in policy discourse in Canadian context. Using post-structural policy analysis to explore the contours of media scrutiny and the resulting debate about gender-based analysis plus (GBA+), Canada’s approach to gender mainstreaming, we reveal that it was ultimately a debate about the role of gender/intersectional expertise within government. We demonstrate that GBA+, and the gender expertise informing it, was often represented in mainstream media as either a “political intervention” or as a “technical tool”, both of which reinforce traditional representations of policy expertise, including political neutrality and professional competence, which, in the past, have been used to justify the exclusion of “other” forms of knowledge. In unpacking these representations, we suggest that, even among critics of post-truth claims, post-truth discourse offers a new vocabulary, anchored in what Ringrose (2018, 653) refers to as “post-truth anti-feminism”, which emphasizes not simply identity politics, but also potential harm resulting from interventions based on feminist knowledge. We also suggest that such claims have resulted in a distancing between gender expertise and feminism, thus contributing to the erasure of feminist knowledge in policy contexts.

What are we saving? Tracing governing knowledge and truth discourse in global COVID-19 policy responses.

As the world went suddenly into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sending individuals to their homes and shutting businesses and institutions, the closing of schools posed big problems. The majority of the world’s children were out of school, leading to the longest sustained period of school closures in history. We saw educators turning towards responses not aimed at collegial and community-engaged strategies for education in an emergency but at online learning cast as education/business as usual. This study explores the logic driving this global response through analyses of the documents released by three key global education actors: (1) the OECD and its paper A Framework to Guide Education Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020; (2) UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition #LearningNeverStops; and (3) the World Bank’s Guidance Note on Education Systems’ Response to COVID-19; and Guidance Note: Remote Learning and COVID-19. The authors of this article draw on Carol Bacchi’s approach to poststructural policy analysis to make visible the key concepts and binaries used within policy texts and to understand the “technologies of saving” that were invoked in each policy response, locating the education programmes, activities and actors within knowledge practices in educational reform. This article explores the World Bank, OECD and UNESCO responses using an analysis of knowledge harmonisation and difference among these institutions as well as their location as key norm-setters and governing actors in the field of education. The authors argue that all three responses privilege private-sector providers of digital technology. The consequence of these responses is that technologies of saving have centred on privatised, corporate edu-business and edu-tech aimed at online education delivery, bringing significant risks for the erasure of local knowledges. The authors’ study suggests that local policymakers, including community-based and national actors, must be invited into the discussion to envision other possibilities and to name the potential destructiveness embedded in the international organisations’ actions.

Tailored workplace education for immigrants in Rural Sweden: working with resources and deficits

ABSTRACT Incorporation into the labour market is a key endeavour, of heightened importance in recent years due to high migration flows, for both immigrants and their recipient countries. Hence, activation and employability are major themes in both transnational and national policy discussions, which have generated various programmes and policy measures. This article focuses on one type of such initiatives: collaborative agreements intended to increase the effective establishment of newly arrived migrants through work-related educational tracks in Sweden. Drawing on post-structural policy analysis techniques and theorisation of place, the author analyses documents regarding associated policies, and views expressed by interviewed actors, in three rural municipalities. In efforts to identify hindrances and possibilities for immigrants’ incorporation in rural settings, potential employers’ perspectives are included. The analysis shows that a ‘resource discourse’ and a ‘deficit discourse’ are prevalent in the construction of the agreements and the employers’ perspectives regarding immigrants in the municipalities, place and tracks. It also shows that the municipal strategies differ in terms of organisation and local goals of the tracks. The indications of how place is constructed in local rural settings highlight the importance of such a perspective in efforts to enhance immigrants’ incorporation into the labour market, address deficits and harness resources.

Thinking with theory as a policy evaluation tool: The case of boarding schools for remote First Nations students

Many recent policy documents have outlined the challenges of delivering high-quality education in remote First Nations communities and proposed that boarding schools are one important solution. These documents have influenced the increasing uptake of boarding options and there has been considerable public investment in scholarships, residential facilities and transition support. Yet the outcomes of this investment and policy effort are not well understood. The authors of this article came together as a collaboration of researchers who have published about boarding school education for First Nations students to examine the evidence and develop a theory-driven understanding of how policies drive systems to produce both desirable and undesirable outcomes for First Nations boarding school students. We applied complexity theory and post-structural policy analysis techniques and produced a useful tool for the evaluation of boarding policy and its implementation.

HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis and the 'problems' of reduced condom use and sexually transmitted infections in Australia: a critical analysis from an evidence-making intervention perspective.

HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has been embraced in Australia, making PrEP available with public funding to people at risk of HIV. Here, we consider the associated 'problems' of reduced condom use and sexually transmissible infections (STIs), as seen by HIV professionals. Twenty-one interviews were conducted during May-August 2017. All agreed that PrEP was a valuable addition to HIV prevention, but their views about reduced condom use and STIs were variable. Using poststructural policy analysis, three main stances were identified: (1) Concerned/alarmed. PrEP was seen as causing reduced condom use, STIs and antibiotic resistance, posing threats to the general population; (2) Neutral/normalising. Stakeholders emphasised that condom use was declining and STIs increasing independently of PrEP, and that PrEP was simply a new tool to be accommodated; (3) Optimistic/critical. PrEP was seen as diminishing fear of HIV and engaging users in more frequent testing and treatment that could lead to declining STI rates. What linked all three stances was the selective performance of evidence, deploying a mixture of personal experience, clinical observations, behavioural data and epidemiology. Anticipating possible futures through evidence-making suggested practical, political and moral consequences for what PrEP could become. We encourage others to consider these consequences with care.

An amalgam of ideals – images of inclusion in the Salamanca Statement

ABSTRACTThe Salamanca Statement is a primary point of departure in research and policy on inclusive education. However, several problems have surfaced in the 25 years since its publication. In particular, several different interpretations of the concept of inclusive education and its enactment in practice have arisen. For instance, the definition of the pupil groups in focus varies greatly. There are also varying definitions of the importance of pupil-placement, when it comes to organisation of inclusive education. Using a theoretical framework combining Bacchi’s [1999. Women, Policy and Politics. The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage Publications] poststructural policy-analysis and concepts from Popkewitz [2009. “Curriculum Study, Curriculum History, and Curriculum Theory: The Reason of Reason.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 41 (3): 301–319. doi:10.1080/00220270902777021], this article illustrates that The Salamanca Statement allows for a variety of interpretations of inclusion. As a policy-concept, inclusion encompasses an amalgam of political ideals, including welfare-state ideals where education is viewed as a public-good, as well as market-ideals of education as a private-good. Policies of inclusion also define the desired citizen, through categories of disadvantaged children, the ones excluded but to be included for their own good as well as for the good of the future society. The conclusions are that researchers and policy-makers should elucidate what they mean by inclusion with for instance moral- and practical arguments rather than vague references to The Salamanca Statement.

Problematizing the age friendly cities and communities program in Toronto

This article contributes to the literature on Age Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) through a poststructural policy analysis of the program in Toronto. The purpose is to propose an approach, rooted in the study of public policy, that can offer a political interrogation into the problems plaguing AFCCs in practice. The approach centres on a basic question: what problem are AFCCs in Toronto intended to solve? A discourse analysis is undertaken on this problematization, using Toronto's age-friendly policy and 77 qualitative interview transcripts with policy actors as key texts. The findings suggest a dominant discursive practice where AFCCs are used to address the problem of costly seniors rather than the problem of inaccessible environments. However, alternative discursive practices rooted in the rights of senior citizens to access services and amenities in environments are also highlighted through the analysis. AFCC policy is thus flexible enough to be used by different political projects and poststructural policy analysis is useful for teasing out these projects, for understanding the problems that plague AFCCs, as well as for informing rights-based alternatives.