This article examines how the city of Nantes, European Green Capital in 2013, came to promote pla... more This article examines how the city of Nantes, European Green Capital in 2013, came to promote plans for a new international airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Deploying poststructuralist discourse theory, it analyses how the highly politicised struggle against the airport reveals the limits of the Nantes model of urban sustainability and collaboration, giving rise to a counter model, which we provisionally characterise as the 'slow city'. While the struggle against the airport can be understood as a rural social movement, we show how its ideals and logics have been progressively displaced to Nantes itself, disclosing new images and possibilities of urban governance.
the Conservative government of Theresa May came out in support of the construction of a third run... more the Conservative government of Theresa May came out in support of the construction of a third runway at Heathrow airport. In announcing the 'momentous step for our country', Chris Grayling, the Secretary of State for Transport, declared that his government's support for Heathrow expansion 'send[s] a clear message today that Britain is open for business' and 'shows that this is a government unafraid to take the difficult decisions and get on with the job'. 1 At least in political terms, this long-awaited decision seems to suggest that the Airports Commission had successfully completed its task. On the one hand, the launch of the Commission had kept aviation expansion off the national political agenda in the runup to the 2015 election. On the other hand, it had reframed aviation policy by looping public debate back to the issues of connectivity and capacity, and away from earlier
Logics of Critical Explanation proposed a methodological approach that could render the insights ... more Logics of Critical Explanation proposed a methodological approach that could render the insights of Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (PDT) and post-Marxist political theory more conducive to critical empirical research. It also offered a language with which to counter positivist tendencies to colonize the space of methods and research strategies, showing how PDT could facilitate both explanatory and critical endeavours. Since its publication in 2007, a number of studies have applied the logics framework to empirical cases, while critically engaging with its methodological and theoretical arguments. The main purpose of this article is to evaluate some of these developments, and to set out some future challenges faced by this research programme.
Radical democracy, the commons and everyday struggles during the Greek crisis, 2023
Set against theoretical and strategic debates about theories of radical democracy, left populism ... more Set against theoretical and strategic debates about theories of radical democracy, left populism and the commons, this article analyses and evaluates everyday struggles in Greek politics after the global financial crisis. It focusses on the cases of Vio.Me-the first workers' recuperated factory in Greece-and the Metropolitan Community Clinic at Helliniko, which is the largest social solidarity health clinic in Greece. Viewed from the perspective of commoning practices, the article identifies the logics that sustain the beliefs, values, infrastructures and institutions developed at an everyday grassroots level, finding traces of an incipient radical democratic ethos and rationality at work. The new initiatives highlight crucial and often neglected organisational, prefiguring and subjective prerequisites for radical democracy, while challenging elements of left populist political strategy. Our evolving perspective also problematises their political limitations and strategic dilemmas as they struggle to constitute a viable hegemonic alternative to neoliberal rationalities and governance.
... And now, thanks to David Howarth and Jason Glynos, the wide ranging poststructuralist literat... more ... And now, thanks to David Howarth and Jason Glynos, the wide ranging poststructuralist literature has been deployed to redescribe social science research as problematization and articulation a context-sensitive research protocol that challenges positivism's universalizing ...
La teoria del discurso ha sido casi unanimemente criticada por no haber desarrollado de manera ad... more La teoria del discurso ha sido casi unanimemente criticada por no haber desarrollado de manera adecuada una reflexion metodologica que de alguna manera “pongan a trabajar” los postulados teoricos de su sofisticada ontologia. El presente texto es un estudio en esta direccion. Usando como casos de aplicacion los movimientos de protesta en Gran Bretana y Sudafrica, el texto elabora una perspectiva metodologica como “practica articulatoria”. En este sentido el texto es un intento de desarrollar una estrategia de investigacion empirica, tecnicas y metodos aplicables al analisis del discurso de base postestructuralista.
Debates in the philosophy of social science often pit lawlike against ideographic approaches to e... more Debates in the philosophy of social science often pit lawlike against ideographic approaches to explanation, whilst dividing objective, value-free approaches from critical and engaged stances. Others foreground causal mechanisms as a unit of explanation, though they are equally split about the role of values and normativity. This article engages with these perspectives by elaborating a logics-based approach to critical explanation. By articulating the idea of social, political and fantasmatic logics, the approach emphasizes contextual particularity, yet also aspires to be explanatory and critical. It shows the added value of such an approach by investigating recent changes in the UK higher education regime.
It is often alleged that governance networks offer policy actors an efficient practice of social ... more It is often alleged that governance networks offer policy actors an efficient practice of social coordination, which has the potential to be more inclusive of multiple stakeholders and more negotiated than its hierarchical or market alternatives (Kickert et al. 1997; Kooiman 2003; Koppenjan & Klijn 2004; Pierre 2000; Rhodes 1997a, 2000b; Stoker 1998). Thus far, however, the burgeoning literature on the techniques of network management has paid little attention to how best to release the democratic potential of governance networks (Hirst 2000; Olsson 2003; Sorensen & Torfing, 2005b). Of course, as Sorensen points out, much rests upon which particular version of democracy is endorsed (2005: 349). Here we adopt the theory of ‘agonistic pluralism’ as our yardstick with which to evaluate and justify putative democratic practices and processes (see Connolly 1991, 1995; Mouffe 2000, 2005; Tully 1999). In this model, actors in the policy process actively and passionately contest substantive issues as adversaries — and not simply as competitors, bargainers or enemies — recognizing each other’s right to differ and disagree.
This article examines the campaign against the construction of Manchester Airport's second ru... more This article examines the campaign against the construction of Manchester Airport's second runway. Articulating insights from rational choice theory within a framework of discourse theory, it provides a set of theoretical tools with which to problematize and explain the Manchester case. Attention is focused on the strategic construction of group identities and interests by leading protest brokers who organized and orchestrated the campaign. The article offers explanations of how and why conservative local residents and radical eco-warriors were able to form an unlikely working coalition to resist the expansion of the airport. The article concludes with an examination of the overall impact and significance of the campaign for local residents and green protesters.
The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government, 2018
The 2008 financial crash and ensuing austerity have brought critical perspectives on political ec... more The 2008 financial crash and ensuing austerity have brought critical perspectives on political economy into academic debates in democratic theory and public administration. One important area of contention regards "collaborative" and "network" forms of governance. Advocates argue that these comprise an epochal shift that resolves many pitfalls of state and market oriented governance, a consensus that was especially popular during the 1990's and early 2000's. This chapter reports research carried out in five cities in Europe (Athens, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Nantes) exploring the impact of austerity politics on the ideology and practice of collaborative governance-would it endure, or be unravelled by, post-crash exposure to austerity and distributional conflict? The chapter concludes that severe austerity erodes the foundations for strong collaborative governance. The inability to survive the return of distributional conflict leads us to conclude that collaborative governance is fully functional only in times of growth.
This article argues that "post-Marxist" or "poststructuralist discourse theory" represents a comp... more This article argues that "post-Marxist" or "poststructuralist discourse theory" represents a complex deconstruction of the Marxist tradition of social and political theory. Focussing on three ontological positions in Marx's texts-the ontologies of human alienation, praxis, and production-the article shows how this approach repeats and transforms the rich tradition of Marxist thinking so as to elaborate a novel approach to social and political analysis. This claim is built around the idea that discourse is best conceptualized as an "articulatory practice", whose elements are both linguistic and non-linguistic in character, and whose products are finite relational orders, including social institutions and economic processes. The result is (1) a shift away from economic determinism and class reductionism to a relational account of social and political forms; (2) the development of an anti-essentialist and anti-reductionist account of political identities, which emerge in a dialectical tension with incomplete processes of identification, and (3) a particular understanding of the subject and agency in political theory, which grounds a different account of political practices. The article also (4) sets out the methodological implications of post-Marxist discourse theory, which is focussed on the articulation of different logics of critical explanation, before (5) exploring the role of critique and normativity in this approach, which are conceptualised as continuous, immanent and complex.
For many, shifting economic and social contexts have created the conditions for a radical reappra... more For many, shifting economic and social contexts have created the conditions for a radical reappraisal of the orthodox image of the 'sustainable city'. However, in assessing such potentialities, there is insufficient knowledge about the way in which local actors construct, live out and are gripped by this signifier. This article responds to this deficit by exploring how key actors engaged in urban development actually interpret the challenges of the 'sustainable city'. In part, using a Q methodology study in Bristol and Grenoble, we discern and construct three distinctive discourses of the sustainable city, which we name progressive reformism, public localism, and moral stewardship. Our findings challenge previous critiques of sustainable urbanism. We observe no consistent support for mainstream conceptions of sustainable urban development, but neither do we find significant support for entrepreneurial or radical green localist discourses of the sustainable city. Instead, we identify a common indifference to the tenets of ecological modernization (and, by extension, entrepreneurialism), and a shared skepticism of local selfsufficiency. We thus argue that such discourses offer uncertain foundations upon which to construct new visions of the 'sustainable city'. In our view, this is because of the transformation of the 'sustainable city' from a relatively fixed idea into a floating signifier, coupled with the practices of local practitioners as policy bricoleurs. We conclude that efforts to develop new visions of 'sustainable cities' are best served by fostering an agonistic ethos of 'pragmatic adversarialism' amongst strategic leaders and stakeholders, which foregrounds politics and the right to difference.
This article examines how the city of Nantes, European Green Capital in 2013, came to promote pla... more This article examines how the city of Nantes, European Green Capital in 2013, came to promote plans for a new international airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Deploying poststructuralist discourse theory, it analyses how the highly politicised struggle against the airport reveals the limits of the Nantes model of urban sustainability and collaboration, giving rise to a counter model, which we provisionally characterise as the 'slow city'. While the struggle against the airport can be understood as a rural social movement, we show how its ideals and logics have been progressively displaced to Nantes itself, disclosing new images and possibilities of urban governance.
the Conservative government of Theresa May came out in support of the construction of a third run... more the Conservative government of Theresa May came out in support of the construction of a third runway at Heathrow airport. In announcing the 'momentous step for our country', Chris Grayling, the Secretary of State for Transport, declared that his government's support for Heathrow expansion 'send[s] a clear message today that Britain is open for business' and 'shows that this is a government unafraid to take the difficult decisions and get on with the job'. 1 At least in political terms, this long-awaited decision seems to suggest that the Airports Commission had successfully completed its task. On the one hand, the launch of the Commission had kept aviation expansion off the national political agenda in the runup to the 2015 election. On the other hand, it had reframed aviation policy by looping public debate back to the issues of connectivity and capacity, and away from earlier
Logics of Critical Explanation proposed a methodological approach that could render the insights ... more Logics of Critical Explanation proposed a methodological approach that could render the insights of Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (PDT) and post-Marxist political theory more conducive to critical empirical research. It also offered a language with which to counter positivist tendencies to colonize the space of methods and research strategies, showing how PDT could facilitate both explanatory and critical endeavours. Since its publication in 2007, a number of studies have applied the logics framework to empirical cases, while critically engaging with its methodological and theoretical arguments. The main purpose of this article is to evaluate some of these developments, and to set out some future challenges faced by this research programme.
Radical democracy, the commons and everyday struggles during the Greek crisis, 2023
Set against theoretical and strategic debates about theories of radical democracy, left populism ... more Set against theoretical and strategic debates about theories of radical democracy, left populism and the commons, this article analyses and evaluates everyday struggles in Greek politics after the global financial crisis. It focusses on the cases of Vio.Me-the first workers' recuperated factory in Greece-and the Metropolitan Community Clinic at Helliniko, which is the largest social solidarity health clinic in Greece. Viewed from the perspective of commoning practices, the article identifies the logics that sustain the beliefs, values, infrastructures and institutions developed at an everyday grassroots level, finding traces of an incipient radical democratic ethos and rationality at work. The new initiatives highlight crucial and often neglected organisational, prefiguring and subjective prerequisites for radical democracy, while challenging elements of left populist political strategy. Our evolving perspective also problematises their political limitations and strategic dilemmas as they struggle to constitute a viable hegemonic alternative to neoliberal rationalities and governance.
... And now, thanks to David Howarth and Jason Glynos, the wide ranging poststructuralist literat... more ... And now, thanks to David Howarth and Jason Glynos, the wide ranging poststructuralist literature has been deployed to redescribe social science research as problematization and articulation a context-sensitive research protocol that challenges positivism's universalizing ...
La teoria del discurso ha sido casi unanimemente criticada por no haber desarrollado de manera ad... more La teoria del discurso ha sido casi unanimemente criticada por no haber desarrollado de manera adecuada una reflexion metodologica que de alguna manera “pongan a trabajar” los postulados teoricos de su sofisticada ontologia. El presente texto es un estudio en esta direccion. Usando como casos de aplicacion los movimientos de protesta en Gran Bretana y Sudafrica, el texto elabora una perspectiva metodologica como “practica articulatoria”. En este sentido el texto es un intento de desarrollar una estrategia de investigacion empirica, tecnicas y metodos aplicables al analisis del discurso de base postestructuralista.
Debates in the philosophy of social science often pit lawlike against ideographic approaches to e... more Debates in the philosophy of social science often pit lawlike against ideographic approaches to explanation, whilst dividing objective, value-free approaches from critical and engaged stances. Others foreground causal mechanisms as a unit of explanation, though they are equally split about the role of values and normativity. This article engages with these perspectives by elaborating a logics-based approach to critical explanation. By articulating the idea of social, political and fantasmatic logics, the approach emphasizes contextual particularity, yet also aspires to be explanatory and critical. It shows the added value of such an approach by investigating recent changes in the UK higher education regime.
It is often alleged that governance networks offer policy actors an efficient practice of social ... more It is often alleged that governance networks offer policy actors an efficient practice of social coordination, which has the potential to be more inclusive of multiple stakeholders and more negotiated than its hierarchical or market alternatives (Kickert et al. 1997; Kooiman 2003; Koppenjan & Klijn 2004; Pierre 2000; Rhodes 1997a, 2000b; Stoker 1998). Thus far, however, the burgeoning literature on the techniques of network management has paid little attention to how best to release the democratic potential of governance networks (Hirst 2000; Olsson 2003; Sorensen & Torfing, 2005b). Of course, as Sorensen points out, much rests upon which particular version of democracy is endorsed (2005: 349). Here we adopt the theory of ‘agonistic pluralism’ as our yardstick with which to evaluate and justify putative democratic practices and processes (see Connolly 1991, 1995; Mouffe 2000, 2005; Tully 1999). In this model, actors in the policy process actively and passionately contest substantive issues as adversaries — and not simply as competitors, bargainers or enemies — recognizing each other’s right to differ and disagree.
This article examines the campaign against the construction of Manchester Airport's second ru... more This article examines the campaign against the construction of Manchester Airport's second runway. Articulating insights from rational choice theory within a framework of discourse theory, it provides a set of theoretical tools with which to problematize and explain the Manchester case. Attention is focused on the strategic construction of group identities and interests by leading protest brokers who organized and orchestrated the campaign. The article offers explanations of how and why conservative local residents and radical eco-warriors were able to form an unlikely working coalition to resist the expansion of the airport. The article concludes with an examination of the overall impact and significance of the campaign for local residents and green protesters.
The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government, 2018
The 2008 financial crash and ensuing austerity have brought critical perspectives on political ec... more The 2008 financial crash and ensuing austerity have brought critical perspectives on political economy into academic debates in democratic theory and public administration. One important area of contention regards "collaborative" and "network" forms of governance. Advocates argue that these comprise an epochal shift that resolves many pitfalls of state and market oriented governance, a consensus that was especially popular during the 1990's and early 2000's. This chapter reports research carried out in five cities in Europe (Athens, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Nantes) exploring the impact of austerity politics on the ideology and practice of collaborative governance-would it endure, or be unravelled by, post-crash exposure to austerity and distributional conflict? The chapter concludes that severe austerity erodes the foundations for strong collaborative governance. The inability to survive the return of distributional conflict leads us to conclude that collaborative governance is fully functional only in times of growth.
This article argues that "post-Marxist" or "poststructuralist discourse theory" represents a comp... more This article argues that "post-Marxist" or "poststructuralist discourse theory" represents a complex deconstruction of the Marxist tradition of social and political theory. Focussing on three ontological positions in Marx's texts-the ontologies of human alienation, praxis, and production-the article shows how this approach repeats and transforms the rich tradition of Marxist thinking so as to elaborate a novel approach to social and political analysis. This claim is built around the idea that discourse is best conceptualized as an "articulatory practice", whose elements are both linguistic and non-linguistic in character, and whose products are finite relational orders, including social institutions and economic processes. The result is (1) a shift away from economic determinism and class reductionism to a relational account of social and political forms; (2) the development of an anti-essentialist and anti-reductionist account of political identities, which emerge in a dialectical tension with incomplete processes of identification, and (3) a particular understanding of the subject and agency in political theory, which grounds a different account of political practices. The article also (4) sets out the methodological implications of post-Marxist discourse theory, which is focussed on the articulation of different logics of critical explanation, before (5) exploring the role of critique and normativity in this approach, which are conceptualised as continuous, immanent and complex.
For many, shifting economic and social contexts have created the conditions for a radical reappra... more For many, shifting economic and social contexts have created the conditions for a radical reappraisal of the orthodox image of the 'sustainable city'. However, in assessing such potentialities, there is insufficient knowledge about the way in which local actors construct, live out and are gripped by this signifier. This article responds to this deficit by exploring how key actors engaged in urban development actually interpret the challenges of the 'sustainable city'. In part, using a Q methodology study in Bristol and Grenoble, we discern and construct three distinctive discourses of the sustainable city, which we name progressive reformism, public localism, and moral stewardship. Our findings challenge previous critiques of sustainable urbanism. We observe no consistent support for mainstream conceptions of sustainable urban development, but neither do we find significant support for entrepreneurial or radical green localist discourses of the sustainable city. Instead, we identify a common indifference to the tenets of ecological modernization (and, by extension, entrepreneurialism), and a shared skepticism of local selfsufficiency. We thus argue that such discourses offer uncertain foundations upon which to construct new visions of the 'sustainable city'. In our view, this is because of the transformation of the 'sustainable city' from a relatively fixed idea into a floating signifier, coupled with the practices of local practitioners as policy bricoleurs. We conclude that efforts to develop new visions of 'sustainable cities' are best served by fostering an agonistic ethos of 'pragmatic adversarialism' amongst strategic leaders and stakeholders, which foregrounds politics and the right to difference.
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Papers by David Howarth