I am a critical discourse analyst and cultural political economist. My research interests are in discourse and democracy, governance and policy making. I am currently working on the language and discourse of energy policy and politics in the UK as a way in to critique of wider issues in the practices of governance and their resistance to forces of democracy.
This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed throug... more This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed through discursive methodological approaches in the traditions of critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and discourse theory. This is the first volume that connects this discursive methodology systematically to the field of critical policy analysis and will therefore be an essential book for researchers who wish to include a discursive analysis in their critical policy research.
In this new study, Farrelly gives a critical examination of democracy as it is conceived and prac... more In this new study, Farrelly gives a critical examination of democracy as it is conceived and practiced in contemporary advanced liberal nations. The received wisdom on democracy is probelmatized through a close analysis of discourse in combination with critical theories of democracy and of the State. The central theme of the book is the paradox of pervasive reference to democracy as a legitimation of political action by liberal governments versus the converse weakening of actual democratic practice within the liberal world. Farrelly builds on the work of Fairclough and others to examine this paradox, developing a new critical concept of "democratism" as an ideology that undermines the possibility of a more genuine democracy through political actors who oversimplify the idea of democracy. The book includes critical analyses of key political texts taken from presidential and prime ministerial speeches from the US and UK that attach democracy to non-democratic practices.
This article is concerned with neighborhood governance reflecting a policy agenda which identifie... more This article is concerned with neighborhood governance reflecting a policy agenda which identifies the 'neighborhood' as a significant space for democratic renewal. But how is democracy understood and practiced? Many neighborhood policy programs are sponsored by central or local ...
Understanding emerging democratic practices in the context of the wider, and changing, system of ... more Understanding emerging democratic practices in the context of the wider, and changing, system of governance in which they operate poses problems for research, not least because broader concepts, such as political culture, focus on historical patterns and are not able to capture ...
ABSTRACT From the late 1990s the New Labour government implemented changes to local government an... more ABSTRACT From the late 1990s the New Labour government implemented changes to local government and, within the context of a discourse of 'democratic renewal', also introduced neighbourhood-based participatory Forums. In this paper, a framework is set out for ...
In the first sections of this article I give a simple and general account of critical discourse a... more In the first sections of this article I give a simple and general account of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and how it might contribute to the theoretical and methodological repertoire of political studies through its discourse-dialectical theory of how discourse figures as an aspect of social practices without reducing those practices to discourse. In the final section I give a short illustrative example of how a CDA approach to detailed textual analysis might also be applied to specific texts (or groups of texts) in the political arena: in the example I take the press release in which the national UK government heralded its recent ‘empowerment’ White Paper, ‘Communities in Control’.
This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed throug... more This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed through discursive methodological approaches in the traditions of critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and discourse theory. This is the first volume that connects this discursive methodology systematically to the field of critical policy analysis and will therefore be an essential book for researchers who wish to include a discursive analysis in their critical policy research.
This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed throug... more This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed through discursive methodological approaches in the traditions of critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and discourse theory. This is the first volume that connects this discursive methodology systematically to the field of critical policy analysis and will therefore be an essential book for researchers who wish to include a discursive analysis in their critical policy research.
In this new study, Farrelly gives a critical examination of democracy as it is conceived and prac... more In this new study, Farrelly gives a critical examination of democracy as it is conceived and practiced in contemporary advanced liberal nations. The received wisdom on democracy is probelmatized through a close analysis of discourse in combination with critical theories of democracy and of the State. The central theme of the book is the paradox of pervasive reference to democracy as a legitimation of political action by liberal governments versus the converse weakening of actual democratic practice within the liberal world. Farrelly builds on the work of Fairclough and others to examine this paradox, developing a new critical concept of "democratism" as an ideology that undermines the possibility of a more genuine democracy through political actors who oversimplify the idea of democracy. The book includes critical analyses of key political texts taken from presidential and prime ministerial speeches from the US and UK that attach democracy to non-democratic practices.
This article is concerned with neighborhood governance reflecting a policy agenda which identifie... more This article is concerned with neighborhood governance reflecting a policy agenda which identifies the 'neighborhood' as a significant space for democratic renewal. But how is democracy understood and practiced? Many neighborhood policy programs are sponsored by central or local ...
Understanding emerging democratic practices in the context of the wider, and changing, system of ... more Understanding emerging democratic practices in the context of the wider, and changing, system of governance in which they operate poses problems for research, not least because broader concepts, such as political culture, focus on historical patterns and are not able to capture ...
ABSTRACT From the late 1990s the New Labour government implemented changes to local government an... more ABSTRACT From the late 1990s the New Labour government implemented changes to local government and, within the context of a discourse of 'democratic renewal', also introduced neighbourhood-based participatory Forums. In this paper, a framework is set out for ...
In the first sections of this article I give a simple and general account of critical discourse a... more In the first sections of this article I give a simple and general account of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and how it might contribute to the theoretical and methodological repertoire of political studies through its discourse-dialectical theory of how discourse figures as an aspect of social practices without reducing those practices to discourse. In the final section I give a short illustrative example of how a CDA approach to detailed textual analysis might also be applied to specific texts (or groups of texts) in the political arena: in the example I take the press release in which the national UK government heralded its recent ‘empowerment’ White Paper, ‘Communities in Control’.
This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed throug... more This book provides a series of contemporary and international policy case studies analysed through discursive methodological approaches in the traditions of critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and discourse theory. This is the first volume that connects this discursive methodology systematically to the field of critical policy analysis and will therefore be an essential book for researchers who wish to include a discursive analysis in their critical policy research.
Better integration of care within the health sector and between health and social care is seen in... more Better integration of care within the health sector and between health and social care is seen in many countries as an essential way of addressing the enduring problems of dwindling resources, changing demographics and unacceptable variation in quality of care. Current research evidence about the effectiveness of integration efforts supports neither the enthusiasm of those promoting and designing integrated care programmes nor the growing efforts of practitioners attempting to integrate care on the ground. In this paper we present a methodological approach, based on the principles of participatory research, that attempts to address this challenge. Participatory approaches are characterised by a desire to use social science methods to solve practical problems and a commitment on the part of researchers to substantive and sustained collaboration with relevant stakeholders. We describe how we applied an emerging practical model of participatory research, the researcher-in-residence mod...
Koller, Veronika and Farrelly, Michael (2010) Darstellungen der Finanzkrise 2007/08 in den britis... more Koller, Veronika and Farrelly, Michael (2010) Darstellungen der Finanzkrise 2007/08 in den britischen Printmedien. Aptum: Z. Sprachkritik & Sprachkult, 6 (2). pp. 179-192. ... Full text not available from this repository. ... Lancaster EPrints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.
Adopting a cultural political economy approach (Jessop and Sum 2001) this paper sets out and appl... more Adopting a cultural political economy approach (Jessop and Sum 2001) this paper sets out and applies a conceptual framework for analysing and opening up for critique the construction and contestation of the liaison of democracy and economy within the UK. The paper demonstrates the discursive construction of local democracy and of local economy in a set of government policy documents and the social actors and social actions which populate these constructions using analytic tools from critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003, 2006).
Drawing on state theory (Jessop 1990, 2002), and theory of democracy (Rancière 2006) I go on to discuss the analysis in terms of political and economic imaginaries. The local democracy imaginary is discussed as a simplified object made compatible with governance strategies. Local economy is discussed as being constructed as giving the largely immutable conditions for governance.
On this basis I further develop the concept of democratism (Farrelly 2008): an ideology (in the negative sense) through which, on the one hand, non-democratic practices can be claimed to be democratic and thereby gain legitimacy; and on the other, practices that could be democratic are stripped of democratic content through a diminution of democratic discourse. The discursive construction of the liaison of the liberal and the democratic elements of liberal-democracy are discussed as potentially setting ideological boundaries on democracy.
The concept of democracy has featured in each of New Labour’s general election manifestoes in the... more The concept of democracy has featured in each of New Labour’s general election manifestoes in the UK. Using theoretical and analytical frameworks based on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis; Jessop’s State Theory and Rancière’s theory of democracy this article gives a critical analysis of the way New Labour construes democracy. van Leeuwen’s categories of inclusion and exclusion of social actors are applied to the text of three election manifestoes of 1997, 2001 and 2005. The analysis given in this article is that the horizon of democratic activity as construed in the imaginary of democracy held by New Labour over the body of these texts extends only so far as the actions of state social actors. It is argued that in this construal the power relation of democracy are inverted and that the at the same time the inversion is hidden under particular exclusions and inclusions of state and demos.
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Drawing on state theory (Jessop 1990, 2002), and theory of democracy (Rancière 2006) I go on to discuss the analysis in terms of political and economic imaginaries. The local democracy imaginary is discussed as a simplified object made compatible with governance strategies. Local economy is discussed as being constructed as giving the largely immutable conditions for governance.
On this basis I further develop the concept of democratism (Farrelly 2008): an ideology (in the negative sense) through which, on the one hand, non-democratic practices can be claimed to be democratic and thereby gain legitimacy; and on the other, practices that could be democratic are stripped of democratic content through a diminution of democratic discourse. The discursive construction of the liaison of the liberal and the democratic elements of liberal-democracy are discussed as potentially setting ideological boundaries on democracy.