Explaining the currency of novel policy concepts: learning from green infrastructure planning

Mick Lennon

Environment and Planning C, 2015, vol. 33, issue 5, 1039-1057

Abstract: The ‘interpretive turn’ in policy analysis has greatly enhanced understanding of policy process dynamics. However, it has not afforded much attention to explaining the currency of novel concepts where open dispute appears absent in policy discussions. This paper seeks to address this lacuna by employing an innovative discourse analysis approach to examining the emergence of green infrastructure planning policy in the Republic of Ireland. Whereas the analysis accounts for the rhetorical force of language, it reveals that those advocating the green infrastructure concept were not passive actors in receiving a static discourse. Instead, it demonstrates that such agents actively sought to negate opposition and advance their policy objectives by exploiting the discourse's flexibility and consensus-building potential, as well as strategically identifying and employing a range of dissemination opportunities. Drawing lessons from this case, a new framework for understanding the interpretive analysis of seemingly unopposed novel policy concepts is presented.

Keywords: policy process theory; multiple streams framework; meaning making; green infrastructure planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263774X15605939 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:33:y:2015:i:5:p:1039-1057

DOI: 10.1177/0263774X15605939

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().