fairclough, n. "governance, partnership and participation: cooperation and conflict"

8/3/2019 Fairclough, N. "Governance, partnership and participation: cooperation and conflict"

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Norman Fairclough

Governance, partnership and participation: cooperation and conflict

What I want to do is approach the theme of the conference, Dialogue cooperation andconflict by way of the theoretical and methodological framework I am using in mycurrent research, which is focused on aspects of social change transition in Central

and Eastern Europe, especially Romania. This framework is centred upon critical discourseanalysis, but it has an interdisciplinary character or as I prefer to put it, trans-disciplinary. The issues I am addressing in this work are multi-dimensional, involving forinstance economic, political and cultural issues, and always involving the relationship

between discourse and other elements of social life. So the approach needs to beinterdisciplinary. Trans-disciplinary research is for me a variety of interdisciplinaryresearch where the objective is to develop ones theory and methodology through dialoguewith other disciplines. For instance, the category of recontextualization2 which originates

in Basil Bernsteins sociology of pedagogy has itself been recontextualized within CDA,has become a category within CDA, through one might say a translation of it into

established discourse-analytical categories including genre and discourse (Chouliaraki& Fairclough 1999).The particular issue I will address is changes in governance which are taking place on

an international scale changes which are evident in Britain but also in Romania, andwhich are being disseminated internationally by for instance the European Union. Therelevance of this issue here is that they involve questions of dialogue and of the relationshipbetween cooperation and conflict in dialogue, as I will try to show. These changes are

sometimes referred to as a move from government to governance, or from ahierarchical to a network mode of governance. They revolve around the idea ofpartnership, the co-involvement and cooperation of the different interests or playersor stakeholders in the governance and regulation of particular public (as well as private)

domains. They include what New Labour in Britain at one stage referred to as joined-upgovernment for instance, ensuring cooperation between all relevant agencies (nationalgovernment, local government, social services, voluntary organisations, business, and soforth) in combating social exclusion. They are associated with ideas of participatory

democracy, and often include the participation or consultation of citizens who aretargeted by or affected by the relevant policies. They are also associated with


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Norman Fairclough

decentralisation and devolution of governance. Im going to use for convenience theterm partnership governance for this form of governance (Balloch & Taylor 2001).

I think it is important to distinguish at the outset between the strategy for partnershipgovernance and actually existing partnership governance. On the one hand, there is astrategy for changing governance in the partnership direction, on the other hand there arerather diverse and uneven forms in which this form of governance is implemented. Thestrategy for partnership governance has a significantly discursive character it includes aparticular discourse of governance (which the word governance is a part of), as well asnarratives of past and present issues and problems of governance, and imaginaries for theirsolution. Actually the situation is more complicated because the move towards partnership

governance is controversial for instance with respect to whether partnerships are reallybetween equals and there is a proliferation of strategies, discourses and narratives. But Ithink one can generally identify a dominant strategy.

It is clear that in dealing with these changes in governance we are dealing substantivelywith questions of discourse. First as I said because strategies for change include discoursesand narratives. In so far as these strategies are implemented, put into practice, discoursesmay be operationalized enacted as new institutions, new relations betweeninstitutions, new procedures, and so forth; inculcated as new ways of being newidentities; and indeed materialized as new ways of organising space and time. But this

operationalization also involves questions of discourse: the enactment of discourses

includes their enactment in new forms of communicative interaction, newgenres, includingnew forms of dialogue and, importantly as I shall argue, new relations between genres;the inculcation of discourses includes new communicative styles such as new styles ofleaders and managers, including for instance one distinctive character of partnershipgovernance the facilitator. So questions of discourse arise both for strategies ofpartnership governance andtheir implementation in actual forms of partnership governance(Fairclough 2003, 2005a, 2005b).

The significance of discourse is to an extent recognised in literature on change ingovernance. What discourse analysis can add within transdisciplinary research on thismatter is: first, theoretical clarification of relations between discourse and other socialelements, including what I just referred to as the operationalization of discourses, and the

socially constructive effects of discourses; and second, method ways of analysing textsand interactions. Having said that, I shall not be proposing specific analytical methods foranalysing what one might see as the dialectic between cooperation and conflict in dialogue.

I think it is fruitful to begin by locating changes in governance within broader processesof social change, in order to contextualize them satisfactorily. This will help in defining

coherent objects of research for this research topic on a trans-disciplinary basis, and indefining the particular contribution of discourse analysis to researching these research


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objects in terms of specifically discursive facets of change in governance, and their relationto these changes overall. So I shall approach dialogue in what may seem and indeed is - a

somewhat circuitous way.

1. Cultural political economy

In my recent research on transition in CEE, I have worked with a framework based upon

what is being called the new or cultural political economy (Jessop 2002, Pickles &Smith 1998). Political economy differs from classical economics in asserting that there arenon-economic conditions for economies and economic change (Polanyi 1944, Sayer 1995).Cultural political economy claims that these conditions are not only political but alsocultural, and include discourse: the cultural turn is also a turn to discourse. Jessop (2002)is a political economist and a theorist of governance and the state whose version of culturalpolitical economy incorporates CDA, and I have been seeking to develop this approachfrom a specifically discourse analytical perspective (Fairclough 2005a, 2005b,forthcoming).

The versions of cultural political economy I draw upon incorporate the regulation

theory view that a socio-economic order is constituted through a particular set of relations a fix between a particular form of economy in the narrow sense and a particular formof governance (a regime of accumulation and a mode of regulation), but add that thefix also includes cultural and discursive elements. A fix is an accommodation, a way ofarticulating together. The key point with respect to socio-economic change is this: it is amatter of change in relations between institutions, and between institutions and thelifeworld, which ties economy, governance, culture and discourse together in new ways.

As I have already indicated, we need to also bring in strategies: in times of crisis orinstability, different social groups develop different and often competing strategies for anew fix.

From this perspective, the move towards partnership governance is regarded as one

element in particular strategies for a new fix. Let me give a concrete example. TheEuropean Union adopted at the Lisbon Council (2000) a strategic goal: to become themost competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable ofsustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. In thesection of the Lisbon Declaration on Putting Decisions into Practice, changes in

governance are indicated which are associated with implementation of the strategic goal.The changes envisaged and advocated are partly changes in the relationship between scales


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Norman Fairclough

of governance between the EU scale, the national scale, and the regional scale. There is tobe a new open method of coordination which allows for a translation of EU guidelines,

indicators and benchmarks into national and regional policies which set targets and adoptmeasures taking into account national and regional differences. But they are also changestowards partnership governance:

A fully decentralised approach will be applied in line with the principle of subsidiarity in whichthe Union, the Member States, the regional and local levels, as well as the social partners and civilsociety, will be actively involved, using variable forms of partnership. A method of benchmarkingbest practices on managing change will be devised by the European Commission networking withdifferent providers and users, namely the social partners, companies and NGOs.

There is a double movement here: decentralization, and partnership, where partnershipsuggests cooperation based upon the emulation which is implied in benchmarking. Sothe EUs strategy for a new fix envisages a combination of a knowledge-based

economy, a modernised European social model, andpartnership governance. It alsoincludes cultural dimensions cultural values of social responsibility (referred to in theLisbon Declaration with respect to the social responsibility of the business community,but in for instance the strategy for combating social exclusion with respect to the socialresponsibility of all citizens, including the socially excluded), of flexibility (forinstance in relation to lifelong learning), and so forth. Knowledge-based economy,decentralisation and partnership are within the strategy no more than discursiveelements, elements of an emergent EU discourse no more than in the sense that theirimplementation, their operationalization, is another and more contingent matter.

They are discursive elements which are worked into a narrative and an imaginary, and anargument, within the Lisbon Declaration. The narrative tells of past and present problemsof competitiveness, unemployment and social exclusion within the EU, and ties these toan imaginary for solving these problems, and at the same time constructs an argumentwhich legitimizes the strategy and the new fix in terms of these problems. Another thingto notice is that the strategy is also a strategy for re-scaling carving out an EU scale,and imaging new relations between the EU, national and regional scales. The EU scale andthe new scalar relations appertain to the economy, social policy, education, and governance

thus what is imagined at the EU scale includes a European economy, a Europeansocial model, a European Higher Education Area, anda European model of governance.Partnership governance is envisaged and advocated at each scale EU, national, andregional.


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2. Discourse analysis in trans-disciplinary research on partnershipgovernance

Trans-disciplinary research carried out in terms of such a view of cultural politicaleconomy will translate the topic of socio-economic change (or political-economic change)into a particular set of research objects. These might include: the emergence of strategiesfor a new fix (such as the EU strategy), contestation between different strategies and theestablishment of the hegemony of a particular strategy (again, such as the EU strategy), thedissemination and recontextualization of such a strategy (eg in the case of the Lisbon

strategy, at national and regional scales within the EU and candidate countries), and theimplementation of such a strategy in the different sites of its recontextualization (as well asat the EU scale). All of these are complex objects of research ultimately sets of objects ofresearch but implementation is particularly complex. We can see some of thiscomplexity if we consider what is involved in recontextualization: the recontextualizationof a strategy is a matter of its insertion into a site with its own distinctive structuralproperties, historical trajectory and forms of path-dependency as some economists put it,and its own pre-existing field of strategies and strategic struggle. One might say forinstance that the successful recontextualization and implementation of an external

strategy depends upon it becoming the internal strategy of a group or coalition of social

agents and agencies with the power and resources to make it hegemonic and to implementit. This in itself is conditional upon various circumstantial factors structural, institutional,cultural and just what the relationship is, for instance in the case of the Lisbon strategy,between the strategy for a new fix and the actually existing implemented forms of a newfix is also conditional upon circumstances. The chances are for instance that partnershipgovernance may appear in markedly different forms in different places.

These four broad objects of research are partly objects for discourse analytical research

or to put it differently, discourse analysis can formulate its own particular objects ofresearch within the wider trans-disciplinary research field.

Emergence: the emergence of discourses, narratives, legitimizations as elements of strategies

how for instance new discourses are constituted by articulating together elements of priordiscourses.Hegemony: contestation between discourses (narratives, legitimizations) as a part of contestation(hegemonic struggle) between strategiesRecontextualization: the recontextualization of discourses (narratives, legitimizations) as part ofthe recontextualization of strategies eg the working of new discourses into relations (ofcomplementarity, tension, contestation) with existing discourses (eg the discourse of partnershipgovernance with existing discourses of governance and government in Romania);recontextualization as a colonisation/appropriation dialectic (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999)


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Norman FaircloughOperationalization: the enactment of discourses (eg the discourse of partnership governance) asnew institutions, new relations between institutions, new practices and procedures; theirinculcation in new ways of being, new identities; their materialization in new material forms (egspatial organisation of public spaces). Operationalization involves the dialectics of discourse(Harvey 1996). Crucially, this is partly an intra-discursive dialectic enactment is partly arelationship between discourses and genres (eg between the discourse of partnership governanceand new genres including forms of dialogue in new institutions and practices of governance,new genre networks as the necessary discursive facet of new relations within and betweeninstitutions); inculcation is partly a relationship between discourses and styles (eg between thediscourse of partnership governance and new styles of participation in new forms of interactionand dialogue (new genres), including new styles of managing governance processes).

Notice these are not stages but moments for instance recontextualization entails

(further) hegemonic struggle in a new place/at a new scale, and possibly the emergence ofnew hybrid strategies (discourses, narratives, legitimizations).

Thus discourse-analytical research on partnership governance will include these threebroad concerns:

discourses, narratives, legitimizations within strategies dialectical relations between discourses, genres and styles dialectical relations between discourse and other elements (including material

elements) of governance

3. Problems with partnership governance: a discourse-analyticalperspective

I have referred to partnership governance in the implementation of public strategies andpolicies, but the tendency to shift towards this form of governance is more general it isalso widespread for instance in the governance of organisations, both public (eg educationalorganisations) and private (eg private businesses).

I now want to pick up the point I briefly made earlier about the controversial character ofpartnership governance. Particular implementations of partnership governance have

been criticized on various grounds. For instance a book edited Balloch & Taylor (2001),discussing partnership in the governance of public services in the UK, asks whetherpartnership has actually left existing power relationships untouched, whether partnershipcan work without efforts to break down resistant public service cultures, whetherpartnerships actually enhance services for the people who are supposed to benefit fromthem, or dissipates energies in setting up new structures, systems and procedures, and so

forth.


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Let me pick up the point about existing public service cultures briefly in the case of

recontextualization of the Lisbon strategy in Romania. There are various diagnoses ofcultural aspects of obstacles Romania faces in transition and EU integration. A popularone attributes failures to Romanian mentalities, often discussed in a universalizing wayas if there were a unitary Romanian culture, and generally linked to Romanian history asthe legacy of communism, or longer-term legacies of the past.

Another which I find more interesting refers to the importance of what have been calledstatus groups in public life (Mungiu-Pippidi 2003), meaning groups which - one mightsay - personalize relations in public institutions, and operate to distribute benefits and,

crucially for our present concerns, information, according to who is included within orexcluded from what are sometimes referred to in a derogatory way as these clans ortribes. Relations and actions and the distribution of benefits are personalized in the senseof being based upon loyalty and indeed love, there is what is sometimes referred to as aclientelist relation between members which depends upon past favours as well as thepublic family attachments. There are I think good social reasons why such status groupshave been strengthened in Romania since 1990, to do with what a Romanian economist hascalled the structural strain (Dianu 2000) resulting from problems and policy errors intransition. Putting that aside, the dominance of status groups in for instance some areas of

higher education presents real obstacles to the implementation of, to take a current

preoccupation, the partnership governance which is supposed to obtain in the Bolognaprocess. For instance, in terms of information, the Bologna process assumes a transparencyof information which is at odds with the hoarding of information which tends tocharacterize status groups.

I have consciously taken a somewhat circuitous route to the issue of cooperation andconflict in dialogue, and I hope my reasons for doing so are clear. But now I want to lookspecifically at this issue with reference to a number of cases.

4. Partnership working

The title of Balloch & Taylors book, Partnership Working, points us to the fact thatpartnership governance is a way ofworking. There is a continuity between partnership as amode of governance and partnership as way of working in what Iedema (2003) calls post-

bureaucratic organization, both public and private. Iedema points to a significant shift inthe character of work:


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Norman FaircloughBy engaging workers into sites where they can only survive if they appropriate new ways ofspeaking and self-presenting, post-bureaucratic organization appears to displace organizationalcriteria that stipulate what is good work from doing work to talking work. Work performance,in this emerging climate, is thus not measured on the strength of work outcomes alone, but isassessed on the strength of workers ability to work, speak and self-present in ways that aredemonstrably orrhetorically outcome-oriented and outcome-productive.

Moreover, the outcome Iedema is referring to with respect to his analysis of partnershipgovernance and working is knowledge knowledge which is operationalized as plans,procedures, projects and so forth. What this indicates is that two central components of theEU strategy for a new fix which I discussed above are not arbitrarily articulated together partnership governance and working are ways of governing and working which

correspond to the character of the knowledge-based economy, in that they enable thecentral innovation of the knowledge-based economy, the intensification of incorporationof knowledge in new products and services.

Viewing partnership governance and working as oriented to the production ofknowledge outcomes provides a particular perspective upon and contextualization ofcooperation and conflict in dialogue. I want to refer to some of the dialogue which Iedemadiscusses in his book, which comes from a series of meetings about the renovation of ahealth care facility in New South Wales, Australia. The planning process was carried out inaccordance with the guidelines of the NSW Department of Health, which stipulate the

involvement of government, community and other stakeholders in large projects. They

require the presence at these meetings of representatives from the health department andlocal area health service, engineers, suppliers, architects, members of the user community(in this case, medical clinicians and managers though notpatients), and crucially - aplanner to facilitate the process. The potential for conflict is clear especially givendifferences in interests and concerns between the users of the new facility and the Healthdepartment officials. But all the stakeholders in these partnership encounters are expectedto recognise the financial, regulatory and material constraints upon the project. The planner

is expected to produce an outcome which all the stakeholders can subscribe to (Iedema2003: 112-113).

In one meeting which Iedema discusses (2003: 133-147), an emergent conflict ismanaged by the planner to produce a successful and cooperative outcome. Early in the

meeting, the Health Department official (represented as GB, Government Bureaucrat, inthe transcript) shows his anxiety to get on with the project as quick as possible now thatthe department has set aside this money and decision was made to do it. He appears, asIedema notes, to regard the involvement of the user community as an unnecessaryformality, in spite of the official requirement to do so. The planner (represented as SP,

Senior Planner) begins to show his reservations:


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Governance, partnership and participation: cooperation and conflictSP- Now can I can I just John can I just ask a couple of things, one is that, at least try and fill insome gaps in history here, um, there are some other players now, in the game, is that right, in 1992there were different people, Im talking about the medical side of the thing, uh, GB- Yeah, the key to [that]SP- [Um, do we] have any knowledge of their feelings with respect to the currentplans and stuff like thatGB- They love the current planSP- Ah! [Thats uh positive]GB- [Huhuh, um,] the director of nurses, sorry the Nursing Unit Manger is consistentSP- So she is she was involved GB- No no no, he heSP- He, sorry,

At this stage, it is GB who is authoritative, whereas SP enacts tentativeness as Iedemaputs it through questions, hesitation devices and repetitions, addressing GB by his firstname. Gradually however the SP becomes less tentative and more assertive. For instance:

SP- So, in terms of the guideline, what we would need have to do then is demonstrate that of anumber of ways of configuring an addition to an existing building that is the best oneGB- YeahSP- Wed also have to look at the no-build option, which they always put into these things, whichbasically says can we do nothing and get away with it, and we would fairly quickly answerthats not on ..

The no-build option is exactly what GB is afraid of, and in mentioning it, Iedema

suggests, SP has lifted the veil on his preparedness to stand up against the priorities of thebureaucrat. The tension comes to a head in the following:

SP- And so yeah, then we would look at whether or not theres other genuine ways ofconfiguring it, but what Im saying is that I, well, we dont really want to go through a process ofprolonging that exercise, but we do need to haveGB- Proof

Iedema suggests that SP would have finished his sentence with something like a fairconsultative process, but GB interrupts him with proof, which in this context refers tofinancial legitimation. The dialogue goes on:

SP- Proof well what will happen is, people over in [health department] are going to look at it andsay can you convince us that this is still the best way to solve the problem of adding on to anexisting building, you know, cost efficient way, and I think thats really what we have to address,now as I said, there are quite specific things we need to do, we need to look at the serviceimplications and since 1992 there has been a strategic master plan or something like that about the[] health services in the area, that has to be looked at I think, Maria did you find anything thatwas there, I dont know,

[these are things]GB- [Ive Ive] Ive got some files in my officeSP- Have you, ok. So we should perhaps gather all that junk together and see what there is.


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Norman FaircloughWe will have to go back to shareholders, whatever we do, both in the Department I think and inthe hospital, and at least run our ideas past, to this stage againGB- Hmhm.SP- So well have to have some meetings with those people

SP goes along with GBs assessment that financial proof is needed but then steers thedialogue back to stakeholders. GB does not challenge this. By not contesting GBs positiondirectly, questioning at some points rather than asserting, and various other interactionaldevices, SP avoids potential conflict, gradually establishes his authority, and achieves anoutcome which those present can go along with, even if it does not really satisfy them.

Conflicts do develop in these meetings, but the shared orientation of stakeholders to an

outcome (and avoiding the no-build option) as well as the brief of the planner to producean outcome that all stakeholders can go along with, means that differences of interest and

the contests for power which they lead to tend to be resolved with limited resort of conflict.Another important aspect of the move towards partnership governance and working is

that it involves new relationships between genres. Iedema refers to this issue in terms of thenew relationships which are set up between spoken interaction and written documents, inwhich spoken interaction assumes a greater relative salience, but where nevertheless thedynamics of power and differences of interest extend from meetings into the production ofminutes and back again, and from the series of meetings into the final report which theplanner produces for the health authority. We can see this as part of what I call a genre

chain or network, interconnected genres which are systematically related to each other,between which there are systematic relations of recontextualization such that the dialogueof a meeting is transformed in more or less predictable ways into minutes and reports. Thedialogue within a particular partnership event, as we might call it, is informed by theknowledge of participants of how it is positioned within a genre chain. Power is exercisednot only in particular types of event but across chains of events which are shaped byrelatively stabilized and institutionalized genre chains, and the balance between cooperationand conflict in negotiating differences of interest is conditional upon the chain of eventsand the genre chain, not just the particular event. We should also bear in mind Bourdieus

(Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992) view that what happens in dialogue between diversestakeholders (his example is rather different however - a TV debate between different sorts

of expert on an election result) depends upon the pre-structured relationships between thefields and institutions which participants represent, which determines the interactionalresources they bring to dialogue. This would for instance suggest that in manycircumstances users as stakeholders will tend to be marginalized. Nevertheless, goingback to Iedemas example, the quiet assertion of authority by SP is a skilled interactionalaccomplishment, and outcomes depend on what is locally accomplished interactionally, as

well as pre-structured relations between fields, institutions, procedures and genres.


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5. Participation troubles

I want to turn finally to the participation of citizens who are targeted or affected by formsof partnership governance. As I indicated earlier, it is characteristic for partnershipgovernance to envisage forms of participation or consultation, but this is what hasperhaps been seen as the most problematic in terms of the gap between rhetoric and reality.

I shall refer to the case of the British Governments Farm Scale Evaluation programmefor genetically modified (GM) crops (Fairclough, Pardoe & Szerszynski forthcoming). TheBritish Government decided on a series of trials to assess the environmental effects of arange of GM crops. The locations for these trials were determined by a specialistgovernment scientific committee in consultation with representatives of the GM cropindustry. Locations were publicly announced some time before planting, and one optionopen to a local council was to organise a public meeting to inform local people about thetrials. The extract I shall comment on is taken from one such meeting.

It is clear that the Government took a very limited view of public participation in the

crop trials process. In some of the Ministrys publicity on the Farm Scale Evaluation, one

finds:

Q: What is being done to involve people with sites in their locality in the Farm ScaleEvaluation programme?The Government involves local people in the Farm Scale Evaluation (FSE) process byproviding both information about the release and an opportunity for the public tocomment on the safety assessments that have been made.

In this representation of participation, the verb involve is used transitively (cp involvethemselves, get involved) with the Government as subject and (local) people as object public involvement is represented as managed or orchestrated by the Government, andis limited to the Government providing both information and an opportunity for the

public to comment. The only instance of the public as actor in of a verbal process(comment) in an embedded clause within a subordinate clause in which the Governmentis actor (it is also actor in the main clause).


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Public meetings were informed by this limited official view of participation. In the specificcase I shall discuss, the meeting was in two parts: opening statements from a Ministry

official, a representative of a GM crop company, and a representative of an NGO, the SoilAssociation; questions from members of the audience to the speakers. Allowablecontributions to the second part were prescribed by the person chairing the meeting asquestions in which questioners give their names, the village or organisation they arefrom, and indicate which of the speakers the question is directed to. People were also askedto speak one at a time and not interrupt. The Chair tried to control contributions whichdeviated from these rules at various points in the meeting where people dont identifytheir village or organisation, and where they make statements rather than ask questions.

In some places, audience members represent themselves as asking questions but areactually making statements. One can also see an apparent strategic use of questions toperform other speech acts, for instance in one exceptionally conflictual case: Can I ask ourMoney Making Crop Grower a basic question. Do you believe in democracy?

Some audience members seemed to have a view of the nature of this event whichdiffered from the official view. This came across in their representations of the event andthe whole decision-making process on crop trials, and is partly evident in the verbs thatwere used (eg consult as opposed to involve), and partly in different assumptions aboutthe relationship between public opinion and policy action. For instance, one audience

member refers to a referendum of local people in which a clear majority expressed their

opposition to the crop trial as if that ought to determine whether or not the trial should goahead - youre not listening, he said. A central difference was that while the official viewof the event was that it was about giving information, many audience members saw theevent in terms of getting action. So the government official could answer the complaintby saying we are listening to you, but there seem to be different understandings of whatthis implies listening and acting upon what is heard, or listening and noting what isheard (and generally then ignoring it).

These differences are apparent in what one might describe as genre struggles withinthe meeting. Specifically, there are frequent struggles over whether the public are allowedto provide information and to comment or only to ask questions, and over whether they canrespond to the answers given by the panel. The chairperson may articulate rules for the

event and demand conformity to these, yet people may insert comments or information asgivens (or presuppositions) within a question. Equally, the audience may demand thatmembers of the panel answer a question.


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Here is one example:

M1: There are two or three problems or concerns really. One really is the lack of timethe parish has been given with respect of when we know. We dont know when the siteis to be. We only know when the site is to be drilled. The County Council has put amotion through that we would ask DEFRA to let us know when the site is agreed, andthen we could have a meeting like this if you like before it all gets out of hand. The otherthing is theres a massive increase in nose problems through spores that are in the airnow. Years ago we used to have hay fever problems at hay time, now we seem to getthem - Is there any difference between the spores of genetically modified crops and theconventional crop? I think those are two major concerns that locally are causingproblems. I dont know whether theres an answer to both but there certainly is ananswer in time delay and there may be an answer to the other.M2: Could I just make a point as well? I mean the first part of that, this year the first weknew about these crops was in the newspaper.M1: Exactly.M2: And when we did draw some information off the Internet, it was the day theydstated for sowing. So thats when the Parish Council knew-M1: The County Council has asked the Government to if we can know when the siteis decided upon then we need the information. And I think that will give us a reasonablelength of time to evaluate whether it is or isnt going to be a problem.Government Official: Can I [unclear word]. Well, I think that I said that our practice is towrite to all Parish Councils when a trial site is proposed and we did that-M1: No, that isnt what happened-Government Official: Could I just say what we do? [Extended account of the notificationprocedure omitted.] So we do our very best to make sure that the people know.M1: At what point do you know which site you are going to use?

M1 begins by making statements not asking questions - about the two problems orconcerns, and then asking a question about the second of them. Another shift away fromthe rules of such meetings is that M1 and M2 are working collaboratively to elaborate thefirst problem, against the normative expectation of one speaker at a time. Furthermore,M1 interrupts the government officials response, challenging what he is saying, and thencontinues in direct dialogue with him by asking a further question, rather than onlyaddressing questions through the chair as the rules would require. Moreover, M1 wouldseem to be asking for more than answers to questions; that is, more than information, he

would seem to be asking for solutions to problems the answer in time delay he is askingfor is a change in the official procedure. Such exchanges are frequent in this and similar

meetings: audience members, usually unostentatiously but persistently, breach the rulesabout questions to get across the points and criticisms and challenges they want to getacross.

As I suggested, I think this is a case where the official procedure takes a narrow view ofparticipation, where the only active option for citizens is to comment which in practicemeans no more than written comments on the part of individuals. But many of the citizens

attending public meetings assume that they are an occasion for participation in a richer


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sense an occasion to try to get action and change. In general, their efforts to circumventthe restrictions on allowable contributions are one might say relatively cooperative and, as I

said about the example I have just discussed, unostentatious. But there are points in themeetings where conflict emerges:

F1:My name is [name] and I am a voluntary campaigner based in [name of town] for [name ofNGO] and I have devoted much of the last year to campaigning and finding out all about GMcrops.I have a simple question I would like umm the two speakers from DEFRA & GM crop &herbicide company tonight, to supply me, by speaking to you all, the names and reference numbersof any independent research to deal with safety, as regards these two crops, maize and oil seedrape.This is for example: umm, if I was to breathe in the pollen, could they tell me please what testshave been done by independent scientists to say whether that will leave me totally healthy orwhether there may be some risk; if a cow was to eat some grass, upon which the pollen haddropped in its short life, coming from these crops. Can we say that these things have been tested, tosee the result of that? That sort of thing. Thanks very much.Audience: [applause]Industry representative: Umm, yes. I can answer that question. The answer, when it comes downto independent research, umm I cant give you an answer to that.To my knowledge Im not aware of independent research. I am aware of a lot of research that hasbeen done both by our company and by other companies, which has been looked at independently.All the results have been looked at independently, on a number of occasions, they umm, both inthis country and in other countries around the world. And that is the only reason why we areallowed to grow these things in this country. So I may not be able to answer your question in termsof independent research, but certainly this information that has been presented has been looked at

independently, yes.F1:Have you got the research papers please, so I can read them too? Can I go on the internet,and actually read this information. This is what I want to be able to do.Industry representative: Okay, if youre talking about maize you can certainly look on our Internetor on, come to that DEFRAs Internet, and look at what safety information there. Yes. And there issafety information in there.Chair: All right, next question please.[While the chair asks for the next question, members of the audience point out that the questionhas not been answered by the government representative. They ask for him to answer it. Itbecomes evident that the Government representative is not going to answer. The chair still asks forthe next question. F1 returns to the microphone.]F1: I have been writing to the Government, at least once a month for seven months, and before thatquite frequently. The Department of the Environment, Margaret Beckett, Michael Meacher.Written to in parliament, at one or two addresses that Ive had for them. I have never had a replyother than the standard reply, which are just like [the industry representative] kindly said. Years,

dossiers full of it. never have they answered my question with one research paper number or title. Ido not believe this exists.[Loud 6 second applause. The chair invites another question.]

This intervention begins cooperatively enough: the speaker identifies herself, and asks aquestion, though it is a question which includes a request for references. The speaker does,politely, break the rules with a follow-up question to the Industry Representatives reply.

What is interesting here is that she is not just asking for information, she is asking for


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references to research papers so that she can read them herself she doesnt get them, andone gets the sense that the Industry Representative fails to grasp that this citizen actually

wants to get into the science that, conventionally, is for the scientific experts, not forcitizens. The point of emergence of conflict is just summed up here it is, notably, initiatedby the audience in demanding that the Government representative also answer the question.It is when it becomes apparent that he is not going to answer the question that thequestioner in a sense briefly takes over the meeting, no longer asking questions, butrecounting her own failed attempts to get access to scientific evidence which in a finalimplicit accusation of bad faith she know believes does not exist. Again, the audiencecontributes to this moment of conflict, this small confrontation or, to romanticize, minor

insurgency. But it is quickly over the chairman moves on. Conflict momentarily erupts,but cooperation is smoothly reinstituted.

6. Conclusion

Both of the examples I have discussed come from forms of dialogical interaction which are

constituent elements of more elaborate procedures which are legitimized in terms of

ensuring the participation or consultation of all relevant stakeholders, their co-involvement in forms of partnership. Recent changes in forms of governance haveproduced many procedures of a broadly similar sort, though I should add that partnershipgovernance appears in many different forms (Balloch & Taylor 2001). On the face of it,they are an attractive alternative to the opaque exercise of bureaucratic authority, and alsoperhaps attractive in appearing to resolve differences of interest through cooperation ratherthan conflict. Yet they have given rise to widespread concerns about democracy. There are

claims that unequal relations of power have not been fundamentally changed despite therhetoric of partnership and participation; that these apparently open and transparentprocedures contribute to weakening forms of civic action, campaigning and dispute whichare integral to healthy democratic societies; and that partnership governance is part of an

elaborate and increasingly international battery of social technologies for imposing butsimultaneously legitimizing a neo-liberal fix of a fundamentally undemocratic character.Partnership, participation and indeed dialogue itself have been seen in New LabourBritain for instance as some of the weasel words which are prominent in the spinwhich is put on government policies whose real substance is neo-liberal, but which have to

be given a progressive patina to secure the compliance of citizens and voters (Hall 2003).The frustrations arising are illustrated for instance in the case of GM crops direct action in


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Norman Fairclough

the form of destroying trial crop sites was legitimized in terms of the absence of any realdemocratic debate on this issue. On the other hand, one might say that whatever the real

limits and frustrations of partnership governance, it does put into social circulation amodel for a sort of dialogical democracy, and opens a new terrain for imminent critique around the gap between promise and delivery.

A final comment on democracy, cooperation and conflict. Democratic politics requiresdialogue between conflicting interests, and necessarily entails conflict, argument, disputewithin dialogue. It also requires a willingness to accommodate to agreed forms and procedures for engaging in dialogue, and seeking to reconcile or negotiate conflictinginterests, hence a basis of cooperation. The danger of partnership governance is that it

sometimes seems to construe guarantees of inclusion and participation of all interestedparties as an alternative to vigorous debate and conflict between conflicting positions andinterests. Cooperation may be an outcome of such debate, as well as in a sense as I haveindicated a precondition. But to institutionalize procedures with financial and otherinducements to avoid conflict and achieve cooperation will tend to allow the powerful toprevail with minimal opposition through a process of co-option, and rather than removingconflicts of position and interest may well lead to them being expressed in more explosiveand less democratic forms, as well as adding to the reduced participation and interest inpolitics which partnership governance is often claimed to be a partial solution to.


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References

Balloch, S. & Taylor, M. (eds.) (2001): Partnership Working. Bristol: The Policy Press.Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. (1992): Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Chouliaraki, L. & Fairclough, N. (1999): Discourse in Late Modernity Edinburgh. Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press.Dianu, D. (2000): ncotro se ndreapt rile postcomuniste? Bucharest: Polirom.Fairclough, N. (2003): Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London:

Routledge. (2005a): Critical Discourse Analysis, Organizational Discourse, and

Organizational Change. Organization Studies 26, 915-939. (2005b): Critical Discourse Analysis. Marges Linguistiques 9, 76-

94. (forthcoming): Discourse in Processes of Social Change: Transition

Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of Language and Politics.Fairclough, N., Pardoe, S. & Szerszynski, B. (forthcoming): Critical discourse

analysis and citizenship. In: H. Hausendorf & A. Bora (eds.):Analyzing Citizenship Talk.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hall, S. (2003): New Labours Double-Shuffle. Soundings 25, 25-47.Harvey, D. (1996): Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell.Iedema, R. (2003): Discourses of Post-Bureaucratic Organization. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins.Jessop, B. (2002): The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity Press.Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2003): Politica dup comunism. Bucharest: Humanitas.Pickles, J. & Smith, A. (1998): Theorising Transition: the Political Economy of

Post-Communist Transformations. London: Routledge.Polanyi, K. (1944): The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press.Sayer, A. (1995): Radical Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell.

fairclough, n. "governance, partnership and participation: cooperation and conflict"

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