Managing Power: the Role of Writing in the Formation of Public Policy

Abstract

This study addresses a stage of public policy formation approximate to that described by the policy science term "formulation". Two features particularly characterise the mode of address that I have adopted from my position in contemporary English studies. First, following the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, I treat the formulation process as a field of production. Second, my focus is on the textual practices inculturated in institutional agents through professional training and experience (the formation of habitus in Bourdieu's terms). From this position I have developed a model of textual practice which, using the terms monologism and dialogism borrowed from the literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, brings into relation certain rhetorical stances which tend to correspond to the standing of writing agents in the relations of power constituting the policy production field. This model also requires, following Bourdieu, a recontextualisation (by readers) of the history of relations amongst the occupants of the field; without this knowledge, which written texts in the policy field generally do not provide, a comprehensive understanding of the texts is not possible. Subsequently, based on a contextualisation of the policy field in question (the electricity distribution field in New Zealand at the commencement of corporatisation reform in the late 1980s) I have developed a theory of policy production for the analysis of official documents. My thesis is that the role of writing in the production of public policy is to manage the tension between a desired intent (corresponding to monologism) and a requirement - for practical as well as democratic purposes - to engage in consultation (dialogism). The analyses identify the mechanisms by which this tension is managed, mainly by maximising monologism, and show that this management, while it leads to a limitation of participation (including the effective exclusion of the general public), cannot be guaranteed to prevent modification of the initial intent. I conclude by first considering the implications for democratic governance of the policy production procedures identified; and second, by recommending an alternative model of textual practice for the induction of officials, one based on a dialectic of monological and dialogical strategies. That is, a text may proceed through an alternating specification and negotiation of difference; a way of operating which I regard as particularly appropriate for the new proportional representation era of New Zealand politics.