Governing Narratives: Symbolic Politics and Policy Change

6. Conclusion

6 Conclusion The idea of mobilizing symbols that shape policy narratives begins to take shape with the connotative associations inherent in the term ideography. ideography, in turn, directs attention to semantic associations, to similarities and differences in symbolic meanings, to emotional resonance, to value orientation. ideographs pull together multiple signs, references, and images to signify an understanding that is imbued with cognition, emotional resonance, situational awareness, and values.These are the relevant elements of public policy discourse; these elements are expansive, sometimes beyond the bounds of reason. Public policy discourse expresses ideographic images quite regularly: acid rain, drug lord, flood of immigrants, partial birth abortion, no child left behind, and, ironically enough, objective fact are examples of such imagery. The connotative depth and range of these ideographs vary, but all are easily exploitable in the art of meaning capture. evidence, data, research, reasoned argument—all are valuable aims of rational inquiry, but public policy discourse does not typically work like scholarly argumentation. Causality functions differently in policy discourse than it does in scientific research. Causality is frequently part of a narrative that frames the issue by assessing blame for problem, warranting a solution, or justifying inaction. epistemologically, the narrative approach is necessarily interpretive. One can count the number of times the term drug addict shows up in a sample of publi- 92 / Chapter 6 cations, but it is a matter of interpretation to discern whether the ideograph is a criminal type of drug addict or merely a diseased drug addict from the harmreduction narrative. indeed, facts themselves are social constructions (Poovey 1998); some are well crafted and some are poorly crafted (Latour 2005). The relationship between indicators and facts is forever problematic because languages are self-referential epiphenomena. in semiotics, words do not refer to objects but rather to mental pictures of those objects, making language highly transportable in that one can talk about objects that are not physically present. but there is a gap between the word that would serve as indicator and “reality itself.” in the social sciences, this gap is highly problematic. We live in a material, prelinguistic natural world that the narrative approach accepts, but, once we begin to discuss policy problems with one another, we are at the mercy of a particular language . even signs that effectively denote some aspect of the objective world can be used again to connote something else. blue sky can mean more than a sky that is blue. There are good scientific reasons for trying to denotatively attach a signifier to a specific object, but the poets (and paid hacks) of policy discourse will always find another connotation or a new association. The absence of foundational fixity does not rob society of meaning; to the contrary, malleability enables meaning to develop, grow, and change. Meaning making is an omnipresent communicative social activity. Narratives and their ideography are connotative and holistic, important not for their denotative precision so much as their integration of meaning into a form of coherence. Meanings can be changed, through new or altered associations among signs, ideographs , and narratives. When meanings change, the symbiotic relations between narrative and practice changes the way tasks are accomplished or understood. The legitimacy and appropriateness of social practices change when meanings change. To maximize stability and order, one might prefer as little change as possible. Managerial control can be thought of as techniques and tactics for limiting or somehow disciplining the actionable associations that emerge in an organization or that infiltrate from outside. However, an overemphasis on this sort of managerial discipline obviates creative experimentation with new associations, impeding adaptation to turbulent environments and diminishing the opportunities for creative solutions to complex problems. Diamond (2005) described occasions when societies have collapsed. These collapses were due in part to ecological problems but were also due to social practices that were incompatible with sustaining the local natural environment. inflexibility in changing practices and their symbiotic narratives can prove ruinous. For a practicing public administrator it is equally valid to worry about too much institutionalized control (that Conclusion / 93 might snuff out alternatives) as too little institutional stability and integration (that might lead to chaos and loss of efficacy). The habitual conventions of institutionalized practice enable coordination and fulfillment of mutual expectations . A narrative thus entrenched into institutionalized practice is able to reject alternative practices that would implement some competing narrative. it is possible that narrative inflexibility could threaten discursive democracy. in...