Narrative Politics in Public Policy: Legalizing Cannabis (2020)

(Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan)

Author(s) : Hugh Miller

Hugh T. Miller is a Professor at the School of Public Administration at Florida Atlantic University, USA. He is the author of Governing Narratives: Symbolic Politics and Policy Change (2012). His other books include Postmodern Public Policy and, with the late Charles Fox, Postmodern Public Administration.

This book focuses on the political competition between and among narratives competing for dominance around policy issues. Employing the case of Cannabis policy, the author argues that the process of narrative inquiry reveals and clarifies the sometimes intractable conflicts that must be surpassed in seeking policy solutions to public problems.

Abstract

This book draws on examples from cannabis policy discourse and elsewhere to illustrate how individuals come to subscribe to a particular policy narrative; how policy narratives evolve; how narratives are employed in public policy discourse to compete with other narratives; and how, on implementation, the winning narrative is performed and subsequently institutionalized. Further, it explores how uncertainty and ambiguity are constants in public policy discourse, and how different factions and groups pursue different goals and aspirations. In the current climate of political reality, disputable facts and contestable goals, this book shows how different coalitions and ideologies use narratives to compete for policy dominance.

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