Examining Enterprise Policy during the 2016 Irish General Election Campaign using Corpus and Critical Discourse Analyses

Importance and Key Contribution This paper is an examination of the Irish State’s enterprise policy using discourse analytic methodologies. It looks at the role played by the State in enterprise development, how that was... [ view full abstract ]

Importance and Key Contribution

This paper is an examination of the Irish State’s enterprise policy using discourse analytic methodologies. It looks at the role played by the State in enterprise development, how that was presented by the political parties during the 2016 Irish General Election campaign and the subsequent treatment of these party policies by the print media. Standard rhetoric on the issue of enterprise policy and development tends to overlook, and often undermines, the level of investment and other supports made by or on behalf of the State, both directly and indirectly, in enterprise development.

The significance of this area lies in the subtle but important role played by the media, amongst others, in mediating how society views State policy, as decided by the legislature and then enacted by the government of the day. The 2016 election campaign presented a valuable opportunity to examine the range of enterprise policies presented by the competing parties, particularly at this electoral juncture.


Theoretical Base

Mazzucato (2011) asserts that “a perceived contrast is repeatedly drawn by the media, business and libertarian politicians of a dynamic, innovative, competitive private sector versus a sluggish, bureaucratic, inertial, ‘meddling’ public sector. So much so that it is virtually accepted by the public as a ‘common sense’ truth.” This paper will investigate the Irish media’s role in perpetuating the view, at a critical time in Ireland when there is an increasingly uncritical portrayal of the privatisation of State assets and entities, of the Irish State sector as inefficient, incompetent and a drag on the public purse. To do this, this paper draws upon the theory presented by Mazzucato’s work (2013) on the role of the state in enterprise development. She points out the significant investments made by the U.S.A.- that bastion of private enterprise - in the fields of information technologies and pharmaceuticals in particular, which have facilitated the emergence of technologies such as Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone, without which the latter would never have been possible. To clarify, Mazzucato notes that the US military funded and pioneered the early forms of the internet, GPS positioning systems and voice-activation technology; they also supplied much of the initial funding behind the inception of Silicon Valley. What is equally interesting, and particularly pertinent from the perspective of this study is the subsequent omission of the state from rhetoric surrounding entrepreneurship; as ‘unacknowledged enablers’, governments literally receive no credit for their investment. This further incenses Mazzucato; that deliberately anti-statist ideology, rather than empirical evidence, is damaging the state’s ability to make key investments for future. Further theoretical foundation can be found in Schumpeterian theory (1942) on the destructive nature of capitalism’s inherent drive towards efficiency, irrespective of human cost, and its implications for real creative investment.


Research Question & Methodology

It is intended to identify the rate of occurrence of public enterprise in the published manifestos of each of the parties running in the Irish General Election of 2016. This study involves two key components of discourse analysis: initially, content analysis of the eight party manifestos were carried out, using the methodology of Corpus Analysis, to explore and establish language patterns surrounding the term ‘enterprise’. This draws upon Baker’s work (2006) in the development of this methodology and specifically his contribution on Concordance Analysis and potential for a “methodological cross-pollination” suggested by Baker et al (2008; 274) between Corpus and Critical Discourse Analysis.

The second stage of the study involved Critical Discourse Analysis, a methodology that Wodak (2007) defines as one which analyses the transparent structural relationship of dominance, discrimination, power and control that is manifest in language. CDA will be used to investigate the coverage that various enterprise development policies were given in print media over the election campaign period, and to examine how that contributes to public discourse surrounding enterprise development policy. In accordance with the theory of Critical Discourse Moments, identified by Carvalho (2008), it was decided to examine the election campaign period, February 3rd to February 25th inclusive.

Specifically, this paper asks questions about how enterprise development policy is treated by party manifestos and subsequently by the media and examines how useful Discourse Analysis methodologies are at elucidating and explicating the nature of discursive structures within the Irish media.


Initial Findings

Findings indicate that some of the key parties seeking election do not consider that enterprise development is a role of the state; specifically the acceptance that “governments don’t create jobs”. This notion is captured in an early press release from the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD, in which he states that “governments don’t create jobs, entrepreneurs do; the risk takers, the business people, the exporters up and down the country who have succeeded often despite, not because of, Government action” (Irish Government News Service, 2011). There was, in the data sources, poor recognition of the state’s investment in key economic areas and how this investment is often in economically non-profitable areas; areas which the private sector may avoid. The lack of an acknowledgement of the State’s role, as suggested by Mazzucato, creates and maintains the “anti-statist” climate in which private enterprise is deemed great, while the state continues to receive the ‘dead-hand’ moniker and thus permits large MNCs companies, such as Apple, to actively avoid their tax liabilities. This continues to perpetuate the ideology that private is good while public is bad and thus jeopardises the economic potential of State backed enterprise development.


Implications

This paper will make an argument that in the Irish economy there is a need to reasonably and accurately portray the competing political perspectives on enterprise policy: as the results will suggest, as false dichotomy is often portrayed in the Irish media between public and private sector policy in this regard, with the public State sector being presented as anachronistic and being a legacy entity that is a drag economically and socially.

Some clear implications to be critiqued involve: the recognition of the central role the state plays, both directly and indirectly, to the creation of wealth via enterprise development (Mazzucato, 2013); the recognition within Schumpeterian theory (1942) on the destructive nature of capitalism’s inherent drive towards efficiency and its implications for real, long-range creative investment; analysis of the Schumpeterian view that the tendency towards capitalist market efficiency could mean the disappearance of the all important ‘entrepreneur’ – a luxury that certainly would not be afforded by many contemporary managerialist and financialist approaches to business. This is especailly pertinent in the continuing context of climate change about which Bill Gates recently commented (Bennet, 2015), calling for the state’s investment in this area to ensure it continues to happen; and to lend some direction to the disparate interests of private enterprise in the development of relevant new technologies to counter what he termed the ineptitude of the private sector in this regard. This paper calls for an economic plurality (Garnett et al, 2009) to help to redress that imbalance; and will also suggest ways in which a more balanced ethic for the portrayal of the enterprise policies from competing political perspectives can be achieved.

References

Baker, P. (2006), Using corpora in discourse analysis. London, UK: Continuum.

Baker,P.,Gabrielatos, C.,Khosravinik,M.,Kryzanowski,M.,McEnery, T.,& Wodak,R. (2008), A
useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics
to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society,
19(3): 273–306.
Bennet, J. (2015), “We Need an Energy Miracle: Bill Gates has committed his fortune to moving the world beyond fossil fuels and mitigating climate”, The Atlantic, November.
Carvalho, A. (2008), “Media(ted) Discourse & Society”, Journalism Studies, 9 (2), Pp. 161-177

Garnett, R. Olsen, E.K. & Starr, M. (2009), Economic Pluralism, Oxford: Routledge.

Irish Government News Service (2011), “New SME loan scheme can create thousands of new jobs over the coming years”, Available at: http://www.merrionstreet.ie/en/Category-Index/Economy/Enterprise/new-sme-loan-scheme-can-create-thousands-of-new-jobs-over-coming-years-bruton.html Accessed: 14 Feb, 2016.

Mazzucato, M. (2011), The Entrepreneurial State, London: Demos.

Mazzucato, M. (2013), The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, London: Anthem Books.

Schumpeter, J. (1942), Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy, 5th Ed., London: Allen & Unwin (1976).

Wodak, R. 2007. What is CDA all about? IN: Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds.) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, pp.1-13.

Critical Discourse Analysis, Corpus Analysis, Media, Enterprise Policy [ view full abstract ]

Critical Discourse Analysis, Corpus Analysis, Media, Enterprise Policy