‘There's something about sustainability’: The discursive dynamics of policy reform
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Susan Ainsworth |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12706 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
‘There's something about sustainability’: The
discursive dynamics of policy reform
Susan Ainsworth
Department of Management and Marketing,
University of Melbourne, Australia
Correspondence
Susan Ainsworth, Department of
Management and Marketing, University of
Melbourne, 198 Berkeley Street, Parkville,
Melbourne, 3010 Victoria, Australia.
Email: susanaa@unimelb.edu.au
Abstract
Sustainability is now among the hegemonic discourses used
by government to construct problems and policy beyond
the environmental domain. Detached from its origins, it
functions as an ‘empty signifier’whose flexibility and ambi-
guity can be harnessed in policy-making and political
debate. This article uses an Australian case study to show
how sustainability discourse was mobilized to justify revers-
ing a previous decision and raise the age at which the pub-
licly funded aged pension could be accessed. Overall, it
contributes to understanding how hegemonic intervention
is accomplished by tracing discursive processes over time
and amongst different texts, helping to identify shifts and
turning points in trajectories of policy reform and political
debate. I conclude by arguing that the use of sustainability
discourse warrants particular critical attention because it
signals broader difficulties in imagining alternative collective
futures and considering the costs and consequences arising
from current arrangements.
1|INTRODUCTION
Language and struggles over meaning are central to politics, policy-making and its implementation (Taylor 2004;
Yanow 2007; Howarth 2009; Fairclough 2013). With the rise of increasingly sophisticated and tightly managed polit-
ical communication, understanding the processes by which certain discourses achieve dominance and the uses to
which they are put are more important than ever. This article traces how a particular discourse—sustainability—was
used in the area of pension reform to rhetorically redescribe and justify a reform that had been rejected outright by
both major political parties in Australia—raising the pensionable age in Australia in 2009 from 65 to 67 years.
Originally a discourse of the environment, ‘sustainability’has become so widespread that Cox and Béland (2013,
p. 307) assert that it constitutes a new ‘policy paradigm’the prominence of which will rise over the coming decades.
Received: 17 September 2019 Revised: 8 October 2020 Accepted: 11 October 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12706
Public Admin. 2021;99:775–788. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 775
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