Postmodern Policy Analysis: Discourse and Identity in Welfare Policy
Author(s)
Schram, Sanford F.
Abstract
Postmodern inquiry into the discursive construction of identity has the potential to make a distinctive, democratizing contribution to public policy analysis. More so than conventional approaches, a postmodern policy analysis offers the opportunity to interrogate assumptions about identity embedded in the analysis and making of public policy, thereby enabling the questionable distinctions that privilege some identities at the expense of others to be rethought and resisted. Public policy analysis can benefit from postmodernism’s emphasis on how discourse constructs identity. Postmodernism and postmodern approaches to interrogating identity are reviewed, followed by an exercise in postmodern policy analysis. Social welfare policy in contemporary postindustrial America is shown to participate in the construction and maintenance of identity in ways that affect not just the allocation of public benefits, but also economic opportunities outside of the state. Mired in old, invidious distinctions, welfare policy discourse today helps to recreate the problems of yesterday.
