The Dislocatory Moment and Means for the Clarification of Identity and Meaning in Policy Regimes

This chapter establishes means for clarifying the structure of policy regimes and their provision of meaning and identity. It argues that understanding ‘policy change’ is about comprehending a policy regime’s structure of being in the world: how the regime achieved hegemony; how it dissolved and disappeared. The purpose of the chapter is to establish the analytical means through which the book operationalizes its commitment to an ontology of lack or absence. Following the work of Glynos and Howarth (Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. London: Routledge, 2007), Laclau and Mouffe (Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso, 1985), and Laclau (On Populist Reason. London: Verso, 2005), and indebted to other theorists like Stavrakakis (Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge, 1999), Torfing (New Theories of Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), Zizek (The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 2019), it surmises a catalogue of objects/concepts appropriate under its ontological commitment and within which we can inscribe individual case studies of policy change.