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Examination of the Discourse

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Examination of the Discourse The use of neo-liberal discourse in communicating Ireland's economic crisis Dr. Brendan K O’ROURKE, Director, Business, Society and Sustainability Research Centre, College of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology, Aungier St., Dublin 2, IRELAND Tel. +353-1-4027097 Email [email protected] Brendan K. O’Rourke, Ph.D. Brendan works at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), where he focuses on learning in the area of discourses of the economy. His academic publications include articles on interview methodology, owner-managed firms and on the nature of economics expertise. Brendan has supervised work across a range of research in issues such as volunteering organisations, interdisciplinary creativity and the circulation of business discourses. He is currently a director of the Business, Society and Sustainability DIT research centre and is also the co-founder of the Discourse Analysis Group (DAG) within DIT. Dr. John HOGAN Lecturer in Irish Politics and International Political Economy, College of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology, Aungier St., Dublin 2, IRELAND Email: [email protected] Website: www.johnhogan.net John Hogan, Ph.D., is a lecturer in Irish politics and international political economy in the DIT. He has written extensively on policy change at times of economic crisis and global lobbying regulations. He is a director of the DIT Business, Society and Sustainability research centre. Keywords: Enterprise discourse, banking crisis, Ireland, Minister for Finance Abstract We examine how the discourse in three radio interviews with the Irish Minister for Finance constructed Irish state support, including a banking guarantee, to private sector banks in Ireland between 2008 and 2010. These interviews provide insights in to the kind of enterprise discourse that was then prevalent in Ireland. Enterprise discourse is built upon the belief in market outcomes, yet it is precisely the workings of the market mechanism that the state prevented from happening in this incidence. The interviews thus provide a stark example of the enterprise discourse under strain within the context of a financial crisis that threatened the Irish economy. The analysis focuses on two features in the Minister’s use of enterprise discourse: His challenge to the legitimacy of interviewers’ questions and the work done by the Minister in maintaining a separation between the concerns of market and state. The analysis shows the enterprise discourse under strain but persistent. Guaranteeing Failure: Enterprise Discourse in the Irish Economic Crisis Introduction Using a discourse analysis approach we examine how the granting of a state guarantee and other subsidies to private banking institutions was constructed – using enterprise discourse - in three interviews with the Irish Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, Jnr.1 The three interviews were with the state broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The granting of this state guarantee was a singular event in the history of Irish political economy, the full consequences of which Irish and Europe governments are still struggling to come to terms with. The guarantee has meant that what were the private debts of commercial banking institutions have become Irish sovereign debts. The result has been that the Irish national debt, previously one of the smallest in the EU, suddenly became one of the largest. This will have serious consequences for Irish society, as the burden of repaying these previously private debts now rests on the shoulders of every Irish resident. As such, the ramification of this guarantee will be felt in the form of increasing taxes and diminishing public services, as most of these tax increases will be required to manage the interest and principle on this massive new debt burden. We begin with a brief overview of enterprise discourse and its analysis. We argue that the use of enterprise discourse has been prevalent in Irish political economy since the mid-1980s, and as such, an understanding of this discourse provides an insight into what came to be referred to as the Celtic Tiger. In the next section we provide a broader context for the interviews with the Minister for Finance by reviewing some of the most pertinent developments in the Irish political economy over the past two decades. Thereafter, we proceed to the detailed analysis of the three interviews with the Minister for Finance on the influential Irish radio show Morning Ireland. In that analysis we focus upon what we call the “challenging questions” of the interview and on the work done by the Minister in arguing that market issues are separate from political issues. By “challenging questions” we mean not only the hard questions raised by the interviewers, but also the manner in which the Minister challenges the legitimacy of those questions. The construction, or reconstruction, by the Minister of a separation of politics from the market, while a common feature of enterprise discourse, required much work in the context of these particular interactions. The conclusion highlights the findings and significance of the paper. Analysing Enterprise Discourse A proper analysis of the governing of the economy in liberal democracies, where citizens are not regularly subject to the explicit coercion of the state, requires “that policy should be located within a wider discursive field in which conceptions of the proper ends and means of government are articulated” (Miller and Rose 1990: 5). A way of talking about the economy, that dominates the discursive field, will allow policy to be operated at a distance. This will be done because the dominant discourse means that notions of what the economy is, and what policies are considered possible, are constituted and contained by that discourse. Enterprise discourse has been the dominant way of talking about economies since the collapse of the Keynesian consensus in the 1970s (Carr 1998; Du Gay and Salaman 1992; Fairclough 1991). A key part of that discourse is the belief in the rightness of market outcomes. The global economic crisis that began in 2008 has put that belief in the market under strain, as states stepped in to subsidise commercial firms, especially banks, in a most explicit way. It is therefore a crisis that puts the logic of enterprise discourse under strain. Ireland, in particular, is a place where enterprise discourse is at the cutting 1 Brian Lenihan, Jnr. was Minister for Finance between 2008 and 2011. edge (O’Rourke 2010). The country was heralded as a triumph of the market during its Celtic Tiger boom (e.g. Powell 2003), was a state where neo-liberal discourse dominated (Phelan 2007) and yet is portrayed as a disaster for neo-liberal policies in the bust (e.g. Krugman 2010). All this makes the discourses of the economic crisis in Ireland of wide concern. There are a variety of approaches that can be adopted in analysing discourse (Wetherell et al. 2001; Wodak and Meyer 2009). The method used here is one informed by the approaches of Potter and Wetherell (1987) and Fairclough (2010). Despite ontological differences, these approaches share an orientation to the text that allows analysis to draw lessons from conversation analysis and linguistic approaches while not ignoring insights into the more macro context in which the interaction is situated. The next section provides a description of the context in which this analysis takes places. The Economic and Political Context of the Interviews Twenty years of economic expansion came to a jarring halt in the late 2000s as the economy plunged into recession (Timoney 2010). Between 1988 and 2007 the Irish economy expanded at an average of 6 percent per annum (IMF 2010a), transforming the country from one of the poorest in the European Union (EU) to one of the richest (see Figure 1). The creation of almost one million new jobs effectively doubled the workforce (ILO 2010). Traditional emigration was ended and workers came to Ireland from all over the world (O’Hagan and McIndoe 2008: 112). Unemployment declined from 17 percent in 1986 to just over 4 percent throughout the 2000s (IMF 2010b). This prosperity, with its associated deregulation, low tax rates and open economy was pointed to by neo-liberals as an example to be emulated (e.g. Powell 2003). Figure 1: GDP growth (%); GDP per capita growth (%); Unemployment (%); Inflation (%) Source: Government Indicators Database (http://www.iadb.org/datagob/) This phenomenal performance was regarded as sustainable by most economists until around 2000 (Timoney 2010). As Figure 2 shows, exports, economic openness and inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stock began declining after 2000 and Ireland’s still impressive growth was seen as becoming much more fragile. In this context, economic activity became increasingly dependent upon the construction industry, especially for residential purposes, with residential investment coming to account for 13 per cent of GDP in 2006, double its historical level (Ahearne 2010). Many economists warned of a property bubble and the unsustainable level of house building (Barrett et al. 2005; Duffy 2002; FitzPatrick and McQuinn 2004; Kelly 2007). Figure 2: Debt/GDP (%); Inward FDI stock/GDP (%); Economic Openness (%) Source: Government Indicators Database (http://www.iadb.org/datagob/) At the centre of the Celtic Tiger were the Irish banks. Though initial house price inflation was driven by other factors, from 2003, at latest, banks began adding fuel to the fire with 100 per cent mortgages, large loan to value ratios together
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