Contesting Narratives in Politics

• Date: 01 September 2013
• Author: Michael W. Spicer
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12106
• Published date: 01 September 2013

768 Public Administration Review • September | October 2013

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 73, Iss. 5, pp. 768–771. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12106.

Michael W. Spicer is professor

of public administration and urban

affairs in the Levin College of Urban

Affairs at Cleveland State University.

His publications include In Defense

of Politics in Public Administration

(University of Alabama Press, 2010),

Public Administration and the State

(University of Alabama Press, 2001), and

The Founders, the Constitution, and

Public Administration (Georgetown

University Press, 1995). His current research

is on the different meanings of freedom

and the implications of these for public

administration.

E-mail: m.spicer@csuohio.edu

there is both a “criminal narrative” and a “disease nar-

rative” of‌f ered and that these two narratives make very

dif‌f erent uses of the “drug addict” ideograph. As he

observes, whereas in “the criminal narrative the drug

addict deserves punishment … in the disease narrative

the drug addict needs health care” (49).

Viewed from Miller’s ideographic perspective, politics

should be seen as a contest, not primarily between

individuals or groups but between dif‌f erent ide-

ographs and the narratives or storylines that make

use of them—a contest to capture meaning within

political discourse and thereby to provide some sort

of perceived legitimacy in our minds for proposed

policy actions. As Miller demonstrates in his detailed

examination of political discourse in drug policy as

well as environmental policy, politics here becomes

an “attempt to displace one ideograph with another”

(93), an ongoing contest to “advance one narrative or

another, thus warranting public action” (2). As Miller

argues, when we view politics in this fashion, we can

see that

One is not merely arguing with these “same

people” over some contentious matter: rather,

one narrative is in contest with another nar-

rative. By displacing the individual or some

aggregations of individuals (group, population)

as unit of analysis, symbolic units such as signs,

ideographs, and narratives reorient attention to

the struggle over meaning capture and the stra-

tegic arranging of ideographic images, values,

arguments, and so on. (49)

More specif‌i cally, for Miller, politics should be seen

as an ongoing struggle between habit and change,

between those ideographs and narratives that have

become entrenched and habitual in their use—or

habitus, as he terms them, drawing in part on Pierre

Bourdieu (1977)—and other ideographs and narra-

tives that seek to displace them. As Miller sees it, the

“aim of politics is to challenge status quo practices

and institutions” or, alternatively, “from the status quo

Hugh T. Miller, Governing Narratives: Symbolic

Politics and Policy Change (Tuscaloosa: University

of Alabama Press, 2012). 145 pp. $34.95 (cloth),

ISBN: 9780817317737.

Hugh Miller is one of the most original and

provocative theorists in the f‌i eld of public

policy and administration. His new book,

Governing Narratives: Symbolic Politics and Policy

Change, seeks to change in signif‌i cant ways how we

think and talk about public policy.  e book’s basic

thesis and contribution to the f‌i eld is that we need to

think about public policy not so much in terms of the

various policy actors or institutions who are engaged

in it, but rather in terms of the language—that is, the

words, sentences, and stories—used to inf‌l uence pol-

icy outcomes, along with all of the symbols, images,

and connotations that this language evokes. At a time

when there is much discussion about the quality of

public discourse, this book can help us understand

how our ever-changing political language shapes the

way we come to look at—and, often, act on—public

policy issues.

Ideographs, Narratives, and Politics

In looking at the language of public policy, a central

idea for Miller is what he terms an ideograph. An ide-

ograph, for Miller, is something that is evoked within

the mind, not just cognitively but also af‌f ectively and

emotionally, when a particular word or a phrase is

used in political discourse, a word or a phrase such

as “acid rain, drug lord, f‌l ood of immigrants, partial

birth abortions, no child left behind” (91). An ide-

ograph is, to use Miller’s own words, “symbolic mate-

rial that brings into view a constellation of images,

emotions, values, understanding, connotations, and

facts” (3). It is a collection of ideas, mental constructs,

or signs that shape how we see the world.  ese

ideographs acquire meaning and inf‌l uence in public

policy as they are incorporated into dif‌f erent policy

narratives or storylines that are advanced in public

policy discourse and then acted on. Miller notes here,

for example, how in public discourse over drug policy,

Contesting Narratives in Politics

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Michael W. Spicer

Cleveland State University