Alan Finlayson
Biographic Data
| ID | 227244 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan Finlayson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Finlayson |
| SIGNATURE | FINLAYSON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of East Anglia |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3939-349X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 687 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Supplementing the tropes: Poststructuralist discourse theory and rhetorical political analysis
This article explores the articulation of poststructuralist Discourse Theory (DT) with Rhetorical Political Analysis (RPA). Critical of the ways in which Ernesto Laclau’s ‘rhetorical turn’ reduces rhetoric to the tropes, and to catachresis in particular, I argue that tropes involve more than naming and that they must be understood and analysed as parts of larger argumentative propositions. Supportive of the general approach of DT I outline two rh…
Playing with the News on Reddit: The Politics Game on r/The_Donald
Research into online forms of far-right, alt-right, populist, and supremacist politics has raised questions about the extent to which social media enables or constitutes extremist affects and ideologies. Building on this research and through a case study of how a pro-Trump community on Reddit made sense of news events and sought to contest their representation, this paper explores the relationship between games and politics, arguing that digital …
This is Not a Critique: Reactionary Digital Politics in the Age of Ideological Entrepreneurship
On digital platforms a distinct form of reactionary politics has gathered, intensifying and focusing its political arguments. Composed of diverse strands of political ideology it is unified by opposition to any and all forms of politics concerned with claims for equality. Key avatars of this politics are ‘ideological entrepreneurs’, individuals untethered from modern political institutions and engaged in the business of manufacturing criticism no…
Covid-19 and ‘the public: U.K. government, discourse and the British Political Tradition
This article presents an original analysis of the UK government’s discursive response to COVID-19 across the first six months of the pandemic. Two arguments are made. First, representations of the state/people relationship were vital to the state’s storying and selling of its response to this crisis. And, second, despite populist-style inflections, the state/people relationship was typically constructed around a ‘government knows best’ claim asso…
The Labour Party: Nation not class
YouTube and Political Ideologies: Technology, Populism and Rhetorical Form
Digital (participatory and shareable) media are driving profound changes to contemporary politics. That includes, this article argues, important changes to the production, dissemination and reception of political ideas and ideologies. Such media have increased the number and political range of ‘ideological entrepreneurs’ promoting forms of political thought, while also giving rise to distinct genres of political rhetoric and communication. All of…
The Trap of Tracking: Digital Methods, Surveillance, and the Far Right
Neoliberalism, the Alt-Right and the Intellectual Dark Web
Drawing on research from digital media studies, political theory and rhetoric, this article explores online radical conservative and reactionary 'ideological entrepreneurs'. It argues that online media are uniting an 'ideological family' around concepts of natural inequality and hostility to those who deny them. Placing this phenomenon in context, the article shows how online culture reinvigorates well-established discourses of opposition to bure…
The Metaphysics of Brexit
In this article, I consider Brexit as the expression of a more general ideology – Brexitism – which I explore through commentary upon a series of quotations drawn from speeches, newspapers, propaganda material and social media. This method is appropriate because Brexitism is itself a kind of quotation – a repetition of half-remembered actual and fictional past political gestures – which allude to something deeper. Exploring fragments which illust…
Rethinking Political Communication
Rethinking Political Communication'Content', is hardly something contemporary political culture could be said to lack.Political news, opinion and disputation fill newspapers and broadcast media.Platforms such as Facebook, Medium, Reddit, Twitter, Podcasts and You Tube have given rise not only to new kinds of political participation, participants and audiences but also to new genres of political argument and expression.The last decade has therefor…
What Is the Point of Parliamentary Debate?” Deliberation, Oratory, Opposition and Spectacle in the British House of Commons
This article seeks to open up debate about Parliamentary debate by exploring the history of ideas about Parliamentary debate and rhetoric through the lens of four core concepts: deliberation, oratory, opposition and spectacle. These are not the names of singular ideas let alone schools of thought; they are conceptual fields each of which gives a particular shape to ways of conceiving, criticizing and defending Commons debate. In mapping this topo…
Interpretation and Social Explanation
In this article I focus on those aspects of Keith Dowding’s book that are most concerned with interpretive approaches to the study of politics. I argue that, in ways not adequately captured by Dowding’s descriptions, the historical study of political concepts tells us something about their historical political effects and for this reason has a distinct value for how we think about and study politics. Furthermore, I argue, concepts of and about po…
Reconstituting Realism: Feasibility, Utopia and Epistemological Imperfection
‘As Shakespeare so Memorably Said…’: Quotation, Rhetoric, and the Performance of Politics
This article examines the use of quotation in British political rhetoric since 1945. It argues that quotations are not only a source of authority, but a way of claiming authorisation. The article also shows how, through quotations, party leaders try to establish connections between themselves and the common cultural resources of their audience, and how they attempt to show fidelity to a tradition even as they try to redirect it. The conclusion is…
Proving, Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British Politics
Expressions of disaffection with politics are often connected with criticism of the ways in which contemporary politicians speak and communicate. In this article I show how political speech is in part a product of the way in which a society organises and arranges communication institutionally, technologically and aesthetically. The art of rhetoric is most fundamentally concerned with how, in the midst of political dispute and contestation, politi…
Humanism from an agonistic perspective: Themes from the work of Bonnie Honig
From Neoliberalism to Pluralism: A Response to Mulheirn and Jacobs
This essay puts into context the debate between Michael Jacobs and Ian Mulheirn, exploring the theories and themes underpinning their arguments, published in issue 84 1 of the Political Quarterly . It discusses, firstly, the roots of Mulheirn's approach in European neoliberalism and, secondly, the roots of Jacobs' approach in a range of sources currently contending for authority over debates within the Labour party. These include themes drawn, br…
Symposium on Isabela Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students (London: Routledge, 2012)
Critique and Political Argumentation
If political philosophy begins with Plato then it begins with anxiety over linguistic ambiguity – with an attempt to establish fixed definitions of words and to assign the right of rule to those best able to contain and order meaning. In the present day philosophers and social scientists remain deeply interested in language – but where Plato wanted to regulate the form and content of stories, substitute private dialogue for public speech and ban …
A 40-Year-Old Black Man Made the Point to Me: Everyday Knowledge and the Performance of Leadership in Contemporary British Politics
In this article we demonstrate the application of rhetorical political analysis in the study of political communication and political ideas and ideologies. Taking the rhetorical use of anecdotes as a case study, we find that their use by mainstream party leaders in Britain has proliferated markedly since the mid-1990s. Drawing on examples from speeches by leaders of all three main parties, we show how these stories are employed as a form of argum…
From Blue to Green and Everything in Between: Ideational Change and Left Political Economy after New Labour
This article argues that ideational and institutionalist approaches to the study of policy continuity and change should be complemented by research into political ideologies, and with exploration of an ‘intermediate’ public sphere in which there is extensive intra-ideological dispute. Exploring contemporary left-wing debate about political economy in Britain it is shown that ideational change takes place in the context of disputes rooted in ideol…
Rhetoric and the Political Theory of Ideologies
The political theory of ideologies proposes a distinct way of conceiving of and analysing political thought, especially as it appears ‘in the wild’. Exploring the claim that there is a form or mode of thinking specific and proper to politics, and that it is the concern of the political theory of ideology, the article examines two of the leading contemporary approaches in this field: the morphological analysis of Michael Freeden and the discourse …
Cameron, Culture and the Creative Class: The Big Society and the Post‐Bureaucratic Age
What will yours grow into?’ Governmentality, governance, social science and the Child Trust Fund
This article demonstrates a governmentality approach to policy, taking as an example the Child Trust Fund devised and implemented by the New Labour government in the United Kingdom (UK). I argue that in making sense of such a policy we should, as interpretive theories of governance tell us, pay attention to the ideas and beliefs that shaped it and to the longer genealogy that made those ideas possible. In addition, I argue, it is important to stu…
Fictions of Sovereignty: Shakespeare, Theatre and the Representation of Rule
Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II includes a number of scenes representing the Kent rebellion of 1450, led by Jack Cade. In these, we argue, Shakespeare explores the ways in which claims to legitimate rule are often secured through performances of word, deed and gesture. We examine some of the concerns about drama expressed by political theorists alongside some of the techniques of political dramatists, and argue that a reason for the often tense r…
From Beliefs to Arguments: Interpretive Methodology and Rhetorical Political Analysis
This article examines the development of methods of political analysis concerned with ideas, beliefs and meanings and argues that these need to be supplemented by an approach attuned to the specific nature of political action. It argues that since politics involves the contest of ideas, beliefs and meanings, analysis should focus on arguments. Considering methods for the study of political arguments the article argues for a re-examination of the …
Financialisation, Financial Literacy and Asset-Based Welfare
This article examines New Labour's policies of asset-based welfare in the broader context of financialisation. It argues that these are indicative of a mode of government concerned to alter individual outlooks and aspirations, and that asset-based welfare, as developed by New Labour, is primarily a strategy for enhancing financial literacy. Exploring and identifying the general contours of New Labour's reform of welfare provision (particularly th…
Rhetoric and the Political Theory of Ideologies
The political theory of ideologies proposes a distinct way of conceiving of and analysing political thought, especially as it appears ‘in the wild’. Exploring the claim that there is a form or mode of thinking specific and proper to politics, and that it is the concern of the political theory of ideology, the article examines two of the leading contemporary approaches in this field: the morphological analysis of Michael Freeden and the discourse …
Political science, political ideas and rhetoric
The article reviews ‘ideational’ analysis and theory in political science. It argues that this is an important area of research limited by lack of a clear sense of what ideas in politics are and of how to analyse them as directly as possible. It is argued that political science should learn from the ‘rhetorical turn’ in various areas of the social sciences, developing ways, appropriate to political science, of analysing the language, rhetoric and…
Neoliberalism, the Alt-Right and the Intellectual Dark Web
Drawing on research from digital media studies, political theory and rhetoric, this article explores online radical conservative and reactionary 'ideological entrepreneurs'. It argues that online media are uniting an 'ideological family' around concepts of natural inequality and hostility to those who deny them. Placing this phenomenon in context, the article shows how online culture reinvigorates well-established discourses of opposition to bure…
YouTube and Political Ideologies: Technology, Populism and Rhetorical Form
Digital (participatory and shareable) media are driving profound changes to contemporary politics. That includes, this article argues, important changes to the production, dissemination and reception of political ideas and ideologies. Such media have increased the number and political range of ‘ideological entrepreneurs’ promoting forms of political thought, while also giving rise to distinct genres of political rhetoric and communication. All of…
A 40-Year-Old Black Man Made the Point to Me: Everyday Knowledge and the Performance of Leadership in Contemporary British Politics
In this article we demonstrate the application of rhetorical political analysis in the study of political communication and political ideas and ideologies. Taking the rhetorical use of anecdotes as a case study, we find that their use by mainstream party leaders in Britain has proliferated markedly since the mid-1990s. Drawing on examples from speeches by leaders of all three main parties, we show how these stories are employed as a form of argum…
The Interpretive Approach in Political Science: A Symposium
One might perhaps expect to find interpretive methodology occupying a strong and secure place in British political science. With its origins in philosophy and history (see Kavanagh 2003) British political studies never fully or exclusively embraced behaviourism or subsequent positivist methodologies. Interpretivism represents the major alternative for social science in which, as Weber declared, ‘we are concerned with mental phenomena the empathic…
Ideology, discourse and nationalism
This article argues against general or unitary theories of nations and nationalism, stressing instead the irreducible specificity of the national phenomena. It is argued that individual nationalisms always contain a very particular ‘content’ that aims to define the general culture and values of the ‘national’ people and which, in turn, is related to the construction and deployment of such values within political ideological discourse. The signifi…
Third Way Theory
Characterizing New Labour: The Case of the Child Trust Fund
The UK Child Trust Fund (CTF), which came into effect in January 2005, appears to be an exemplary instance of ‘asset‐based welfare’, of the redistribution of wealth rather than simply income. However, this article shows that over the course of its development, and in its final implementation, CTF policy became ever more focused on generating a ‘savings culture’ and enhancing financial literacy. In explaining this outcome, it is argued that it may…
Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Theories of Nationalism
This article reviews some psychological and psychoanalytic social theories to see what they have to offer in terms of an understanding of nations and nationalism. Three approaches are reviewed in turn: discursive psychology, the psychoanalytic work of Theodor Adomo and the Lacanianism of Slavoj Zizek. In critically analysing and drawing on these varied perspectives it is argued that we need to develop a theory of nationalism that focuses on the p…
Proving, Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British Politics
Expressions of disaffection with politics are often connected with criticism of the ways in which contemporary politicians speak and communicate. In this article I show how political speech is in part a product of the way in which a society organises and arranges communication institutionally, technologically and aesthetically. The art of rhetoric is most fundamentally concerned with how, in the midst of political dispute and contestation, politi…
What’s the Problem?’: Political Theory, Rhetoric and Problem‐Setting
This essay argues that political theorists interested in analysing, understanding or evaluating political problems in the ‘real world’ should consider the ways in which such problems are specified through a rhetorical process of definition. It discusses, in general terms, the relationship of rhetoric to political theory and examines in some detail the way in which different writers, developing applications of political theory to Northern Ireland,…
Loyalist Political Identity After the Peace
This article looks at the ways in which conceptions of Loyalist identity have been affected by the current political conjuncture in Northern Ireland. It argues that claims about cultural and political group identity are central to Loyalist political discourses and that the way in which this identity is figured is both variable and limited. Analysing the rhetoric of both the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) …
The Trap of Tracking: Digital Methods, Surveillance, and the Far Right
Elements of the Blairite Image of Leadership
In contemporary media dominated democracies, where national populations are complex and citizens increasingly 'individualised', political leaders must cultivate a personalised image of intimacy and equivalence with their populations. Reviewing the leadership theories of Machiavelli, Marx, Gramsci and Weber, this article argues that such intimacy and equivalence is central to the image of Tony Blair. Election broadcasts and other promotional mater…
The Problem of 'Culture' in Northern Ireland: A Critique of the Cultural Traditions Group
Reconstituting Realism: Feasibility, Utopia and Epistemological Imperfection
Critique and Political Argumentation
If political philosophy begins with Plato then it begins with anxiety over linguistic ambiguity – with an attempt to establish fixed definitions of words and to assign the right of rule to those best able to contain and order meaning. In the present day philosophers and social scientists remain deeply interested in language – but where Plato wanted to regulate the form and content of stories, substitute private dialogue for public speech and ban …
Nationalism as ideological interpellation: The case of Ulster Loyalism
This article aims to explore nationalism, generally, and Ulster Loyalism, specifically, through the use of discourse theory and the Althusserian concept of ideology as interpellation. It suggests that nationalism is best understood as a particular discursive articulation that constructs subjects as being of a particular nation and thereby having certain characteristics and political needs and interests. This entails a larger definition of nationa…
From Blue to Green and Everything in Between: Ideational Change and Left Political Economy after New Labour
This article argues that ideational and institutionalist approaches to the study of policy continuity and change should be complemented by research into political ideologies, and with exploration of an ‘intermediate’ public sphere in which there is extensive intra-ideological dispute. Exploring contemporary left-wing debate about political economy in Britain it is shown that ideational change takes place in the context of disputes rooted in ideol…
The broken society versus the social recession
Covid-19 and ‘the public: U.K. government, discourse and the British Political Tradition
This article presents an original analysis of the UK government’s discursive response to COVID-19 across the first six months of the pandemic. Two arguments are made. First, representations of the state/people relationship were vital to the state’s storying and selling of its response to this crisis. And, second, despite populist-style inflections, the state/people relationship was typically constructed around a ‘government knows best’ claim asso…
Advertising for Peace: The state and political advertising in Northern Ireland, 1988-1998
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Nationalism as ideological interpellation: The case of Ulster Loyalism
This article aims to explore nationalism, generally, and Ulster Loyalism, specifically, through the use of discourse theory and the Althusserian concept of ideology as interpellation. It suggests that nationalism is best understood as a particular discursive articulation that constructs subjects as being of a particular nation and thereby having certain characteristics and political needs and interests. This entails a larger definition of nationa…
The Broadcast Media in Northern Ireland
The Problem of 'Culture' in Northern Ireland: A Critique of the Cultural Traditions Group
Political Studies and Cultural Studies
This article reviews the contribution of the discipline of Cultural Studies to that of Politics. It suggests that the study of popular culture opens up the realm of politics in a way that challenges the traditional boundaries of the discipline. By treating culture as ‘ideology’, Cultural Studies directs attention to the sites in which meaning is produced and contested. This in turn undermines any clear distinction between politics and culture and…
Reconceptualising the political in northern Ireland: A response to Arthur Aughey
Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Theories of Nationalism
This article reviews some psychological and psychoanalytic social theories to see what they have to offer in terms of an understanding of nations and nationalism. Three approaches are reviewed in turn: discursive psychology, the psychoanalytic work of Theodor Adomo and the Lacanianism of Slavoj Zizek. In critically analysing and drawing on these varied perspectives it is argued that we need to develop a theory of nationalism that focuses on the p…
Ideology, discourse and nationalism
This article argues against general or unitary theories of nations and nationalism, stressing instead the irreducible specificity of the national phenomena. It is argued that individual nationalisms always contain a very particular ‘content’ that aims to define the general culture and values of the ‘national’ people and which, in turn, is related to the construction and deployment of such values within political ideological discourse. The signifi…
Third Way Theory
Loyalist Political Identity After the Peace
This article looks at the ways in which conceptions of Loyalist identity have been affected by the current political conjuncture in Northern Ireland. It argues that claims about cultural and political group identity are central to Loyalist political discourses and that the way in which this identity is figured is both variable and limited. Analysing the rhetoric of both the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) …
Advertising for Peace: The state and political advertising in Northern Ireland, 1988-1998
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Philo and Miller's metaphysical media studies
The Problem of the Political Interview
Elements of the Blairite Image of Leadership
In contemporary media dominated democracies, where national populations are complex and citizens increasingly 'individualised', political leaders must cultivate a personalised image of intimacy and equivalence with their populations. Reviewing the leadership theories of Machiavelli, Marx, Gramsci and Weber, this article argues that such intimacy and equivalence is central to the image of Tony Blair. Election broadcasts and other promotional mater…
Poststructuralism, Marxism and Neoliberalism. Between Theory and Politics
The Interpretive Approach in Political Science: A Symposium
One might perhaps expect to find interpretive methodology occupying a strong and secure place in British political science. With its origins in philosophy and history (see Kavanagh 2003) British political studies never fully or exclusively embraced behaviourism or subsequent positivist methodologies. Interpretivism represents the major alternative for social science in which, as Weber declared, ‘we are concerned with mental phenomena the empathic…
Political science, political ideas and rhetoric
The article reviews ‘ideational’ analysis and theory in political science. It argues that this is an important area of research limited by lack of a clear sense of what ideas in politics are and of how to analyse them as directly as possible. It is argued that political science should learn from the ‘rhetorical turn’ in various areas of the social sciences, developing ways, appropriate to political science, of analysing the language, rhetoric and…
New Labour: A Critique
What’s the Problem?’: Political Theory, Rhetoric and Problem‐Setting
This essay argues that political theorists interested in analysing, understanding or evaluating political problems in the ‘real world’ should consider the ways in which such problems are specified through a rhetorical process of definition. It discusses, in general terms, the relationship of rhetoric to political theory and examines in some detail the way in which different writers, developing applications of political theory to Northern Ireland,…
From Beliefs to Arguments: Interpretive Methodology and Rhetorical Political Analysis
This article examines the development of methods of political analysis concerned with ideas, beliefs and meanings and argues that these need to be supplemented by an approach attuned to the specific nature of political action. It argues that since politics involves the contest of ideas, beliefs and meanings, analysis should focus on arguments. Considering methods for the study of political arguments the article argues for a re-examination of the …
Characterizing New Labour: The Case of the Child Trust Fund
The UK Child Trust Fund (CTF), which came into effect in January 2005, appears to be an exemplary instance of ‘asset‐based welfare’, of the redistribution of wealth rather than simply income. However, this article shows that over the course of its development, and in its final implementation, CTF policy became ever more focused on generating a ‘savings culture’ and enhancing financial literacy. In explaining this outcome, it is argued that it may…
Becoming Plural: The Political Thought of William E. Connolly” May 11-12, 2007
‘It Ain’t What You Say…’: British Political Studies and the Analysis of Speech and Rhetoric
Democracy and Pluralism: The political thought of William E. Connolly
Introduction: Becoming Plural Alan Finlayson 1. Pluralizing Methods: Contingency, Ethics, and Critical Explanation David Howarth 2. Ethos and Late-Modern Democracy Stephen White 3. Connolly, Embodiment, Conversion, and Mysticism: Learning to Be Present in the Present Thomas Dumm 4. Bill Connolly's Others: Erotics and Cinematics Michael Shapiro 5. Interpretation, Political Theory, and the Hegemony of Normative Theorizing Sophia Mihic 6. Hate, Loat…
Planning People: The Ideology and Rationality of New Labour
This article discusses ways of understanding the ideology of New Labour, and argues that it would be better to explicate its ‘rationality’: the conceptual tools and frameworks that are employed in government thinking. It shows that this rationality is primarily concerned with ‘modernizing’ the state, the economy and people, all of which must be enabled to act in ways imagined to be appropriate for the new ‘knowledge economy’. The article then con…
Financialisation, Financial Literacy and Asset-Based Welfare
This article examines New Labour's policies of asset-based welfare in the broader context of financialisation. It argues that these are indicative of a mode of government concerned to alter individual outlooks and aspirations, and that asset-based welfare, as developed by New Labour, is primarily a strategy for enhancing financial literacy. Exploring and identifying the general contours of New Labour's reform of welfare provision (particularly th…
Political science (47 works) · Politics (45 works) · Sociology (45 works) · Law (41 works) · Law (40 works) · Philosophy (26 works) · Philosophy (25 works) · Epistemology (20 works) · Political and Economic history of UK and US (19 works) · Ideology (15 works)