Conflicting Political Projects in the Debate over the 2012 Labour Market Reform

Abstract

The actor-process analysis of this chapter focuses on the debate over the 2012 labour market reform in order to reconstruct and analyse its peculiar constellation of conflicting or reciprocally reinforcing political projects of reform. To this end, it proceeds in three steps. First, the government’s political project of reform is reconstructed by means of a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of practical argumentation focused on the position of Minister Fornero. Second, Fornero’s reform strategy is evaluated by means of a CDA critical questioning in which the Minister’s position is assessed by reference to the arguments advanced by all other observed actors. Third, the variety of positions emerged in Fornero’s argument evaluation is disentangled by systematically reconstructing and analysing the resulting constellation of political projects of reform.