Towards an Understanding of the Dynamics of Moral Argument in Politics

Abstract

In the preceding chapters, we considered each of the three aspects of the ‘context of justification’: the ‘context of ideology’, the ‘context of argumentation’ and the ‘context of hegemonic competition’. The present chapter brings these elements together, and in the first section I develop this account of the process of justification into a three-stage theoretical framework, which will guide the examination of the case of New Labour in Part II of the book. For analytical purposes, the framework reconstructs this process as one in which argumentative strategies are chosen, adapted and utilized in the light of the three contextual factors identified above. The framework suggests the use of qualitative research methods, and in the second section I outline the main features of this approach and examine its implications for the analysis of my chosen case study.