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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 16:3 (2017) ► pp.388–411

Speeding up or reaching out?

Efficiency and unmet need as policy priorities in Wales

ORCID logo | Sheffield Hallam University
ORCID logo | Northumbria University
ORCID logo | University of California Los Angeles
ORCID logo | Swansea University
ORCID logo | Cardiff University

The Welsh Assembly, a devolved legislature in the UK, and its executive the Welsh Government, have a distinctly intensive commitment to equality – emphasising universality with weighty obligations on public services. This article uses the ‘discourse-historical approach’ (DHA) to critically review an eleven-year social service reform strategy (produced in 2007), and to weigh up its emphasis on fiscal efficiency and universal equality. We refer to these competing priorities as ‘speeding up’ and ‘reaching out’, respectively. Our findings show an imbalance towards the former, largely sidelining the possible value of services to those currently under-served. The article discusses this mismatch in respect of the dominant policymaking framework of ‘New Public Management’ and its emphases on productivity, efficiency, and quantifiable accountability. We also show the value of DHA in analysing ‘fights for dominance’ – in this case between competing discourses within a flagship policy document.

Keywords: Discourse-historical approach, social exclusion, social policy, social services, Wales, Welsh Government
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Findings and discussion
    • Focusing on existing user groups vs. finding new ones
    • References to familiar vs. unfamiliar social groupings
    • Efficiency as an inherent good vs. the value of time-redundancy and flexibility
  • 4.Working together to reduce harm
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 25 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.15005.say
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