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"Tunney, Sean"
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Motions in Pictures: From Habermas’s Informal Political Sphere to Formal Politics in the Films Footloose, Land and Freedom and The Beguiled
This article analyses three historical fiction films, Footloose, Land and Freedom and The Beguiled, to help illuminate aspects of politics and political theory. We study them to explore the relationship between Habermas’s concepts of the lifeworld and political spheres, which analysts have critiqued as opaque. Drawing on Habermas’s theory of communicative action, we debate prevailing understandings of the implications of his work for deliberative democracy via an exploration of the films. By expanding the definition of the term ‘motion’ (otherwise known as ‘draft resolution’), we relate this concept to these Habermasian themes. Thus, this paper analyses feature film case studies as they incorporate motions into fictionalised accounts. We suggest that focusing on these movies’ motions, embedded in unfolding narratives, can help reconceive Habermas’s work to illustrate fluidity in how people and ideas may move between informal and more formal spheres. Ultimately, by showcasing the importance of motions in political participation, via these movies, we advance the idea that motions may be seen as part of a ladder of involvement, providing further opportunities for encouraging participation.
Journal Article
UK public opinion on reasons to oppose healthcare privatisation: a failure of neoliberal persuasion and discursive politicisation
Opinion surveys have consistently shown that the British public does not support National Health Service (NHS) privatisation, but we know less about why this is. Studies in this area have been limited, despite the importance of the topic for healthcare, its associated workforces, public health, inequalities, (de)politicisation and democracy. We analyse the first open-ended representative survey of UK citizens’ motivations for opposing privatisation. Public opinion is contrasted with previous academic assumptions—supported by quasi-market theory—that opposition to privatisation is overwhelmingly concerned with services being free at the point of delivery. Instead, we find the largest single reason for dissent is the extraction of profits. Drawing on political governance perspectives, which advocate a wider scope of actors be included in such analyses, we consider public sphere institutions that previous studies have neglected. Thus, we examine our evidence in relation to patient representatives and health think-tank policies. Furthermore, we assess trade unions’ political communications strategies and their ‘public service approach’, in the light of our results. Our findings raise significant challenges for actors, such as non-executive commissioners. There are important implications for public sphere policy here in acknowledging the full extent of the public’s discursive, reasoned, concerns about privatisation.
Journal Article
Accountable care? An analysis of national reporting on local health and social care service integration
This paper analyses how the UK national press has covered local decision-making on options for the integration of health and social care. In England, as part of a major restructuring of health services, the UK government has devolved significant decisions on reorganising services to local areas. This increasing ‘localism’ in healthcare has been a global trend, albeit an uneven one. The article assesses the insights of Amitai Etzioni and others, as applied to national newspaper coverage of local decisions. It finds Etzioni’s analysis to be not fully supported. Following other journalism research on the NHS, we show that contentious points of wider public interest were little reported on, such as international corporate influence and the potential for fragmentation across a national health service.
Journal Article
How US newspapers view the UK’s NHS: a study in international lesson-drawing
Healthcare on both sides of the Atlantic is a highly charged political and economic subject. This work considers US media coverage of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), an under-researched area. We assess the framing of the NHS in editorials, opinion and feature articles during the time of the Obama administration to show how media can perform the role of lesson-drawing, a theory adopted from public policy research. The study also applies the notion of journalistic habitus in this context. Using these ideas, we address a hypothesis which holds that US coverage is framed around the flaws of the UK’s NHS. The paper considers how intermedia editorial and news values operate, with commentators drawing a range of negative lessons in both the Democrat- and Republican-supporting press. We find that the NHS was often posited as a flawed international variant of the single-payer model, where newspapers employed an ahistoric explanation of failure and decline.
Journal Article
Public access to NHS financial information: From a freedom of information regime to full open-book governance?
This article investigates the access that health professionals, researchers, journalists and, ultimately, the public have to review spending in the English National Health Service (NHS). The ability of news organisations to inform debate and decision-making, particularly when hospitals face financial constraints, relies on accessible data. Theorists such as Patrick Dunleavy have suggested that developments in information communications technology induce a dialectical movement, involving changing governance and increasing transparency. Drawing on this premise, the article reviews the extent to which the NHS has moved from a ‘freedom of information regime’ to one of ‘full open-book governance’. Its methodology includes a combination of documentary and freedom of information data analysis, as well as in-depth interviews with directors of commissioning and provider services and national agencies. It argues that, while increased dissemination of information might be consistent with the government’s digital agenda, the NHS’s quasi-market operation and its relationship to the Freedom of Information Act mean that significant data remain inaccessible or costly to obtain.
Journal Article
An exploration of labour party policy and debates on national newspaper ownership from 1972-2002, with regard to models for achieving pluralistic and democratic ownership of the media
This thesis analyses how Labour Party discussions and policy development between 1972 and 2002 considered problems posed concerning political democracy and British press ownership and control. By examining the Labour policy formulated, and the surrounding debates, the thesis considers the extent to which policy corresponded to models for creating a pluralistic and democratic media that the first chapter outlines. The work also analyses to what extent the policy developed by Labour considered some of the difficulties with those models. It finds that the policy alternatives put forward in the earlier period considered in the thesis do not fully answer those difficulties. However, it is indicated that this does not provide sufficient explanation as to why, as happened, the policies were progressively abandoned. To explain why earlier commitments were jettisoned, firstly, the work analyses how press ownership policy was created within the Labour Party in this period, in the context of change in party policy more generally. It identifies how the sectors involved in press policy creation changed. This is then considered in relation to various 'classic' theories of Labour Party power relations. It concludes that an alternative Marxist analysis of party power relations provides an approximate explanation of policy creation. Secondly, the work posits that the pressure for Labour representation provided a tension with policies providing for press diversity and participative democracy. Moreover, it argues that this tension existed throughout the period from 1972 onwards. It considers the role of Labour representation in explaining the later thrust of Labour press policy within a hierarchy of influences, particularly the effect of going with the grain of economic globalisation.
Dissertation