Carol Bacchi

I imagine that many readers of this Research Hub are deeply troubled by recent political developments, specifically in the United States but with repercussions in Australia and around the world. I have been asking myself if these developments somehow reduce the relevance of WPR and its associated theoretical perspectives. It appears that I am not alone in expressing these qualms. A recent special edition of Global Society raises critical questions about the usefulness of governmentality as an analytic concept. It broaches the need for deploying the concept of “authoritarian governmentality” to help make sense of the times we are living in. 

In this entry I reflect on aspects of the contributions to the special edition by Julia Simon (2025a, 2025b) and by Mitchell Dean (2025). I recommend reading their articles in full (several times!). Both authors are concerned to highlight the need to include authoritarian developments in a governmentality perspective. Indeed, they suggest that the absence of attention to authoritarian aspects of governing practices leaves us ill-equipped to deal with the current “rise” of authoritarian regimes, including those that appear where they are least expected – i.e. in previously described “liberal democracies” (the United States).

Whither neoliberalism? 

Simon and Dean raise concerns about the way in which neoliberalism is theorised in many governmentality accounts – how treating neoliberalism (a neoliberal rationality) as a “master category” can make it difficult to observe and understand authoritarian aspects of governing practices. In the most recent Research Hub entry (27 August 2025) we reviewed the uses of the concept of “rationalities” in WPR analyses. I emphasised that the concept of “rationality” in governmentality accounts is meant to keep a focus on fluidity in modes of political analysis and change and that “problematisation” as an analytic strategy has the same goal (see Bacchi 2023). The object of the exercise in each case is to consider how power relations are “rooted deep in the social nexus”. This fluidity, however, can be lost through treating neoliberalism as a singular phenomenon. 

For good reason many WPR applications take as their primary focus neoliberalism as governmentality (rationality). This focus is apparent in the many references to “responsibilisation” as a mode of governing. That is, asking “What’s the problem represented to be?” has frequently identified the tendency to hold individuals responsible for improving their health, their job readiness, their use of drugs and gambling, etc., described as a neoliberal logic.  

However, more attention needs to be paid to how “neoliberalism” is conceptualised. In the previous entry I draw on Larner’s (2000) work, which cautions against the tendency to characterise neoliberalism as ideology. Simon (2025a, p. 5) echoes this caution. She challenges the tendency to use neoliberalism as “a more or less constant master category”, reifying neoliberalism (see Rose, O’Malley and Valverde 2006, pp. 97-98). She makes the case that such an approach weakens the “unique analytical potential” of a governmentality approach that is strongest 

“when it does not take globalising concepts or macro phenomena as starting points and explanatory principles but rather zooms in on how these very phenomena are continuously reproduced, homogenised, altered, annexed, and reformed as effects of historically and site-specific practices (cf. Lemke 2000, 43; Bröckling, Krasmann, and Lemke 2011b, 12). (Simon 2025a, p. 5; emphasis in original)”

Treating neoliberalism as some sort of “master category”, she argues, leads to “blindspots” “by failing to fully explore, visibilise, and critically investigate the multivocal and inconsistent character, the patchwork, or frankly, the ‘messiness’ of governmentalities”. 

These blindspots or omissions, as she describes, are consequential for the present moment because they tend to include a rather characteristic “neglect of non-liberalforms of power” (Triantafillou 2017, 385, emphasis added by Simon 2025a, p. 5). The implication here is the need to be wary of adopting classifications that categorically separate (neo)liberal democracies from authoritarian or non-liberal logics/rationalities. Rather, we need to critique the implicit assumption of a fundamental conceptual dichotomy or even incompatibility between neoliberalism and authoritarianism (Simon 2025a, p 5).

“Refraining from precategorising countries as (neo)liberal or authoritarian or democratic allows us to cast light on and trace a broad range of actually existing (re)combinations and shifts” (Simon 2025a, p. 8). 

In a related argument, according to Dean, we struggle to understand current political developments due to some blockages in early governmentality theory. Echoing Simon, Dean (2025) defends the need to move beyond liberal rationalities (and neoliberalism) in the study of governmentality. He suggests that the term “authoritarian” be added to the governmentality lexicon. While, he argues, “Foucault and his followers do not intend to reduce ‘governmentality’ to its liberal and neoliberal manifestations”, “such a teleological narrative makes it difficult to avoid this elision” (Dean 2025, p. 21). 

“Authoritarian governmentality” operates as a subset of the “conduct of conduct”, a subset in which conduct involves binding obligations: “while liberal governing is grounded in orders that work through providentially beneficial outcomes accruing through individual free conduct, authoritarian governing works though orders that leaves no alternative for individuals and collectives other than to be bound by them”. (Dean 2025, p. 30)

Dean (2025, p. 27) adds that Foucault’s focus on conduct of conduct “needs to be supplemented by a developed, and not simply residual, concept of sovereignty”. We need an “analytics of sovereignty” in his view because Foucault’s “government” excludes violence. The goal here is to understand how governing in the Foucauldian sense becomes intertwined with types of rule that discharge or delegate authority not simply through direction or persuasion but through coercivemeans. 

In earlier work Dean (2002) uses unemployment policy to illustrate the confluence of liberal and authoritarian practices. He offers the example of unemployment benefits, with benefits conditional on certain behaviours, to illustrate the illiberality of liberal government.

“When the governmental practice becomes binding for whatever reason, in this case because the economic costs of not following the welfare officer’s advice are too high for those with limited means of subsistence, then we have crossed into an authoritarian government” (Dean 2025, p. 24)

Dean (2025, p.31) points out that such authoritarian practices tend to target specific sectors of the population, with his example being “the differential treatment of subjects within liberal democracies using coercive and disciplinary instruments on those incapable, or not yet capable, of acting with the attributes of responsible freedom”.

Dean (2025, p. 29) looks to developments in immigration policy in Denmark to illustrate this argument. He notes that “While in general, one would clearly want to argue that Denmark relies on a more liberal set of practices of government than, say, Putin’s Russia with its propensity for the repression of political opponents”, this does not preclude the discovery of practices of authoritarian governmentality in the Scandinavian country. As an example, Dean highlights the passing of legislation, and its implementation, “that forcibly removes the homes and relocates segments of the Danish population to better integrate ethnic groups within the Danish community and prevent the formation of what were initially called ‘ghettos’ and more recently, ‘parallel societies’ (Bubola 2023)”. 

The COVID-19 pandemic also illustrates the confluence of (neo)liberal and authoritarian interventions. Sjölander-Lindqvist et al. (2020) point out that the full range of approaches to controlling COVID-19 in Sweden (e.g. social distancing, hygiene) included an aspect of ‘responsibilisation’, with the implication that citizen subjects are responsible for the outcomes of the pandemic. At the same time questions about how to deal with the pandemic involved debates over forms of authoritarian intervention (restrictions on movement, tracking devices, curfews, prison, etc.). As Dean (2025, p. 31) maintains, “The difference here between liberal and authoritarian government is relative”. 

Many WPR studies point to the operation of similar dynamics. In relation to the law and justice, Yassine (2019) offers a detailed WPR analysis of a specific practice in Australian juvenile justice: the risk assessment tool. She describes how this particular tool regulates and actively shapes who is defined, marked and classified as “risky”. Being Indigenous “is reduced to a potential risk factor for involvement with the criminal justice system, akin to alcohol and drug abuse, offending history, and so on” (Cunneen 2016, p. 36 in Yassine 2019, p. 154–155). This targeting of Indigenous subjects illustrates the intertwining of liberal and authoritarian logics. 

Colonial relations of other forms operate in a similar fashion. Odida (2022) produces a decolonial analysis of the United Nations policy of Constitutional Assistance (UNCA). The UNCA represents an initiative by which Western forms of government can be sustained in the wake of decolonisation. As a specific example of how colonial practices are embedded in UNCA, Odida identifies “discourses of infantilization” as particular practices “which represented Eritreans and Libyans as vulnerable, weak and incapable of self-governance” (2022, p. 27).

In the WPR studies by Yassine and Odida it becomes possible and appropriate to identify racialisng and colonising practices as authoritarian. The suggestion in this entry is that it is important to call out authoritarian tendencies where they appear as part of the analysis. Attending to “authoritarian governmentality” prepares us to recognise the “authoritarian potential of the (neo)liberal modalities of rule” (Simon 2025a, p. 7). This recognition positions us to better understand current authoritarian developments.

Resistance and counter-conduct

A particular challenge in WPR and in governmentality studies involves theorizing resistance. One of the chief criticisms of governmentality is that assumptions about subjectification produce determined, in the sense of controlled, subjects (Brady 2014, p. 11). We return here to the topic of “responsibilisation” (see above) and the suggestion in many WPR accounts that subjects take on self-regulation due to neoliberal policies that produce them as “governable”. 

Simon (2025b) notes how in studies of neoliberalism there is an all too enthusiastic acceptance of the production of neoliberal subjects. “Neoliberal governmental techniques always seemed to dovetail seamlessly with self-fashioning practices and to secure the desired individualising, autonomising, and responsibilising”. She makes the case that incorporation of authoritarian modes of rule in governmentality analyses provides an opening for investigating practices of resistance and contestation, as opposed to simply becoming “governable”. 

Simon offers an interesting adaptation of Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct to develop this argument. Her analytic target is the organisation self-described as Moms for Liberty (M4L), which emerged in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic:

“The group took shape during the SarsCov2-pandemic amidst a protest movement that problematised mitigation policies like temporary (school) closures or mask mandates in a language of ‘government tyranny’ (Westermeyer 2021).” (Simon 2015b, p. 9) 

Simon usefully highlights the engagement of M4L in efforts to “change people’s sense of what is politically desirable and right …”, which she characterises as the “epistemic dimension of politics” (Simon 2025b, p. 4). She shows, for example, their strong critique of expertise and “tactics of scientific distrust” (Simon 2025b, p.5), indicating an unexpected alignment with left-wing criticisms of expert knowledges. 

Her study thus provides a corrective to the tendency to pre-categorise actors in “an overly general manner as ‘populist’” (Simon 2025b, p.17). She produces an analysis of “reflected, relational, and productive contestational practices” (2025b, p.17). “It visibilises distinct far-right/populist patterns of shaping ‘resisting’ subjectivities, techniques of counter-practice, underlying truth-claims as well as particular fields of intervention” (Simon 2025b, p. 1). 

I was surprised to see this alignment of the Foucauldian concept of counter-conduct with right-wing politics. Simon acknowledges that “counter-conduct has initially been equated with inclusive, emancipatory efforts”. She argues that, in point of fact, the governmentality/counter-conduct perspective as such has no fixed normative foundation (Simon 2025b, p. 7 fn 6). 

I am not quite convinced by this argument. Simon (2025b, p. 19) goes on to note that the Moms for Liberty organisation seeks to “invisibilise past and present discrimination and (epistemic) violence against non-binary or trans individuals and African-Americans”. Clearly, in this description, Simon indicates that, in her view, discrimination and epistemic violence against the identified groups exist, a position that I suspect would be challenged by M4L. In other words, I’d suggest that acknowledging or denying the existence of discrimination and epistemic violence has normative implications. 

Is it possible therefore to rework “counter conducts” to describe the M4L organisation? Simon marshals “counter conducts” to make two important points. First, her work shows the usefulness of focussing critical attention on “agents” “beyond the state”, avoiding the tendency to reduce populism to political parties (Simon 2025b, p. 2). Her targeting of a group such as M4L signals a need to go beyond broad diagnoses of an “era of ‘authoritarian populism’” (Rose 2017, 305). Further, she illustrates “how particular epistemic repertories are drawn on and thus become productive in the formation of alternative or resisting, instead of governable, subjects” (2025b p.18):

“This desubjugation, the discarding of the docile, governable subjectivity of the conservative parent, facilitates the fashioning of an alternative – alert, assertive, knowledgeable, and insubordinate – awakened maternal subjectivity. (Simon 2025b, p.12)”

However, I query the reliance on interview transcripts to produce this analysis and suggest that asking what is “sayable” in the contexts Simon describes could produce a quite different interpretation of developments. I’m referring here to PIA (Poststructural Interview Analysis), developed with Jennifer Bonham (see Bacchi and Bonham 2025, Chapter 8). In PIA, a major purpose is to consider the particular kinds of “subjects” produced within interview settings, while also reflecting on how subject status can be questioned and disrupted. It therefore challenges the tendency to accept interview subjects as having privileged (“first person”) access to a kind of “truth” about their “experience/s” (which I believe underpins Simon’s characterising of M4L), while paying heed to how subjects come to occupy specific subject position and how they open spaces to disrupt those positions. 

Conclusions

To better understand and critically engage with the temper of the times there are clear benefits to drawing attention in WPR research to authoritarian practices. Such an approach would mean being wary regarding how we conceptualise neoliberalism, encouraging researchers to trace authoritarian tendencies in neoliberal practices and to name them as such. Incorporating attention to authoritarian governmentality could also raise useful questions about subjectification, cautioning against any tendency to produce subjects as “governable” in some determined sense. The implications for research practices are pursued in the next entry. 

References

Bacchi, C 2023, ‘Governmentalizing “policy studies”’, in W Walters & M Tazzioli (eds), Handbook on governmentality, Edward Elgar, Northampton, MA, pp. 54–71, DOI:10.4337/9781839108662.00010.

Bacchi, C. and Bonham, J. 2025, ‘Poststructural Interview Analysis: Politicizing “Personhood”’, in C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice, Second Edition, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, Chapter 8. 

Brady, M 2014, ‘Ethnographies of neoliberal governmentalities: from the neoliberal apparatus to neoliberalism and governmental assemblages’, Foucault Studies, no. 18, pp. 11–33, DOI:10.22439/fs.v0i18.4649.

Bröckling, Ulrich, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke. 2011b. “From Foucault’s Lectures at the Collège de France to Studies of Governmentality.” In Governmentality. Current Issues and Future Challenges, edited by Ulrich Brückling, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke, 

1–33. New York: Routledge.

Bubola, E. 2023. “Denmark Aims a Wrecking Ball at ‘Non-Western’ Neighborhoods.” New York Times, October 26. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/world/europe/denmark-housing. html?smid=url-share. 

Dean, M. 2002. “Liberal Government and Authoritarianism.” Economy and Society 31 (1): 37–61. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140120109240.

Dean, M. 2025. The Concept of Authoritarian Governmentality Today, Global Society, 39:1, 16-35, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2024.2362739

Larner, W. 2000. Neo-liberalism: Policy, ideology, governmentality. Studies in Political Economy, 64, 5-25. 

Lemke, Thomas. 2000. “Neoliberalismus, Staat und Selbsttechnologien. Ein kritischer Überblick über die governmentality studies.” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 41 (1): 31–47. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11615-000-0003-8. 

Odida, A 2022, ‘Making policy, problems, and constitutions: decolonising the UN policy of constitutional assistance’, PhD thesis, University College London, London.

Rose, Nikolas. 2017. “Still ‘Like Birds on the Wire’? Freedom After Neoliberalism.” Economy and Society 46 (3–4): 303–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2017.1377947. 

Rose, Nikolas, Pat O’Malley, and Mariana Valverde. 2006. “Governmentality.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2 (1): 83–104. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.2.081805. 105900. 

Simon, J. 2025a. ‘After Neoliberalism’ and on the ‘Dark Side’? Governmentality and Counter-Conduct in Times of Growing Autocratisation, Global Society, 39:1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2024.2401552 

Simon, J. 2025b. An Analytics of Far-Right Populist Contestation and the Case of ‘Awakened Mothers’ in US Public Education and Beyond, Global Society, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2025.2468946 

Sjölander-Lindqvist, A, Larsson, S, Fava, N, Gillberg, N, Marcianò, C & Cinque, S 2020, ‘Communicating about COVID-19 in four European countries: similarities and differences in national discourses in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden’, Frontiers in Communication, vol. 5, article 593325, DOI:10.3389/fcomm.2020.593325.

Triantafillou, Peter. 2017. “Governmentality.” In Handbook on Theories of Governance, edited by Christopher K. Ansell and Jacob Torfing, 378–388. Cheltenham: Edward Elga Yassine, L 2019, ‘Governing through “neutrality”: a poststructural analysis of risk assessment in the NSW juvenile justice system’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney, https://hdl.handle.net/2123/21228.

It has been some time since we paid attention to the difficult concept of “political rationalities” (see Research Hub entry 7 January 2018). I decided that it would be worthwhile to revisit the place of political rationalities in a WPR analysis and to illustrate the usefulness of the concept with examples. Following the pattern in recent entries, I have been inspired to pursue this path due to some new and insightful articles applying WPR. The topics they tackle are: UBI (Universal Basic Income) and food in/security. 

Emily Clark (04 Feb 2025): Is the universal basic income a neoliberal trojan horse? Analyzing representations of ‘the poor’ and ‘poverty’ in UK UBI policy discourses, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2456695 

Inza-Bartolomé, A.; Escajedo San-Epifanio, L. (2025). Assistentialism in food aid resources. An analysis of the problematization of food insecurity through the What’s the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) framework. Cuadernos de Trabajo Social 38(1), 149-157. https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/cuts.96795 

Connections in arguments

As a preliminary thought, I draw to your attention how the topics covered in the Research Hub (which I have maintained now for some eight years) are likely to be interconnected. We are, after all, pursuing a specific question about the character and impact of governing practices. Hence, connections are to be expected. 

In the previous entry (29 July 2025), Skjold points to the effects of “personalization” in Norway’s activation services. Applying WPR thinking (Question 4 on silences) she (2025, p. 14; emphasis added) notes that 

“the current bias toward collaborative forms of personalization has the potential to undermine other legitimate rationales and values that offer long-term unemployed people other options of inclusion (such as in the Norwegian case, proposals for basic minimum income for the unemployed suggested in Paper 33, 2023–2024).” 

Serendipitously, the next article to come to my attention (Clark 2025) applies WPR thinking to UBI (Universal Basic Income). We are alerted therefore to the need to keep asking the WPR questions – to assume that the topics we address or issues we raise may themselves require some WPR thinking. I hope you do not find this proposition depressing since it seems to suggest that our thinking is never done, never complete. But that, of course, is the nature of the task at hand – closure is not to be expected. Decisions will need to be made but these decision will be informed by careful interrogation. 

Another connection is struck between the article by Clark and the one by Inza-Bartolomé and Escajedo San-Epifanio. Clark (2025, p. 10) points out that, in her analysis of UBI proposals in the UK Parliament, “food banks” are, at times, “pathologized as a ‘symptom’ of absolute poverty”. Unsurprisingly, there are connections here with the analysis by Inza-Bartolomé and Escajedo San-Epifanio of food in/security policies. Conceptions of “poverty” are central to both analyses, as we shall see.

Finally, in the previous Research Hub entry (29 July 2025) I raised questions about the place of proposals in a WPR analysis. The two articles we examine in this entry contribute to this topic.

Political Rationalities: Review

What are political rationalities? Where are we likely to encounter them? Where do they feature in a WPR analysis? Why are they important? 

I start reflections on these questions with some brief and necessarily simplified comments on governmentality (see Bacchi 2023 for elaboration). Governmentality provides a way to expand our thinking about what governing entails. Foucault (2007, p. 108) has this goal in mind when he describes the need to critically interrogate the “ensemble” of “institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, calculations and tactics” through which governing takes place. His argument is that power relations operate in and across this “ensemble”. They are “rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted ‘above’ society as a supplementary structure [for example, ‘the State’]” (Foucault 1982, p. 222). We therefore need modes of analysis that include but go beyond conventional studies of State-based politics. 

Foucault’s “ensemble” points the way to the targets for this broader analysis. In the quote above, he mentions “institutions” and “procedures”, alongside “analyses and reflections”. In governmentality theory, the former constitute “technologies of rule”, while the latter form “rationalities”. That is, to study how governing takes place we need to study both the techniques and mechanisms involved in governing practices (“technologies of rule”) and the “thinking” underpinning those techniques (“rationalities” or “rationales” – the reasons given for those techniques). In this way “political rationalities” provide access to the “thought” in government. Dean (1999, p. 24) describes them as “relatively coherent ways of understanding the tasks and objects of rule”. Put simply, to understand how specific practices/mechanisms become possible, we need to understand the forms of thought – the governing logics – that made these practices intelligible and practicable. Rationalities refer to the specific combinations of concepts and reasons guiding rule (Rose 2000, p. 24). 

I find it easier to grasp this notion through examples. Doubtless, you will have heard references to “a liberal rationality” or a “neo-liberal rationality” or an “authoritarian rationality” (see next entry). These “short-hands” refer to the clusters of theories, suppositions, and notions that produce a particular understanding of the operations of government. Foucault found the concept of “problematisation” a useful supplement to rationalities. If we want to probe the “thinking” behind certain government practices, an effective way to do this is to ask how “things” are being problematised – hence, the usefulness of the WPR questions which take on this task. 

I now use the two selected articles to illustrate how they deploy these conceptual tools. 

ARTICLE 1: 

Emily Clark (04 Feb 2025): Is the universal basic income a neoliberal trojan horse? Analyzing representations of ‘the poor’ and ‘poverty’ in UK UBI policy discourses, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2456695 

Brief summary: 

Clark takes up the contentious issue of “universal basic income” (UBI), a reform proposition (proposal) that has found supporters across the political spectrum. Instead of pursuing competing definitions of the reform, she explores the rationality/ies underpinning it in UK Parliamentary debates. Specifically, she asks whether “representations of ‘the poor’ and ‘poverty’ in UK parliamentary UBI proposals signal breaks with, or continuations of, dominant neoliberal governing logics” – i.e., rationalities. She concludes that, despite popular characterizations of UBI as a “progressive” social policy, its “dominant constitution in UK Parliament” reflects neoliberal rationalities (p. 3). Importantly, Clark highlights two “disruptive proposals” for UBI that constitute it as a “right to the commons of the earth”. 

Materials and methods:

Clark (p. 7) specifies that her “data corpus” consists of 135 parliamentary texts. In the main these are extracts from Parliamentary debates to do with UBI: “All debates, questions and answers, Early Day Motions, committee discussions, and evidence sessions in UK Parliament referencing ‘basic income’ were examined from this period [September 2016 to July 2024]”. She provides “example statements” from MPs and peers’ speeches that “expose the logics underpinning the formation of UBI”. 

Clark adopts an additional “text”. She uses Foucault’s (2008) examination of Friedman’s Negative Income Tax (NIT) policy idea, to tease out the parameters of a neoliberal rationality (see below). 

Applying WPR:

Clark specifies that she applies selected WPR questions (questions 1, 2, 4 and 5) to the material. The material (“key discursive constructions”) was “first coded on NVivo with a focus on the constitution of UBI policy problematizations/prescriptions”. Discourses were then analyzed according to the four WPR questions. From this analysis “three dominant codes, or typologies, of the ‘poor’, underpinned by neoliberal nationalities (sic; should be “rationalities”), emerged”, alongside the two disruptive codes. 

Basically, Clark looks to characterise the understanding of UBI in UK Parliamentary debates through examining how it is problematised in readily accessible Parliamentary materials (e.g., Hansard debates). She concludes that, with the exception of the two disruptive “codes”, these texts reflect a neoliberal rationality. This rationality (or neoliberal governing logic/s) can be seen to be in operation through the ways in which “poverty” and “the poor” are constituted as 1) the impotent poor; 2) the idle poor; 3) the industrious poor – typologies adopted from Dean’s (1992) examination of the genealogy of poverty. 

Theoretical Issues: 

Clark’s paper raises a number of theoretical issues.

Referring to the previous Research Hub entry (29 July 2025), I look to see where she “finds” the “proposals” that provide the starting place for a WPR analysis. 

I suggest she finds them in two places: first, in Friedman’s proposed Negative Income Tax (see Camporesi 2024), and second, in the “example statements” of politicians. 

How does this work? 

On the former, it is possible to think of theoretical propositions as proposals, in the WPR sense of the term. Consider, for example, Marx’s theory of historical materialism, or a realist perspective in international relations. Both, in effect, indicate or propose how things ought to be and hence what needs to change. You can recognise here the starting premise in WPR – what we propose as what needs to change indicates what is produced as problematic. This argument means that, in effect, “every piece of published research is in a sense a ‘prescriptive text’” (Backman and Lofstrand (2022, p. 273). Illustrating the usefulness of this approach, it is becoming increasingly popular to use WPR to conduct systematic reviews or scoping reviews (see for example Johansson and Larsson 2023; Byrt et al. 2023; Puukko 2024). On these grounds, Friedman’s NIT constitutes a proposal and Foucault’s critical comments perform a kind of WPR analysis, probing and elaborating a neoliberal rationality.

On the latter source of proposals (the statements of politicians), in an earlier Research Hub entry (30 June 2021), I consider the possibility of using WPR with legislative debates as “practical texts” – which is basically the approach Clark develops. There I distinguish between statements that clearly target the “conduct of conduct” and hence fit within the parameters of a WPR analysis, and other statements that reflect “pervasive cultural logics” (or “dominant cultural imaginaries) (Spivakovsky and Seear 2017, p. 463). For the latter, I suggest the usefulness of Poststructural Interview Analysis (PIA) which focuses on how certain comments are “sayable” (Bacchi and Bonham 2016).

Clark’s “example statements” refer at times to the desirability of shaping certain behaviours and hence to a prescriptive targeting of “conduct”. At the same time, as Clark (p. 10) notes, they are “underpinned by neo-liberal governing logics”. In other words, thinking through PIA, the selected statements are possible or “sayable” due to their coherence with a neoliberal rationality. A challenge here is to keep the focus on the rationality and to resist slippage into an interpretive analysis that targets policy actors and/or politicians and their “concerns”. 

ARTICLE 2: 

Inza-Bartolomé, A.; Escajedo San-Epifanio, L. (2025). Assistentialism in food aid resources. An analysis of the problematization of food insecurity through the What’s the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) framework. Cuadernos de Trabajo Social 38(1), 149-157. https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/cuts.96795 

Brief summary:

Inza-Bartolomé and Escajedo San-Epifanio bring a critical perspective to “food charity”. They emphasise several factors, including that “the dominant problematization of food insecurity neglects the right to food and the structural reasons for poverty”. They draw attention to the trend towards “food charity” in a period of “reduced entitlements in social security”. A particular concern is the effects of this trend on recipients who become “dependent on the generosity of strangers and discretionary donations”, with accompanying stigma. The term “assistentialist” (or assistance-oriented) is introduced to describe the underlying charity orientation of this approach. 

Materials and methods: 

The authors draw upon a wide range of official documents from the European Commission concerning poverty and aid (see references in the article). They incorporate policy documents, legislative texts and academic (theoretical) texts. 

Applying WPR:

The authors (p.151; emphasis added) clearly lay out the way to commence a WPR analysis:

“The first question of the WPR methodology, ‘What is the problem represented to be in a particular policy or policies?’ aims to identify a place from which to begin the analysis, to examine the problem representation to see what is being problematized (Bacchi and Goodwin, 2016, p. 20). Therefore, it is essential to start with the proposed solutions”.

They follow through this commitment through targeting a specific practice: The Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD). They proceed to probe the proposals associated with FEAD. For example, “food banks” are put forward as a “win-win solution to prevent food waste and reduce food insecurity: it is an economically, environmentally, and socially responsible alternative” (FEBA, 2023a). The authors proceed to apply the WPR questions to these proposals. To do so they emphasise the need to “work backwards” and “revisit and interrogate unexamined ways of thinking to show that they have a history, and insist on questioning their implications (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 16)”.

Theoretical Issues: 

As with Clark, a prominent focus for critique is neoliberalism. By contrast with Clark, neoliberalism is described as an “ideological perspective” not a rationality (152), and it is noted that “this process implies an intentionality from a neoliberal ideological perspective”. Despite this contrast, there are overlaps in interpretation. I have already mentioned the shared observation that food banks can be associated with stigma. 

We return therefore to the need to specify what we mean when we use the term “political rationality” and the need to distinguish its use from analyses that talk about ideologies. Larner (2000) clarified this distinction some time ago and I highly recommend her article. The concept of “rationality” is meant to keep a focus on fluidity in modes of political analysis and change. “Problematisation” as an analytic strategy has the same goal (see Bacchi 2023). The object of the exercise is to consider how power relations are “rooted deep in the social nexus”, not in the intentions of “bad actors”. 

Conclusions: 

The implications of adopting a rationality framework are manifold. Here I emphasise what follows from identifying rationalities as reflecting power relations that are “rooted deep in the social nexus”. Basically, such a perspective alerts us to the need to check our own positions and proposals. Brown (1998, p. 44) clarifies this point nicely.

“it [poststructural analysis] aims to make visible why particular positions and visions of the future occur to us, and especially to reveal when and where those positions work in the same register of ‘political rationality’ as that which they purport to criticize”.

It follows that one of the main tasks of WPR is to examine the possible place of specific rationalities in our own proposals/arguments (see Step 7 on “self”-problematisation; Bacchi and Goodwin, p. 20). Inza-Bartolomé and Escajedo San-Epifanio (2025, p. 154) end their piece with a plea to construct a different problematization and to ensure that the “path” of “vulnerable people” who “need the help of the welfare system to achieve food security” is protected by the right to food. We have an instance here where applying WPR and the concept of rationality to terms such as “vulnerable” may prove useful analytically. 

References

Bacchi, C. (2023). Governmentalizing “policy studies”. In W. Walters and M. Tazzioli (Eds) Handbook on Governmentality. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar.

Bacchi, C. and Bonham, J. 2016. Poststructural Interview Analysis: Politicizing “personhood”, in C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 113-123. 

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Backman, C and Löfstrand, C H 2022, “Representations of Policing Problems and Body-Worn Cameras in Existing Research”, International Criminal Justice Review, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 270-290, DOI: 10.1177/10575677211020813. 

Brown, W. (1998). Genealogical politics. In J. Moss (Ed.), The later Foucault: Politics and philosophy (pp. 

33–49). London, England: Sage.

Byrt, A, Cook, K and Burgin, R 2023, “Addressing Economic Abuse in Intimate-partner Violence Interventions: A Bacchian Analysis of Responsibility”, Journal of Family Violence, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-023-00639-y.

Camporesi, T. 2024. “The “Negative Income Tax” as a Steering Mechanism: The Semantic Field of the NIT Around Milton Friedman in his Pre-Monetarist Period (1939–1948).” The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought: 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672567.2024. 

2360486.

Dean, M. 1992. “A Genealogy of the Government of Poverty.” Economy and Society 21 (3): 215– 

251. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085149200000012.

Dean, M. (1999), Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage.  

FEBA. European Federation of Food Banks (2023 septembere 11) (2023a). 10 facts about food banks and food waste prevention. FEBA. https://www.eurofoodbank.org/publications/10-facts-about-food-banks-and- food-waste-prevention/ 

Foucault, M. (1982), ‘How is Power Exercised?’, in Dreyfus, H. L. and Rabinow, P. (eds), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Brighton: Harvester Press, pp. 216–226.

Foucault, M. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. Basingstoke: 

Palgrave Macmillan.

Foucault, M. (2007), Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78, Senellart, M. (ed.), Burchell, G. (trans.), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Johansson, A and Larsson, J 2023, “Identity Perspectives in Research on University Physics Education: What Is the Problem Represented to Be?”, in Science Identities, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-17642-5_8.

Larner, W. 2000. Neo-liberalism: Policy, ideology, governmentality. Studies in Political Economy, 64, 5-25. 

Puukko, O 2024, “Rethinking digital rights through systemic problems of communication”, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, vol. 82, pp. 1-19, DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2024-2044. 

Rose, N. (2000), Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  

Skjold, S. M. (22 Jan 2025): From ‘user-oriented’ to ‘holistic’: evolving contours of personalization in Norway’s activation policy between 2000 – 2023, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2456151 Spivakovsky, C. and Seear, K. 2017. Making the abject: problem- solving courts, addiction, mental illness and impairment, Continuum, 31(3): 458-469, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2016.1275152 

This entry begins with an overview of the thinking behind the WPR premise that analytically it is useful to begin from “proposals” or “proposed solutions” (“solutions”) and to “work backwards” to identify problem representations. It proceeds to draw on two recent articles that make effective use of this analytic strategy as a means to illustrate how to apply this thinking. I also consider some possible theoretical slippages in the selected articles. 

The two selected articles are:

Celik, F. B. 2025. Unpacking democratic participation in the European Green Deal: the case of Climate Pact, Journal of European Integration, DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2025.2455688 

Skjold, S. M. (22 Jan 2025): From “user-oriented” to “holistic”: evolving contours of personalization in Norway’s activation policy between 2000 – 2023, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2456151 

Why start from “proposals”? 

I have broached this topic on other occasions and refer you to a Research Hub entry (30 January 2023) called “Starting from scratch”. It contains a section that identifies Task 2 as:  Select specific proposals to gain access to the problematizations at work. The section provides a “how to” guide to finding proposals. 

Here I would like to offer a brief exposition of the thinking that lies behind this suggested analytic strategy. First, we need to remember that the objective in a WPR analysis is to widen our understanding of how governing takes place (how we are governed). This objective relies upon an expanded view of governing to embrace not just political institutions but the multitudinous factors and groups (e.g. of professionals, experts, etc.) that shape our lives on a day-to-day basis. This expanded “reach” of monitoring and fashioning is captured in the notion of governmentality. 

At a simple level you can think of governing as directions affecting how one behaves and thinks. This thinking leads to a focus on what Foucault describes as “the conduct of conduct”. Who is “conducting” whom? To what extent do we “conduct” ourselves? In what ways? This emphasis on conduct easily translates into an examination of directives to do certain things in certain ways – or (in other words) of proposals for action/s. 

Foucault takes this insight and shows how guides to conduct make a range of “things” and subject positions come into being. Here, we are dealing with a practice approach, an ontology of becoming rather than an ontology of being. Foucault gives the example of “madness”. He shows that, to understand how “madness” becomes an “object of thought”, it is necessary to examine how those called “mad” are treated – how they are regulated, sequestered, medicalized, etc. In other words, as Foucault explains, we can see how “the mad” are problematised and how “madness” emerges as a problematised object by examining how those called “mad” are treated. 

To extend this form of analysis, Foucault turned to what he called “practical texts” or “prescriptive texts”, those texts that provide directives for what to do or for what is described as needing to be done. WPR refers to these “directives” as proposals. It follows that examining proposals provides insights into how governing takes place: what is proposed indicates what is targeted as needing to change and hence what is rendered problematic, or “the problem”. In WPR researchers therefore start their analyses by identifying proposals and then “working backwards” to examine how specific proposals “problematise” certain things or behaviours. 

Now, I think it is important to spend a little time on understanding the nature of proposals. In the 30 January 2023 entry (see above), I provide some pointers on how to identify proposals. I stress the need for some nuance in this process. You will not always, or necessarily, be looking for explicit “aims” or “recommendations”. We are talking rather about a particular way of “reading” the material. For example, statements about desired goals are almost invariably proposals and hence problematisations. This point will be illustrated when we look at our two selected articles for this entry. 

In addition, I often refer to “proposals” as “proposed solutions”. That is, if some “solution” is offered to “address” some “problem”, it constitutes a proposal to do exactly that. Please note the use of quotation marks around the key terms in the preceding sentence. These quotation marks signal the WPR argument that “problems” do not simply exist waiting to be “addressed” or “solved” in the way assumed in such statements but that they are produced through the proposals put in place to “solve” them. 

Hence, in this analytic approach, there are no “solutions” per se (just as there are no “problems” per se). Rather, any suggested “solution” is automatically involved in constituting “the problem” as a particular sort of problem. Let me use the somewhat overworked example of training programs for women. If training programs for women are introduced as a means to increase women’s representation in positions of influence, training programs constitute a “(proposed) solution” and “the problem” is represented to be women’s lack of training. I have described this mutual imbrication of “solutions” and “problems” by saying that “problems” are implicit within the “(proposed) solution”. The point to remember is that “solutions” do not follow from a WPR analysis; rather, “solutions” (proposed “solutions”; proposals) provide the starting place for asking how the “problem” is constituted. A tendency to refer to solutions in respect to a WPR analysis emerges, I suspect, from Question 5 in WPR on effects or implications. I raise this point in later discussion. 

A final introductory point – “proposals” do not offer impressions or interpretations of “problems”. Rather, they constitute them as particular forms of problem. That is, proposals shape “problems” and hence alter the existing order to a certain degree. In WPR, therefore, we are not talking about competing interpretations of “a problem”. We are talking about the impact of the shapes imposed on “problems”, where these come from and how they affect lives and worlds. I will return to this point in the discussion to follow. 

Article 1: 

Celik, F. B. 2025. Unpacking democratic participation in the European Green Deal: the case of Climate Pact, Journal of European Integration, DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2025.2455688 

Brief summary:

Allow me to remind readers that the Research Hub entries at the end of February and end of March 2025 comment on three applications of WPR to climate change as a topic area. Celik offers another important contribution to this urgent research subject.

Celik’s analytic target is the European Climate Pact (ECP). This Pact, as he explains, is a key initiative of the European Green Deal (EGD). Applying WPR and “Foucault’s problematization perspective”, he scrutinises “how the ECP frames climate change as a problem and the solutions it proposes”. He makes the case that the ECP primarily “addresses climate change as a problem of insufficient participation”: “This reflects an approach where climate responsibilities are individualised, citizens are framed as consumers, and different hierarchies of participation are created”. 

Materials used: 

Celik (p. 6) describes the two steps by which he identified the “relevant documents”. First, he conducted a search on the EUR-lex database for the official EU documents that mentioned the ECP. Due to the very large number of such documents (“thousands of results”) he “manually looked for a clear pattern of problem framing within each document”:

“The final corpus of documents included the 2020 Commission Communication on the ECP (European Commission 2020d), as well as wider official communications, regulations, and policy briefings issued by various EU institutions such as the European Commission, European Parliament, the European Council, and the Committee of Regions.” 

Applying WPR thinking: 

When Celik (p. 7) turns to his analysis, he describes how he

“conducted an initial close reading of each text by focusing on recurring themes and phrases that signalled the representation of climate change as a particular type of problem (e.g. ‘competitiveness’, ‘innovation,’ ‘market-based solutions’, ‘education’, ‘public awareness’, or ‘community engagement’), paying special attention to how specific words and phrases were used to structure the EU’s problematisation of climate change.” 

This approach, as described, does not start from proposals. Hence, it appears to deviate from the WPR analytic framework. There also appears to be a greater focus on language (“phrases”) than in a WPR analysis. In addition, Celik tends to refer to “solutions” as separate from and the result of problem representations. For example, he (p. 3) refers specifically to “what solutions the ECP proposes as a result of its problem representation”. As noted above, in WPR, “problems” and “solutions” are mutually imbricated.

At the same time as these apparent differences from WPR, the article offers examples of proposals in the WPR sense of the term and proceeds to “read off” “problem representations” from them. I offer this example. Celik (p. 10) notes that the European Council suggested that

“Citizens of all ages should also be involved in the energy transition via the European Climate Pact and the Conference on the Future of Europe. Increased energy efficiency is also highly important for the security of energy supply of the Union through lowering its dependence on import of fuels from third countries’. (Council of the European Union 2022a) (emphasis added)”.

The use of the word “should” in this quotation from the Council indicates that this comment offers a directive and that hence it is a proposal in the WPR sense of the term (see above; see also entry on 30 January 2023). “Working backwards” from this proposal, Celik notes: 

These examples represent climate change as a problem of insufficient public participation in the EU’s climate change policies through a responsibility point of view, especially in terms of achieving the Union’s climate-friendly growth targets as well as reducing its resource dependency on third countries. 

This “reading off” of the problem representation from the proposal indicates a useful application of WPR thinking.

Theoretical issues

How can we account for the “blending” of a WPR analytic approach (seen in the example just above) with the earlier comments on starting from a close reading of the text for phrases and themes? In part, I attribute this eclecticism to Celik’s characterisation of his analysis as “social constructionist”, reliant on a “complex interplay of social constructions that shape the perceptions, responses, impacts, and even the very definition of the issue itself” (Celik 2025, p. 1-2). He elaborates that this social constructivist perspective offers a conception of the idea of “climate-change-as-problem” that is deeply influenced by “values, beliefs, power dynamics, and political narratives”. 

This social constructionist perspective produces an analysis that targets “how climate change is seen as a problem” (p. 1) rather than how problem representations produce climate change as a particular sort of problem. There appears then to be a slide towards an interpretive perspective (“is seen as”) based on competing interpretations and away from a constitutive perspective (“is produced as”). Elsewhere (see Keynote address at Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se).

 I have discussed the theoretical shift in my work on WPR from a constructionist to a performative/constitutive perspective. This perspective is encouraged through keeping the focus on proposals as a starting place for your analysis (rather than on assumed values or beliefs- see above). 

Article 2: 

Skjold, S. M. (22 Jan 2025): From ‘user-oriented’ to ‘holistic’: evolving contours of personalization in Norway’s activation policy between 2000 – 2023, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2456151 

Brief summary: 

This article explores how “personalization” has evolved within activation services in Norway, with a particular focus on the “long-term unemployed”. It raises questions about how the changing patterns of personalization “reconfigure state citizen relationships” (p. 2). The author identifies “two dominant problematizations of unemployment”. The first targeted deficiencies of jobseekers and employers. The second addresses unemployment as a systemic problem and promotes “collaborative approaches”. The article contends that, in both problematizations, paid work serves as the basis of active citizenship so that “new changes that preach collaboration and empowerment” may disguise “tighter controls and administrative hierarchies”. 

Materials used: 

Skjold (p. 3) analyses 5 documents on Norwegian activation policy between 2000 and 2023, including four White papers and one proposition from the 2000-2023 period. She describes in some detail her selection process, given that “the selected policy texts for this analysis are not exhaustive of Norwegian policy papers on activation” (p. 5). In Analysing Policy (Bacchi 2009: 20) I note that “Given the almost endless variety and number of texts that could be selected, it needs to be recognized that choosing policies to examine is itself an interpretive exercise”. Hence, I applaud Skjold’s explanation of her rationale for her choices. Debates about that rationale can be anticipated.  

Applying WPR thinking:

In the “Results of the analysis section” Skjold (p. 7; emphasis added) states clearly the intent to start from proposals (proposed solutions) and to “work backwards” to identify problem representations. I quote her in full:

In the following section, I present the findings regarding what problem representations form the basis of policy direction toward personalized activation. In line with Bacchi and Goodwin (2016), I start with the proposed solution and work backward by asking the following question: if personalization is the answer, then what is the problem? 

Skjord does a stellar job at identifying “proposed solutions” (“proposals”) and at applying WPR thinking to them. I wish to highlight her use of direct quotations from the selected documents. These quotations help us to understand just what a proposal looks like, including the nuance required to read the material (see above). I offer a couple of examples. The quotes are taken directly from the Skjold article.

1. ‘The government is in favor of an approach that adapts welfare services to the needs of the users, contributing to more people being directed toward work and away from benefits’ (white paper 14:2002–2003:1). 

I hope you can see how this statement is a proposal (in the WPR sense of the term). It may not tell you directly what it wants you to do but it proclaims the benefits of a particular welfare approach. Skjold picks up this point and notes that it shows “Within the Norwegian activation policy, employment holds a vantage position as the basis of societal well-being”. This insight could be read as an underlying presupposition (Question 2 in WPR; Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, p. 20). 

• Paper 33: NAV needs to have a more active connection with “health and education sectors and establish a common understanding that work is positive for health”.

Skjold offers a genealogical analysis of Norwegian unemployment services, including developments that predated a major organizational reform of the Norwegian employment and welfare services (NAV), and documents from the post-reform period. In the latter period, three areas for improvement are identified: “strengthened cooperation with employers, effective and tailored services that also improve user experiences, and increased local autonomy at NAV offices” (p. 11). As the extract from paper 33 (above) indicates, the “proposal” is to “establish a common understanding that work is positive for health”.

Skjold’s paper is replete with examples of proposals, and I recommend reading the paper to assist in understanding what this process looks like. She also proceeds to offer useful comments on the kind of critique such a process allows. Specifically, she notes how the “current bias toward collaborative forms of personalization” has the potential to undermine other options of inclusion, e.g. proposals for a basic minimum income for the unemployed (see Question 4 in WPR on identifying silences; see Clark 2025 on competing problematisations of UBI – universal basic income). As she proceeds to explain, the point of her critique is not to negate the potential of “personalization” as a reform approach, but “to rescue the concept from its apoliticized, technicized and instrumentized form, presenting simply remedies to seemingly rational ‘problems’” (p. 14).

Theoretical issues:

On occasion, Skjold’s analysis adopts an interpretive perspective. For example, she quotes Hajer, the well-known interpretive theorist, to the effect that a goal of the analysis is “uncovering ‘how problems come to be conceived as such within the policy process, what solutions are ultimately adopted for these problems, and the effects that arise from these problematizations’” (p. 4; emphasis added) (Hajer, M. 1995). 

In this perspective, we are looking at competing conceptions of “problems-that-exist” rather than at how “problems” are produced as particular sorts of problem. Note also how solutions in this view exist separately from problems whereas in WPR “solutions” and “problems” are mutually imbricated (above). 

I make a similar point about the Celik analysis (above) where I point to his comment regarding “how climate change is seen as a problem” (p. 1). Again, here we are encouraged to think about competing conceptions of “problems” rather than how “problems” are produced in practices (think of how “madness” emerges from practices in a Foucauldian approach; above). Rather than “different ways of conceiving unemployment” (Skjold 2025, p. 13; emphasis added) the analytic target is how unemployment is enacted as a specific form of social organisation. 

Conclusions

The highly useful articles that form the basis of this entry assist us in understanding the need to firm up our theoretical positioning. 

I’d like to suggest that starting from proposals assists in this task.

They take us back to Foucault on “the mad” – they show that what we are after in this analysis is not what goes on in people’s heads but in what is done – the practices through which “problems” are produced as particular sorts of problem with significant implications for how lives are lived. “Proposals” provide an entry-point for examining the “conduct of conduct”, producing “problems”, “subjects”, “objects” and “places” (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). 

References

Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be?Frenchs Forest: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Clark, E. (04 Feb 2025): Is the universal basic income a neoliberal trojan horse? Analyzing representations of ‘the poor’ and ‘poverty’ in UK UBI policy discourses, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2456695 

Hajer, M. 1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. New York: Oxford University Press

In the previous entry (29 May 2025) I commented on two articles that apply WPR to policy relating to menstruation. Here, I follow up the earlier entry with consideration of the contribution by Koskenniemi, A. 2024. Extremely Private and Incredibly Public – Free Menstrual Products and the “Problem” of Menstruation in the Finnish Public Discourse, NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 2023, VOL. 31, NO. 4, 381–394 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2023.2189301

I pay particular attention to the author’s innovative approach to policy materials for WPR analysis, and to the attention paid to deep-seated assumptions/presuppositions underpinning dominant representations of the menstruation “problem”. 

Brief Summary: 

The Koskenniemi article was prompted by the decision of the Helsinki City Council in December 2021 to experiment with the distribution of free menstrual products in schools and educational institutions, a practice seen in similar decisions on city and state levels around the world. It identifies the implicit problem representations in both the public documents and public debate on the initiative. The declared goal in the article is to understand how these problem representations potentially resist or contribute to the menstrual stigma. The article asks why menstruation should be concealed or stopped in the first place. Instead of focusing on painkillers to regulate pain, it emphasises the need to explore the reasons for and realities of living with menstrual pain, including work and schooling structures. Koskenniemi argues that, ultimately, addressing the menstrual stigma becomes a question of changing the societal approach to the menstrual cycle. 

Materials used:

Koskenniemi (2024: 385) explains that to address the issue of menstrual stigma she interrogates two forms of source material: (i) the policy documents related to the experimental distribution of free menstrual products and (ii) the online public debates on the Helskinki policy proposal. She notes that this use of public debates departs “somewhat from the conventional use of the WPR approach, which targets, in the main, policy documents”. We have already seen, in the previous entry, how McAllister et al. (2025) incorporate websites and press releases into the materials analysed in their WPR analysis of Global Health policy affecting menstruation. The suggested use of online debates provides an interesting development in WPR analysis. Koskenniemi (2024) makes a convincing argument that “governing” of menstruation takes place, not just through policies, but through societal norms. Hence, it becomes important to consider the generation of those norms. Online debates, in this context, act (to an extent) as prescriptive texts, or guides to action – making them available for a WPR analysis. 

There are, however, questions to be asked about how to treat the comments in online contributions to the debate. Specifically, there is a need to consider how the subjects contributing to the debate are constituted. Akin to the treatment of interview material, I suggest that to understand the subjects as constituted in discourse rather than as sovereign subjects requires asking how what is said could be said, how the content of the online contributions is “sayable”. Hence, it could be useful to apply the processes in PIA (Poststructural Interview Analysis) to the debate material, including a focus on transformative moments (see Bacchi and Bonham 2016; Bacchi and Goodwin 2025). 

Koskenniemi (2024: 386) explains the place of coding in her analysis. She coded “the materials inductively to familiarize myself with the materials and to explore what topics were discussed and what arguments provided for and against the Helsinki proposal”. She then applies WPR thinking, as explained in the next section. I argue in the entry on the distinctions between WPR and RTA (Reflexive Thematic Analysis; Research Hub 29 Jan. 2025) that it may be more analytically useful to reverse the order of these modes of analysis, applying the theory (WPR) first and subsequently organising the material into “themes”. The goal here is to protect against identifying “arguments for and against the Helskinki proposal” outside of WPR thinking – as if they are simply “there” waiting to be named. 

Applying WPR thinking: 

Koskenniemi (2024: 386) displays a clear understanding of how to apply WPR – that is, starting from proposals and “working backwards” to identify problem representations. She applies this thinking to her coded material: 

“Since the WPR-approach focuses on discovering problem representations through an analysis of proposals for action (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016, p. 18), I then went through all the coded quotations to determine proposals for action.” 

She proceeds to analyse the proposals and the arguments for and against them to determine the dominant problem representations in the materials. She notes here that the online material proved helpful in this task (see discussion of materials above). She states that “Finally, I explored potential effects of the problem representations”. The word “potential” in this sentence is curious and will be discussed below when I consider the issue of interpretive versus constitutive approaches to WPR.

Insights generated: 

Koskenniemi (2024) includes in this study reflections on the deep-seated assumptions and presuppositions underpinning the identified problem representations. In other words, this author explores Question 2 in WPR (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 20) in innovative and thought-provoking ways. Because Question 2 proves to be a stumbling block for many researchers, I elaborate how it proves useful in thinking differently about “menstruation”. 

There are (at least) two interconnected presuppositions that need attention – the dominant conception of equality in western industrialised society and conceptions of the body. The strength and ubiquity of an equal opportunity ethic needs to be emphasised. I have written about the repercussions of this view of equality in several places. For example, I have shown how it underpins a conception of affirmative action as “special treatment”, a conception that proves highly problematic for those supporting the reform. Further, an equal opportunity framing has subjectifying effects, at times dissuading women from pursuing affirmative action on the grounds that they wish to be judged “on their merit” (Bacchi 1996; 2004). 

There are suggestions in Koskenniemi that an equal opportunity ethic has repercussions for how “menstruation” is problematised. She (2024: 389) mentions that a common counterargument to the free provision of menstrual products involved the claim that cis males may be disadvantaged through the growing of beards and that “if girls [sic] are given free menstrual products, why then are boys [sic] not given something as well?”.  

I note the emphasis in many of the identified policies on the need to “manage” bleeding. The implication here is that, to “fit in”, bleeding needs to made to disappear or at least to be rendered invisible, to “allow one to pass as non-menstruating” (Koskenniemi 2024: 384). Such a stance is linked to a desire to make “women” (and others who bleed) fit into existing social arrangements – to make them “equal” (Koskenniemi 2024: 389) or at least to provide them with “equal opportunities”. Elsewhere I describe this stance as a “sameness” model (Bacchi 2025; Bacchi 1999, Chapter 5). 

The “sameness” model has trouble with bodies. Chris Beasley and I (2002) have written about the tension in the full range of policies to do with abortion and cosmetic surgery between two models of personhood – between those deemed to be in control of their bodies and those deemed to be controlled by their bodies. The latter are constituted “lesser citizens”. These are most often women. 

This argument provides a novel slant on the “menstruation” debates. It highlights how the level of analysis that is needed occurs within deep-seated ontological presuppositions (Question 2 in WPR). So long as “reforms” to refigure “menstruation” focus on ways for menstruators to control/manage their bleeding, so long will we perpetuate a limited view of embodied citizenship (Bacchi and Beasley 2002). Contestation needs to occur at this level of analysis. Koskenniemi (2024) pursues exactly this level of analysis. 

Koskenniemi (2024) also makes a useful contribution to thinking about the silences accompanying the “menstrual concealment imperative” (Wood 2020). She points out that the online debates reveal that the provision of free menstrual products is linked to environmental pollution. Importantly, this issue is not mentioned in the (formal) proposal. I have been asked on many occasions how to address Question 4 in WPR which asks about silences. Just how do you identify what is not mentioned? I have suggested several ways forward, primarily reading the critical literature and undertaking comparative analyses. The suggestion that other source material – here online debates – might prompt insights into issues that do not appear in official documentation promises to be helpful.

Koskeinniemi (2024: 390) notes that “the proposal merely states that ‘people should have the right to choose which products they use’”. This statement opens the way to highlight the underlying liberal framing of the “problem”, with a focus on “choice” and “rights”. The limitations of this view, given that such “equality” ignores people’s social location and the forms of products deemed to be commercially attractive (e.g. disposable), illustrates how Question 4 features as part of a WPR analysis.  

One final issue needs to be raised. It relates to the confusion between describing WPR as about competing interpretations versus the recognition of the performative effects of problem representations (see Research Hub entry 28 April 2025). Koskenniemi (2024) recognises the centrality of a performative perspective. She notes (2024: 385), for example, that the Helsinki city policy proposal and the ensuring debates produced the “gendered lives” of Helsinki citizens. However, she occasionally uses the language of “imagined” to describe the relationship between problem representations and effects. Here is one example. She notes that the “proposals for action revolve around the accessibility, visibility, and cost of products”: “The menstruating body is thus imagined as deficient and in need of public or private, but foremost, commercial management” (Koskenniemi 2024: 392; emphasis added). 

The point I wish to make is that the connection between problem representations and effects is much stronger than an “imagined” relationship. We are talking about how this representation of the “problem” produces “subjects” as particular kinds of subject, rather than “imagining” them as such. It is possible to make this argument without suggesting that these subjects are “determined”. 

When I followed up this point, I discovered that Koskenniemi (2024: 385) quoted me from a 2010 publication: “according to the WPR-approach, policy proposals ‘imagine’ both problems and people (Bacchi & Eveline, 2012, p. 111, 119–120). From this quote, you can see that in 2010 I still lapsed into a more interpretive stance. In my usage, quotation marks were inserted around “imagine” – quoted appropriately in Koskenniemi. However, Koskenniemi proceeds to drop the quotation marks (example above).

I would now not use the term “imagine” either with or without quotation marks, since the term implies that problem representations are simply “perceptions”. I hope by now you can see why I find that understanding unsatisfactory. Related to this same point, I mention above that Koskenniemi (2024: 386) refers to the potential effects of problem representations. The effects targeted in Question 5 of WPR – discursive, subjectification, lived – indicate ways of recognising the power of problem representations in shaping lives and worlds. These effects indicate what it means to say that we are governed through problem representations. To describe them as “potential effects” reduces the power and relevance of this argument. 

Conclusions:

I take great joy from reading applications of WPR. I learn a good deal about topics that I had previously neglected. I also gain insights into how people/researchers come to understand WPR and the reasons for these interpretations – often due to my own writing at different stages over the last decades. In other words, the contributions from others help WPR to stay alive and to foster a mode of self-interrogation that is useful.

All three of the articles on the topic of menstruation (this entry and those in the previous entry) draw a similar conclusion about how menstruation is problematised in global and Finnish health policy as a matter of health and hygiene. They are also keenly sensitive to the limitations of this problem representation. As mentioned in the last entry, WPR comes into its own through a critical lens, identifying what fails to be problematised and the politics involved in this failure. Politics in WPR captures the heterogenous strategic relations and practices that shape who we are and how we live. I trust that the three contributions on menstruation have encouraged a sensitivity to the complex of factors that need to be thought about in the active shaping or making of “menstruation”.

There was an item on the news (ABC Radio National) during this morning’s walk (20 January 2025) relating to a new report on women’s health that highlighted the large numbers of women who experienced severe pain during menstruation (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-20/problematic-periods-menstruation-womens-health/104825510). The question of “remedies” was raised. One suggestion endorsed “universal reproductive leave”. Contra this proposal, a spokeswoman made the point that what was needed was to fix the workplace, not to take women out of it. Thanks to the articles on menstruation that formed the basis of this and the previous entry, I felt better able to engage the topic at a meaningful level. I thank the authors for their work. 

Don’t forget to check out this recent article on menopause: Liana B. Winett & Louise Dalingwater (30 Mar 2025): “Women are hard to study”: US and UK National Legislator discourse on menopause-related research, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2483537 

References

Bacchi, C. (2004). Policy and discourse: challenging the construction of affirmative action as preferential treatment. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(1): 128-146.

Bacchi, C. 1996. The Politics of Affirmative Action: “Women”, Equality and Category Politics. London: Sage.

Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage.

Bacchi, C. and Beasley, C. 2002. Citizen bodies: Is embodied citizenship a contradiction in terms? Critical Social Policy, 22(2).

Bacchi, C. and Bonham, J. 2016. “Appendix: Poststructural Interview Analysis: Politicizing ‘personhood’”, in C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis: A guide to practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2025. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. Second edition. (see chapter 8 on PIA by. Bacchi and Bonham). NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C., & Eveline, J. (2012). Mainstreaming politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. University of Adelaide Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9780980672381 

Bacchi, C and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. 2025. Same difference: Feminism and sexual difference. New York: Routledge.McAllister, J., Amery, F., Channon, M. and Thomson, J. 2025. Where is menstruation in global health policy? The need for a collective understanding. GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH

Following the previous two entries on WPR and climate-related topics, I decided to examine three WPR applications on the question of how menstruation is problematised. The exercise is intended to draw attention to the versatility of WPR and how it can encourage thinking differently about a wide range of issues. The gift of WPR is exactly that – taking what is commonsense and turning it around, highlighting the operation of power relations. 

The three articles are from 2023, 2024, and 2025:

King, S. 2023. Why current menstrual policies do not work. Nature Human Behaviour 8(11): 2072-2073, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01996-4

Koskenniemi, A. 2024. Extremely Private and Incredibly Public – Free Menstrual Products and the “Problem” of Menstruation in the Finnish Public Discourse, NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 2023, VOL. 31, NO. 4, 381–394 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2023.2189301

McAllister, J., Amery, F., Channon, M. and Thomson, J. 2025. Where is menstruation in global health policy? The need for a collective understanding. GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH
2025, VOL. 20, NO. 1, 2448272 https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2024.2448272

[on the related topic of menopause, please see: Liana B. Winett & Louise Dalingwater (30 Mar 2025): “Women are hard to study”: US and UK National Legislator discourse on menopause-related research, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2483537]

As in the two previous entries, I take each article, summarise its main argument, note the materials it uses and make a few comments on how WPR is adopted/adapted. My hope is that engaging with articles that draw on WPR will assist those who wish to use it. 

All three articles are stimulating and insightful. I highlight what each contributes to a critical analysis of menstruation-“related” policies. I have problematised “related” because, as we shall see, useful insights are generated primarily by removing the focus from menstruation as the “problem”. 

Working on this topic reminded me of earlier reflections (Bacchi 1999: 5-6) on the possible gains and losses accompanying “social problem” status. McAllister (2025, p. 1) notes that “In recent years, attention to menstrual policy has proliferated at both the national and international level”. So, you could say that menstruation has achieved social problem status. According to the sociologist, Armand Mauss (1975: x), the fact that we debate and deal with “social problems” is a sign of the health of our democracy. In contrast, it is possible to suggest that it is the very nature of the piece-meal approach to change encouraged by “social problem” thinking which keeps change within limits and manageable.

Because both King and McAllister et al. deal with Global Health policy, I comment on their contributions first. We will then turn in the next entry to Koskenniemi and the situation in Finland. 

ARTICLE 1: 

King, S. 2023. Why current menstrual policies do not work. Nature Human Behaviour 8(11): 2072-2073, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01996-4

Brief Summary:

This is a short, highly insightful piece of writing that deserves close attention. King targets the following topics: “period poverty”; “tampon tax” policy changes; “menstrual leave” and “menopause leave” policies; and educational policies to do with menstruation. She argues that, in the case of most menstrual and menopausal policies to date, the “problem” 

“appears to be the menstruating body (and “women” by association), rather than universal menstrual ignorance and taboos, associated discriminatory beliefs and practices, and those who profit from these things”. 

Material used:

Because of the nature of this short opinion piece, King does not describe her sources in any detail. She makes reference to WHO and UNICEF guidelines, and to New York State policy. Doubtless, King’s other publications on the topic would provide details on the material informing her critical analyses. See:

King S. Menstrual Leave: Good Intention, Poor Solution. In: Hassard Juliet, Torres LD, editors. Aligning Perspectives in Gender Mainstreaming, Springer International Publishing; 2021, p. 151–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53269-7_9.

King, S. (2020). Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) and the myth of the irrational female. In C. Bobel, I. T. Winkler, 

B. Fahs, K. A. Hasson, E. A. Kissling, & T.-A. Roberts (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of critical menstruation 

studies (pp. 319–336). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0614-7_25

Applying WPR thinking:

King indicates her interpretation of WPR in the comment: “What a policy proposes to do, reveals what the creators assume is problematic (needs to change).” I have said something similar on numerous occasions. Here is my version of this argument in the 2016 book with Susan Goodwin titled Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice (p. 16): 

“The WPR approach starts from a simple idea: that what we propose to do about something indicates what we think needs to change and hence what we think the ‘problem’ is”. 

A distinction here is that King targets “what the creators assume is problematic”, whereas I do not mention “creators”. A more substantive point is that both the quote from King and my 2016 comment fail to make the step from competing “views” of the “problem” to how the “problem” is produced as a particular form of problem. In my Keynote address for the 2022 Karlstad International WPR Symposium, I specify that the first key premise of WPR is: “Policies (and other practices) produce(enact or constitute) ‘problems’ as particular sorts of problems” ( Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se).

This distinction is an important one. To talk about what someone assumes is problematic (King) or what we think needs to change (me in 2016) keeps the whole analysis at the level of conjecture. By contrast, to refer to how a “problem” is produced as a particular sort of problem means that the analytic target becomes the ways in which problem representations shape lives and worlds. In line with a performative perspective, problem representations are “the practices through which things take on meaning and value” (Shapiro 1988: xi) rather than impressions of “problems”. This distinction comes up for discussion in the sections on both McAllister et. al and Koskenniemi (below and next entry).

Insights generated: 

King uses her understanding of WPR to offer important insights into the politics surrounding menstruation. I offer a few examples. She notes how in the Global North and the Global South, the policy “solution” to the “problems” of “period poverty” and “Menstrual Hygiene Management” typically involves “access to free disposable period products”. With this “solution”, the “problem” is represented to be “(unmanaged) periods”: 

“This, unfortunately, frames periods and female bodies as the problem rather than the government policies and societal gender inequalities that directly contribute to increasing poverty, especially amongst women and girls, or the fact that most schools (and workplaces) are not fit for people who menstruate, or the huge profit margins involved in the sale of expensive disposable period products (and other products subject to ‘pink tax’).” 

As another example, the “solution” of “menstrual leave” and “menopause leave policies” positions the healthy female body as the “problem” rather than “inadequate work environments” which “penalise rest breaks or the uptake of sick leave”. King is not saying that either free menstrual products or “menstrual leave” are undesirable reforms but that it is important to see what such interventions problematise and what they leave in place. 

ARTICLE 2:

McAllister, J., Amery, F., Channon, M. and Thomson, J. 2025. Where is menstruation in global health policy? The need for a collective understanding. GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH
2025, VOL. 20, NO. 1, 2448272 https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2024.2448272

Brief Summary:

McAllister et al. target “how menstruation actually is understood at present within global health policy”. They describe WPR as “an approach to critical frame analysis” that offers “competing constructions” of menstruation “as an issue” (Abstract). The goal is to produce a “collective understanding” of menstruation. The authors produce a useful Table outlining the dominant (menstrual hygiene management (MHM), menstrual health) and sub-dominant (menstrual rights, menstrual (in)justice) “framings” of menstruation. They proceed to analyse the policy texts (defined broadly) of important international organisations to see which of these “framings” are endorsed currently.

Materials used: 

Table 1 in the article lists the large number of “documents analysed by organisation”. These include policy statements and guidance notes from WHO, UNICEF, UN Women and CSW [Commission on the Status of Women], UNFPA, UNESCO and the World Bank. Alongside these more conventional sources used in WPR studies, McAllister et al. add “websites (including video), press releases and shorter statements produced by these organisations in relation to key events” (p. 6). The article thus illustrates both how WPR can be applied to a large number of texts and also how it can be applied to material beyond the boundaries of its original development. Marshall (2012) explains at some length how she performed a WPR analysis of the World Bank’s “multimodal” and “hypertextual” webpages in her study of “disability mainstreaming”, extending the forms of material available for use. 

Applying WPR thinking:

As mentioned, McAllister et al. (2024) describe WPR as an “approach to critical frame analysis”. Having spent some time in an earlier Research Hub entry distinguishing WPR from CFA (Critical Frame Analysis) (30 Dec. 2024), it is useful to consider how McAllister et al.’s position on WPR has eventuated. I take responsibility for this confusion. However, I need to explain that my thinking on WPR has developed over time. I have always described it as a “work-in-progress”. Hence, you should not be surprised if the theoretical stance has evolved. Indeed, because this is the case, it is important to read more recent work (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016) rather than relying on my earlier publications. 

McAllister et al. (2024: 6) draw heavily on my 1999 book, Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems (Sage). I quote them at some length to indicate how the 1999 book develops a constructionist argument: 

“Bacchi’s critical approach understands that policy problems and solutions are not objective entities, already existing in the world, but rather socially and discursively constructed. In Bacchi’s words, ‘every policy proposal contains within it an explicit or implicit diagnosis of the ‘problem’ (1999, p. 1). She argues that ‘we need to shift our analysis from policies as attempted ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’, to policies as constituting competing interpretations or representations of political issues’ (1999, p. 2).” 

I have highlighted the words “competing interpretations or representations”. Clearly, this position reflects an interpretive paradigm. Also, it is a position that I have moved away from. My Keynote Address at Karlstad (link attached above) noted a shift in WPR from constructionism to performativity. Questioning the earlier 1999 focus on problem representations as “perceptions” or “interpretations”, I state: 

“Problem representations, it is now argued, are not perceptions but performatives. Through their proposals policies shape ‘problems’ and hence alter the existing order to a certain degree. The analytic task becomes identifying the shapes imposed on ‘problems’, where these come from and how they affect lives and worlds.”

I hope you can identify the theoretical shift here from competing interpretations of “problems” to the performative impacts of problem representations. In the latter view, problem representations are not (just) interpretations; they are interventions with “real-world” repercussions.

McAllister et al. (2024: 11) move towards a more performative stance by drawing on what they describe as the “further analysis” prompted by WPR:

“Bacchi’s WPR critical frame analysis urges further analysis. If the above [referring to MHM; see above] is the dominant framing, what is left unproblematic in this representation? What is left unsaid around menstruation? Can the ‘problem’ be conceptualised differently?” 

Pursuing these questions, the authors zoom in on important silences: “the absence of a life course perspective; the lack of attention paid to menstrual related illnesses and conditions; the lack of an integration with SRHR [Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights] approaches; and questions of environmental justice”. 

Insights

By outlining four “framings” of menstruation, McAllister et al. make it easy to consider the issues at stake. They also set the groundwork for establishing health and hygiene as a dominant framework. Drawing on Question 4 on silences in WPR, they identify key dimensions of the issue that tend to be ignored. I highlight a few of these. 

Firstly, the focus on adolescent girls and education means that issues for older women, such as peri/menopause, and transgender and non-binary people, are particularly invisible. …

Secondly, the above policy analysis highlights little discussion of pain or menstrual related illnesses. 

Finally, there is an absence of thinking about environmental issues 

The authors’ stated goal as the need for a “collective understanding” of menstruation follow the kind of analysis they offer. It would be useful to take this goal as a proposal in the WPR sense of the term and to then ask how such a proposal (to find a collective understanding) represents or constitutes the “problem”. The promise of WPR – to take commonsense and turn it around, with an emphasis on power relations – could be illustrated through this exercise.

In the next entry I look in some detail at the contribution by Koskenniemi on the situation in Finland. I discuss this article because it provides an opportunity to clarify where a WPR analysis takes us. 

References

Bacchi, C 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage.

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Marshall, N. 2012. Digging deeper: The challenge of problematising “inclusive development” and “disability mainstreaming”. In A. Bletsas and C. Beasley (eds) Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic interventions and exchanges. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, pp. 53-70. Available as free download from University of Adelaide Press website.