Discourse And Power: An Analysis Of Discourse And Practice In Global Internet Governance

Influenced by the “linguistic turn” in international relations studies which regards language as a fundamental dimension of international politics and departs from rationalist theories on power,IR scholars have developed two distinct types of discourse research in the field: Habermasian micro-interactional approaches that emphasize the communicative aspects of discourse and Foucauldian macro-structural approaches focusing on discourse as structures of meanings.This paper,by applying the three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis,demonstrates an attempt to combine the two approaches and construct a link between communicative events and meaning structures,text and broader social and political context.On the premises that power struggles often take the form of discursive practices and political texts are therefore excellent objects to study power relations,this paper argues for a constitutive relationship between discourse and power: discourse is both grounded in power relations and is a central parameter in power relations.On the one hand,actors produce hegemonic discourse and strategically exploit discursive tactics in order to maintain and consolidate power relations;on the other hand,discourses as meaning structures enable or constrain actors' practices and consequently affect power relations.The theoretic hypothesis is tested through investigation into the institutional development of global internet governance.Discourses and practices of major phases in the process are examined with the three-dimensional framework: the description of the linguistic contents and features of texts(the level of the text);the exploration of processes related to the production and consumption of texts(the level of the discursive practice);and the examination of the wider political and economic context of the communicative events(the level of the social practice).Findings of empirical study show that power relations are embedded in the dominant discourse in global internet governance which emphasizes “private-sector leadership” and “multi-stakeholderism”.The American government,corporate and technical elites as dominant actors in early internet governance established a neo-liberal governance regime and created a decentralized governance discourse to enhance their control of the internet.Later on,when the U.S.-centric internet governance mechanism was challenged in multi-lateral,inter-governmental settings,the dominant actors succeeded in maintaining their dominance through the structural influence of the discourse and the employment of discursive tactics.However,when the violation of internet freedom was revealed by the PRISM Project,the U.S.government found itself trapped in the rhetoric of the neo-liberal discourse and forced to relinquish its control over ICANN.