Low Emission Zones as contentious environmental policymaking: discursive dynamics unraveled

European cities increasingly adopt Low Emission Zones as a policy measure against local air pollution. However, since Low Emission Zones (LEZ) engage with wicked problems, their implementation recurrently triggers society-wide protest and political dispute. The debates on LEZ are, therefore, particularly relevant to the study of contentious environmental policymaking. Despite their relevance as controversial policy debates, scholars limit analysis of LEZ to their characteristics as a policy measure (e.g. environmental and health impact) while disregarding broader dynamics of LEZ as a policy debate (e.g. the presence of dispute and interactions, the long-term and context-specific character). This contribution removes these limitations through a discourse network analysis, the first one performed in the context of policy debates on mobility, of the debate on LEZ in the city of Ghent (Belgium). As discourse network analysis is a methodological tool that combines qualitative content coding with quantitative network analysis (Leifeld, 2020), the debate is not only described but also measured and rendered visually understandable. First, drawing on the analysis of 38 town council meeting reports and 76 local newspaper articles, the discourses, i.e. the networks of arguments, as well as the discourse coalitions, i.e. the networks of actors in the debate, are identified and mapped. Then, these discourses and discourse coalitions are measured in terms of polarisation within and between them. Finally, the discourses and discourse coalitions are traced over time, made possible through the collection of data over the entire period of political debate from 2015 to 2022, to expose dynamics of stability and change, in particular to detect disruptive moments or so-called ‘discursive interpellations’ (Hajer, 1995, p. 60), ‘discursive shifts’ (Späth & Rohracher, 2010) or ‘critical moments’ (Yuana et al., 2020). This in-depth empirical discourse network analysis of the policy debate on the LEZ in the city of Ghent offers an approach to the LEZ going beyond the partial ones traditionally found in the literature. It proposes insights on LEZ as a political quandary and the dynamics of contentious environmental policymaking. References Leifeld, P. (2020). Policy Debates and Discourse Network Analysis: A Research Agenda. Politics and Governance, 8, 180. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v8i2.3249 Hajer, M. (1995). The politics of environmental discourse. Clarendon. Späth, P., & Rohracher, H. (2010). ‘Energy regions’: The transformative power of regional discourses on socio-technical futures. Research Policy, 39(4), 449-458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2010.01.017 Yuana, S. L., Sengers, F., Boon, W., Hajer, M. A., & Raven, R. (2020). A dramaturgy of critical moments in transition: Understanding the dynamics of conflict in socio-political change. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 37, 156-170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2020.08.009