Understanding the policy controversy on the low emission zone in Ghent through discursive networks and strategies

Interpretive scholars understand policy controversies as discursive struggles, i.e. as discussions or battles between distinct discourses, in which polarisation and conflict arise from the different meanings actors attribute to policy issues. Accordingly, controversies are analysed through the identification of different discourses and their simplified expressions or storylines that emerge in the debate. However, this often ignores the role of agents and the relational or network character of discursive struggles. Yet, discourses are continuously (re)produced and transformed by actors who discursively position themselves and others in relation to other positions using a set of discursive strategies. We turn attention towards the agentive and network dimension of policy controversies as discursive struggles by analysing the controversy on the implementation of a low emission zone in the city of Ghent. Low emission zones (LEZs) are a controversial policy measure. Their implementation often sparks public protest and political dispute. LEZs are designated areas where specific polluting vehicles are prohibited from circulating. European local governments increasingly implement them to reduce local air pollution, encourage a shift towards more sustainable modes of transportation, and facilitate the deliberate, gradual phase-out of combustion engine vehicles. LEZs can be viewed as exnovations that seek to destabilise existing socio-technological mobility regimes and whose discursive dynamics might indicate or be an entry point for the governance of sustainability transitions. In 2020, the city of Ghent in Belgium decided to implement a LEZ, but later decided to not expand it, making it an interesting case for our study of policy controversies. We perform a discourse network analysis because it enables us to analyse discourses and actors simultaneously and as relational phenomena. Using the Discourse Network Analyzer 3.0.10, we coded 38 reports from town council meetings and 76 articles from local newspapers, all of which contain explicit references to “emissie [emission] zone” and were issued between 2015 and 2022. The town council documents offer comprehensive and in-depth insights into the policy debate while the newspaper articles ensure the inclusion of perspectives from formally non-political actors. We obtained the documents by contacting the city administration and accessing the Gopress database. First, we take a broad perspective on the debate: we identify the discourses, the discourse coalitions, their storylines and we measure polarisation. This enables us to uncover the degree as well as the issues of conflict in the policy controversy. Second, we focus on the discursive strategies that are used in the debate: we distinguish analytical and evaluative arguments from discursive strategies, which discursively position others and seek to harm their credibility and legitimacy, and we analyse their role in the debate. We thus make an analytical move from descriptively presenting discourse networks towards assessing the explanatory value of discursive strategies for discursive stability and change in the policy controversy. The in-depth and detailed analysis of the LEZ controversy in Ghent demonstrates the importance of understanding policy controversies as discursive relational phenomena and proposes insights on the role of agents who mobilise distinct discursive strategies, such as eco-shaming, to influence the controversy.