Narrative reinventions as cognitive mechanisms for public policy stability: the case of anti-drug policy in Colombia

Abstract Public policies face major challenges to their consolidation and stability that force rulers to make significant political efforts to keep them alive. Some of these challenges occur by the adjustment of the policy’s idea as an attempt to reduce the possible difficulties caused by public confrontation, thus better adapting them to the reference frame of the actors. Such is the case of Colombia’s drug control policy which did not have sufficient legitimacy to be carried out, despite international pressure, but it was later coupled to the international agenda as a national need. By using the critical discourse analysis, this study verifies how the discursive transformation of this policy took place and the cognitive mechanisms used to reinterpret it as a matter of national security and not international co-responsibility, which allowed consolidation of the current prohibitionist strategy. The results of the study reveal an interpretation of the drug trafficking problem as a threat to the institutional order, which reduces the confrontation capacity of the critics of the proposed policy.

摘要：公共政策在巩固与稳定进程中面临诸多重大挑战，迫使执政者投入大量政治努力以维系其存续。此类挑战中，有一部分源于对政策理念的调整——旨在降低公众对抗可能引发的各类困难，进而更好地适配政策相关主体的认知框架。哥伦比亚的毒品管控政策正是此类情况：尽管面临国际施压，该政策最初缺乏足够的执行合法性，但后续却以国家需求之名被纳入国际议程。本研究采用批判话语分析（critical discourse analysis）方法，验证了该政策的话语转型过程，以及用以将其重新诠释为国家安全议题而非国际共同责任的认知机制，这一机制助力当前禁令式禁毒策略得以巩固。本研究结果显示，毒品贩运问题被诠释为对制度秩序的威胁，这削弱了该拟议政策批评者的对抗能力。