The Discursive Turn in Policy Analysis and the Validation of Policy Stories

This paper is concerned with the language of policy documents in the field of health care, and how ‘readings’ of such documents might be validated in the context of a narrative analysis. The substantive focus is on a comparative study of UK health policy documents ( N = 20) as produced by the various assemblies, governments and executives of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during the period 2000–09. Following the identification of...