Reckoning Schemes of Legitimation: On Commissions of Inquiry as Power/Knowledge Forms

Abstract

Drawing upon literature from Australia, Canada, England, India, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States this article offers an alternative framework for the study of Commissions of Inquiry. Conventional understandings of such inquiries as policy‐making instruments of Government fail to grasp the significance of their political form. A reading which stresses the symbolic and ritual aspects of their work and analyses the forms of communication which are organized through public inquiries provides a better framework for grasping the place of these institutions in the reproduction of State power. This article argues that public inquiries derive authority from their distinctive legal, social, and epistemological status. The work of such inquiries can be characterized as ‘reckoning schemes of legitimation’, and this work structures political discourse in three phases: investigative, persuasive, and archival. The abiding significance of Commissions lies not simply in the investigation of facts and the recommendation of policy, but in the elaboration of the ‘idea of the state’. Such schemes of legitimation serve in constituting a realm of discourse through which collective action vis‐à‐vis Society by those who act in the name of the State becomes thinkable, and thereby organizable.

The place of drink: Temperance and the public, 1856–1914

“…Temperance publications and speeches were highly heterogeneous forms of evidence, composed of statistical data, tables, maps, quotes from literature and historical sources, eyewitness accounts, photographs, anecdotes and news cuttings. Despite this, these arguments resemble that form of writing perfected by the nineteenth-century British state: the report of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (Ashworth 1990). This is because they face a similar task of establishing and legitimating the conditions for intervention; Ashworth argues that the Commission's role is to assess 'schemes of legitimation', to consider State procedure and establish its right to act.…”

La commission d’enquête comme réflexivité gouvernementale

“…Les whigs réformateurs et les « libé-raux » utilitaristes ont fait la promotion des commissions royales et s'en sont servis pour lutter contre le clientélisme politique connu sous le nom de Old Corruption. Pratiquement toutes les réformes majeures sous la pré-tendue « English revolution in government » du XIX e siècle ont été précé-dées de commissions d'investigation spécialement chargées d'obtenir des informations sur « l'existence des faits » afi n de justifi er des changements, voire d'encadrer l'élaboration de politiques rationnelles 6 . Ces enquêtes ont documenté aussi bien les cas de paupérisme, de misère du prolétariat que la culture bornée de la bourgeoisie et de l'aristocratie.…”

Community Engagement to Facilitate, Legitimize and Accelerate the Advancement of Nanotechnologies in Australia

“…This has been ensured through arrangements that maintain the under-representation of critical stakeholders and the 'scientization' ( [47]: 169) of the debate; a framing that reduces 'complex social, ethical, spiritual, and physical issues often associated with controversial technology-policy choices… to narrow technical/scientific matters'. This framing arguably maximizes opportunities for technology promoters and investors [1,26].…”