Governmentality in North American and Post-Soviet Political Discourses: An Analysis of Presidential Speeches and Their Analogues in the United States, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan Delivered From 1993 to 2021

Authors

  • Anton Oleinik Memorial University of Newfoundland

Keywords:

governmentality, presidential speeches, critical discourse analysis, content analysis

Abstract

This article discusses political discourses in five North American and post-Soviet countries through the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality. Three types of governmentalities (sovereignty, discipline, and security) are differentiated and used in critical discourse analysis. It is shown with the help of quantitative procedures that the governmentality based on security prevailed in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan at the discursive level until the start of the 2010s. The concept of security does not seem to capture all aspects of the system of governance that existed in North America during the same period. State of the Union speeches and their analogues, Google Books corpus, Web of Science, and eLibrary databases of scholarly publications informed the analysis. In total, 119 speeches were content analyzed using a custom-built dictionary.

Author Biography

Anton Oleinik, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Dr. Oleinik’s areas of interest include research methods, with specific focus on mixed research methods and content analysis, critical sociology, and communication studies. He created an online platform for content analysis, ThinkMate.org. His works on research methods were published in Big Data & Society and Quality & Quantity. He authored several monographs: Building Ukraine From Within: A Sociological, Institutional and Economic Analysis of a Nation-State in the Making (Ibidem/Columbia University Press, 2018), The Invisible Hand of Power: An Economic Theory of Gatekeeping (Routledge, 2015), Market as a Weapon: The Socio-Economic Machinery of Dominance in Russia (Routledge, 2011), Organized Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies (Routledge, 2003).

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Published

2023-02-13

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Section

Articles