PAPER WITHDRAWN--2414----Discoursal Production in Social Europe: Social Policy Work as Social Meaning Production.

This paper introduces a 'discoursal production' approach to the study of new modes of governance in the construction of Social Europe. These new modes of governance are a broad phenomenon that are adopted and refined on various scales by advanced liberal societies, as well as the EU. The 'discoursal production' approach overcomes the shortcomings of current studies that reproduce a division between the production of ideas, arguments, statements, etc., and organizational practices, which articulate, draft, communicate, and implement these ideational elements. A consistent bottom-up inquiry into the production of social policies becomes possible with this approach. One conspicuous aspect of the formation of the EU is the immense production of texts and the accompanying forms of societal arrangements that coordinate and articulate text production processes in the service of the multi-level and multi-lateral governance of the EU. The EU is in the process of founding its governing practices on large-scale production of social meanings, whose bearers are texts, whose production process is distinct form document production process. In the EU, the shift from document to text production can be traced to the extension of the European Employment Strategy policy to newer policy domains, identified as 'soft law' governance. This process of legitimization of policy making is founded on text production. 'Soft law' governance has created contention between its proponents and those who defend classical regulatory mechanisms based on 'hard law'. Finally, it is argued that the legitimization of discoursal production of texts necessitates a new vision of European citizen practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]