Logics of Critical Explanation proposed a methodological approach that could render the insights of Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (PDT) and post-Marxist political theory more conducive to critical empirical research. It also offered a language with which to counter positivist tendencies to colonize the space of methods and research strategies, showing how PDT could facilitate both explanatory and critical endeavours. Since its publication in 2007, a number of studies have applied the logics framework to empirical cases, while critically engaging with its methodological and theoretical arguments. The main purpose of this article is to evaluate some of these developments, and to set out some future challenges faced by this research programme.
Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek. 2000. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso.
Carpentier, Nico. 2017. The discursive-material knot: Cyprus in conflict and community media participation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group.
Critchley, Simon, ed. 1996. Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London: Routledge.
Critchley, Simon, and Oliver Marchart, eds. 2004. Laclau: A Critical Reader, London: Palgrave.
Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Dissemination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Geras, Norman. 1990. Discourses of Extremity: Radical Ethics and Post-Marxist Extravagances. London: Verso.
Glynos, Jason. 2012. “Body, discourse, and the turn to matter.” In Language, Ideology, and the Human: New Interventions, edited by Sanja Bahun and Dušan Radunovic, 173–174. London: Ashgate.
Glynos, Jason. 2014. “Hating government and voting against one’s interests: Self-Transgression, enjoyment, critique.” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 19 (2): 179–189.
Glynos, Jason, and David Howarth. 2007. Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political theory, Routledge innovations in political theory. London: Routledge.
Glynos, Jason, and David Howarth. 2019. “The Retroductive Cycle: The Research Process iin Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis.” In Discourse, Culture and Organization, edited by Tomas Marttila, 105–125. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Glynos, Jason, Robin Klimecki, and Hugh Willmott. 2012. “Cooling out the marks: The ideology and politics of the financial crisis.” Journal of cultural economy 5 (3): 297–320.
Glynos, Jason, Robin Klimecki, and Hugh Willmott. 2015. “Logics in policy and practice: a critical nodal analysis of the UK banking reform process.” Critical Policy Studies 9 (4): 393–415.
Glynos, Jason, and Ewen Speed. 2012. “Varieties of co-production in public services: time banks in a UK health policy context.” Critical Policy Studies 6 (4): 402–433.
Glynos, Jason, Ewen Speed, and Karen West. 2015. “Logics of marginalisation in health and social care reform: Integration, choice, and provider-blind provision.” Critical Social Policy 35 (1): 45–68.
Griggs, Steven, Stephen Hall, David Howarth, and Natacha Seigenuret. 2017. “Prospects for the “Sustainable City”: Characterizing and Evaluating Rival Discourses of Radical Change in Bristol and Grenoble” Political Geography 591: 36–46.
Griggs, Steven, and David Howarth. 2019. “Discourse, policy and the environment: hegemony, statements and the analysis of U.K. airport expansion.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 21 (5): 464–478.
Griggs, Steven, and David Howarth. 2013. The politics of airport expansion in the United Kingdom: hegemony, policy and the rhetoric of ‘sustainable aviation’. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hawkins, Benjamin. 2015. “Fantasies of subjugation: a discourse theoretical account of British policy on the European Union.” Critical Policy Studies 9 (2): 139–157.
Howarth, David. 2005. “Applying Discourse Theory: The Method of Articulation.” In Discourse theory in European politics, edited by David Howarth and Torfing Jacob, 316–349. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Howarth, David. 2013. Poststructuralism and After: Structure, Subjectivity and Power, London: Palgrave.
Jacobs, Thomas. 2020. “The Post-Marxist political economy of EU Trade: A discourse-theoretical analysis of the construction of political agency in the European Parliament.” Accessed June 5, 2020. Available at SSRN: [URL] or
Jacobs, Thomas and Robin Tschötschel. 2019. “Topic models meet discourse analysis: a quantitative tool for a qualitative approach” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 22 (5): 469–485.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2004. “Glimpsing the Future.” In Laclau: a critical reader, edited by Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart, 279–328. London; New York: Routledge.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics, London: Verso.
Marttila, Tomas. 2015. Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis: From Political Difference to Empirical Research. London: Palgrave.
Mouzelis, Nicos. 1990. Post-Marxist Alternatives: The Construction of Social Orders. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Remling, Elise. 2018. “Logics, assumptions and genre chains: a framework for poststructuralist policy analysis.” Critical Discourse Studies 15 (1): 1–18.
Skelcher, Chris, Helen Sullivan, and Steven Jeffares. 2013. Hybrid Governance in European Cities. London: Palgrave.
Tønder, Lars, and Lasse Thomassen, eds. 2005. Radical Democracy: Politics Between Abundance and Lack. Manchester: MUP.
West, Karen. 2011. “Articulating discursive and materialist conceptions of practice in the logics approach to critical policy analysis.” Critical Policy Studies 5 (4): 414–433.
Zienkowski, Jan. 2019. “Politics and the political in critical discourse studies: state of the art and a call for an intensified focus on the metapolitical dimension of discursive practice.” Critical Discourse Studies 16(2): 131–148.
Zienkowski, Jan, and Benjamin De Cleen. 2020. “The polyphonic critique of trade unions: unpacking the logics of union critical discourse.” Critical Discourse Studies, online first.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1990. “Beyond discourse-analysis.” In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 249–260. London: Verso.
Gkagkelis, Vangelis, Haris Malamidis & Konstantinos Roussos
2024. Cooperative Media and the Politics of Class: Exploring Post-capitalist Logics in the Cooperative Media of Ef.Syn and AlterThess. In Class, Culture, and the Media in Greece, Volume 2, ► pp. 231 ff.
Hurtado Hurtado, Joshua & Jason Glynos
2024. Navigating desires beyond growth: the critical role of fantasy in degrowth’s environmental politics and prefigurative ethics. Environmental Politics► pp. 1 ff.
Hurtado Hurtado, Joshua, Pasi Heikkurinen, Toni Ruuska, Sophia E. Hagolani‐Albov & Kari Koppelmäki
2024. Counter‐hegemonic ethics for sustainable business. Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility
Keller, Reiner
2024. Discourse Perspectives in the Wake of Foucault. In The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse, ► pp. 201 ff.
Schneider, Julius
2024. Waiting for strategy, or: How post-structuralist discourse theory learned to stop worrying and love computational methods. Journal of Political Power 17:3 ► pp. 268 ff.
2023. Raping turtles and kidnapping children: Fantasmatic logics of Scandinavia in Russian and German anti-gender discourse. Nordic Journal of Media Studies 5:1 ► pp. 95 ff.
Farkas, Johan
2023. News on fake news. Journal of Language and Politics 22:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Genç, Merve
2023. #NotDying4Wallstreet: A Discourse Analysis on Health vs. Economy during COVID-19. Societies 13:2 ► pp. 22 ff.
Papadimitropoulos, Vangelis & Haris Malamidis
2023. Prefiguring the counter-hegemony of open cooperativism: The case of Open Food Network. Journal of Rural Studies 101 ► pp. 103067 ff.
Fearn, Gareth
2022. The age of the manager is over? Shale gas fracking and the challenge to the post-political regime for English planning. Political Geography 93 ► pp. 102550 ff.
Fearn, Gareth
2024. Planning incapacitated: Environmental planning and the political ecology of austerity. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 56:5 ► pp. 1401 ff.
Telleria, Juan & Jorge Garcia-Arias
2022. The fantasmatic narrative of ‘sustainable development’. A political analysis of the 2030 Global Development Agenda. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 40:1 ► pp. 241 ff.
De Cleen, Benjamin, Jana Goyvaerts, Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos & Yannis Stavrakakis
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.
