Shaping acting space: In search of a new political awareness among local authority planners

A discursive perspective on the field of possible actions

Foucault and many others after him have pointed out the contingent character of power. Foucault (1983) concluded that a relationship of power is ‘a mode of actions upon actions’ and that to govern is therefore ‘to structure the possible field of action of others’. A thorough analysis of the structuring principles of such fields was conducted by Laclau and Mouffe in their seminal work from 1985. Building on, yet also distancing themselves from Foucault, they refer to the field of possible actions as ‘the space of hegemony’, thereby underlining that there cannot be any spaces that are not discursively constructed (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). A basic thought running through their work is thus that there is no essential meaning to be found in the core of a subject. Meaning is instead constructed through the articulation of relations between different subjects. However, there will always be attempts to articulate certain relations as more legitimate than others, aiming at establishing hegemony around certain issues. This means that every subject position is a discursive position reflecting the interests it seeks to identify with and that identity should be understood as ‘purely relational’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985).

Discursive spaces of possible actions are thus never totally determined, as there are always elements that have not yet been articulated or around which there are struggles over meanings. If there were not, Laclau and Mouffe underline, no articulation would be possible and there would be nothing to hegemonise. Against this background, Laclau and Mouffe argue that the field of possible actions is inherently political.

Also building on Foucault is the growing body of research on ‘governmentality’. Much of this research takes its starting point in the shift from governing through a strong welfare state to more neo-liberal governing. Such a shift has often been described as a change in rationalities and techniques for governing ‘at a distance’ (Dean, 2010; Miller and Rose, 2008) and builds on the thought that political power cannot be reduced to the sphere of the state. Thus, the perception of the state is no longer that of a coherent body. Instead, there is an understanding of the state as a regulating discourse, which finds its expression not only through a network of institutions of temporal stability and authority but also in diverse mechanisms for self-governing:

Regimes of government do not determine forms of subjectivity. They elicit, promote, facilitate, foster and attribute various capacities, qualities and statuses to particular agents. They are successful to the extent that these agents come to experience themselves through such capacities [ … ]. Much of the problem of government here is less one of identity than one of ‘identification’. (Dean, 2010: 43)

Miller and Rose (2008; see also Alvesson and Willmott, 2002) emphasise the crucial role professionals play in the shift towards such a mode of governing. The increasing use of mechanisms of audit, through goals, targets, measurements, in combination with the implementation of webs of accountability and authority, all contribute to make the actions and judgment of professional agents governable. Such mechanisms are often presented as ‘techniques for restoring trust’, although what they implicitly presuppose is ‘a culture of mistrust’ (Dean, 2010). The discrepancy thereby established, between ambition and motivation among professionals on one hand and insufficient outcome on the other, is described by Miller and Rose as a central element in governing at a distance. According to them, such a ‘recurrent diagnosis of failure’ is what implants among professionals the will to self-govern and, in the long run, forms the link between political objectives decided upon in one place and actions in another:

We do not live in a governed world so much as a world traversed by the ‘will to govern’, fuelled by the constant registration of ‘failure’, the discrepancy between ambition and outcome, and the constant injunction to do better next time. (Miller and Rose, 2008: 71)

From the above, it is clear that the field of possible actions is inherently political, in the way it is simultaneously discursively constructed by hegemonic power struggles and self-governed by processes of identification among agents. It is also clear that an ongoing shift in governing modes is leading to new conditions framing the role of the professional. In order to further unfold what is identified here as a need for deeper awareness of how hegemonic power struggles and processes of identification are deeply interconnected and how they interact in the shaping of planners’ acting space, Dyrberg’s analysis of power as a continuous, circular process of identification is of particular interest.

The circular structure of power

Dyrberg (1997) makes a distinction between a higher order level of power and a lower order level of power. An analysis on the higher order level is focused on how power works through identification processes, while the lower order level analysis can be viewed as concerned with identifying particular hegemonic discourses and strategies. What Dyrberg sets out to scrutinise is whether it is possible to presuppose and posit an ‘ability’ within a subject. His power analysis, in which he draws primarily on Foucault and Laclau and Mouffe, is thus on the higher order level and seems highly relevant for understanding how acting space is shaped. However, he is also concerned with how the two levels of power are built into each other, that is, how the higher order level conditions the lower order:

[A] higher-order level of analysing power looks at the ongoing processes of the constitution of identity into which particular strategies insert themselves in order to give these processes form and content. But these strategies at the lower-order level can never fill in, or fully domesticate, ability as such. (Dyrberg, 1997: 11)

Much seems to indicate that the distinction Dyrberg makes between a higher order and a lower order level of power could be understood as the difference Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and Mouffe (2005) make between ‘the political’ on the one hand and ‘politics’ on the other (see also Dyrberg, 2004). Mouffe, for example, describes ‘the political’ as ‘the dimension of antagonism which I take to be constitutive of human societies’, while by politics she refers to ‘the set of practices and institutions through which an order is created, organizing human coexistence in the context of conflictuality provided by the political’ (Mouffe, 2005). Dyrberg (1997) gives a similar description:

One ought to distinguish between political authority as a process characterizing the political structure (the political) and the activity of engaging in this process (politics). (p. 93)

In accordance with many post-structuralists, Dyrberg’s higher order power analysis is a thorough criticism of the way power is often perceived, that is, as a presupposed causal ability posited in either the agent or the structure (see Torfing, 2009, for an analysis of the modern notion of power as causation). Instead, he shows how the very construction of a linear relationship, between a presupposed cause and an effect, is in itself what defines power. Moreover, he shows how this construction cannot but be retroactive and therefore, ought to be understood as circular.

In the centre of Dyrberg’s higher order level analysis of power, just as in Laclau and Mouffe’s analysis of ‘the political’, is the assumption that there is no essential meaning to be found in the core of the subject and, subsequently, that meaning is constructed only through the articulation of relations. It is this lack of essence in the subject that leads the subject into constant attempts to retroactively situate the effects of its actions as if they were already there, as causes for further action. Thus, according to Dyrberg, power should not be understood as that which can be posited in the subject, for example, a certain ability, authority or identity, but rather as that which authorises the retroactive construction of such an ability, authority or identity, as if they were presupposed capacities, possible to posit in the subject.

How such retroactive circular processes of identification operate is described in further detail below. However, before moving on to these more detailed theoretical explorations, it should be underlined that a main argument in this article is that it is the outcome of these processes that, in effect, constitutes a subject’s ‘acting space’. Just as Dyrberg argues that strategies on a lower order level of power can never fully domesticate a subject’s ability, it will be argued here that the same applies for acting space. Consequently, if planners want to understand what it is that defines their possible actions – their ‘acting space’ – then this requires awareness of how hegemonic power struggles and processes of identification are deeply interconnected.

In order to apply Dyrberg’s rather extensive higher order level power analysis to this article’s analysis of the acting space of English local authority planners, three concepts were extracted from his work: ‘the void in signification’, ‘the political moment’ and ‘the becoming of oneself’. An analysis that combines the higher order level with the lower order level, that is, what Dyrberg describes as ‘how particular strategies insert themselves in order to give these processes form and content’, is provided later in this article.

The void in signification

A main conception in Dyrberg’s power analysis is that power derives from nothing but itself. As mentioned above, this is a conceptualisation of power as ‘non-derivative and ‘non-essential’. Dyrberg describes it as ‘an open-ended process of identification’, contingent upon nothing but ‘its own structuring’. Dyrberg begins his power analysis by stating that ‘power as the ability to make a difference is a limit between two situations’, that is, between ‘making’ and ‘difference’. However simple it may sound, according to Dyrberg, moving from making to having made a difference is a complex circular process of identification, including a retroactive positing of ability (an effect) as a capacity already installed in the subject (a cause). Dyrberg describes the identification process as though it circulates around the subject’s lack of essential meaning, that is, its ‘void in signification’: temporally, in the sense that it is constructed so that it moves from a present situation to a previous and back again; spatially, in the sense that the subject is defined by its relations to other subject positions. Important for the analysis here is that this ‘void in signification’ constitutes the very locus for power relations. Thus, it is this void that every hegemonic articulation aims to occupy:

The totality is thus always present in its absence: it is a representation of an absence, the ‘place’ of inscription towards which political strategies direct themselves in order to speak in the name of society. It is, in other words, the locus for the authorization of power, meaning that the hegemonic task of political strategies is to occupy the empty place of the absent totality, which authorizes them to represent society as such. (Dyrberg, 1997: 125)

The political moment

Understanding power as contingent upon nothing but ‘its own structuring’ implies a discursive field of possible actions where there are always elements which have not yet been articulated and over which there can occur struggles over meaning. Hence, processes of identification are by definition characterised by a multitude of possibilities. According to Dyrberg, the moment of transgression between ‘making’ and ‘difference’ could therefore be understood as a moment when ‘pure ability’ is at hand. As such, it is a ‘political moment’ in which the subject is equipped with authority to determine its future direction. However, as described earlier, this is also a moment structured by various hegemonic articulations, aiming at predetermining the subject’s choice of direction. In effect, this means that the subject transforms its ‘political authority’ into ‘legitimate authority’, that is, it directs itself towards certain societal interests in order to gain legitimacy. Moreover, by retroactively positing the effects of its actions as if they were already ‘there’, the subject aims at installing authority to legitimise its choice of direction:

The modern relation between power and authority inaugurates what has been termed the circular structure of power. This is crucial for understanding the relation between the political, politics and society, namely that power strategies erect an authority in whose name they seek legitimation. The success of such an operation depends upon the extent to which a reversed causality can be established in which the effect (authority) somehow precedes its cause (power), and where this cause undertakes to fill out its effect, that is to authorize itself. Politics is above all concerned with this somehow: with construing and cultivating something which is already ‘there’ (autonomy and rationality), which is to say that politics is located in the transgression of the particularity of power and the becoming of the universality of authority. (Dyrberg, 1997: 186–187)

The becoming of oneself

This process of identification, constantly circulating back and forth between the moments of ‘making’ and ‘difference’, but constructed as if it were a linear cause and effect relationship, thus has as its aim to install capacities such as ability, authority and identity into the subject. Furthermore, Dyrberg underlines that processes of identification are continuous processes, with future directions ‘for ever to be decided’. This means that the subject is inscribed into processes in which it continually seeks to install authority to legitimise possible new actions. Of importance is the fact that a subject’s political authority to determine its future direction thus hinges on how legitimacy is being constructed for its previous/present actions. It is in this sense that the subject is constantly occupied with becoming what it already is:

Reality thus conceived is the limit of experience: what the subject is and what it projects itself into, that is, what it is not yet. In the encounter with reality the subject is propelled towards a horizon of signification and into itself in a recoiling movement as that which was already there. It is in these processes of interpretation and identification that the subject becomes what it is. The itselfness of the subject is thus a becoming, whose direction is posed as presupposed. (Dyrberg, 1997: 171)

A main element in all the theories referred to above is an understanding of power as ‘non-essential’ and ‘non-derivative’. Following such an understanding of power, this article takes the stance that a subject’s acting space ought to be understood as defined by discursively constructed processes of identification. The next section of the article further unravels how hegemonic power struggles and processes of identification play out in planning practice, using the practical example of English planning reform 1998–2010.

Introduction to the UK Central Government’s advocacy for a culture change

As the reform agenda is described in detail elsewhere, this section only briefly introduces some of the main documents and objectives informing the changes, before moving on to analyse the reform and culture change agenda from a power perspective.

The first planning policy statement under New Labour was the White Paper Modernising Planning (Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), 1998). Since the time the first Planning Act was introduced in 1947, UK planning had changed relatively little. The White Paper underlined that planning needed to ‘speed up’ decision-making and become more ‘positive’ in its approach. To many, this document indicated that the planning system was unlikely to undergo any major changes under the New Labour government (Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 2000). It soon became clear, however, that improving the performance of local authority planning would be included in New Labour’s wider ‘modernisation agenda’ for local government. With the implementation of the system for ‘Best Value’ performance measures in 1999, a strengthened audit culture was introduced into English local government. This system was built on ‘evidence-based policy’, in which targets, performance measures and budgets were linked to a rewards system aimed at improving public services (Morphet, 2005).

While the introduction of these new governance structures did not indicate major changes for planning in the first White Paper, such changes were more visible in the Green Paper Planning: Delivering a Fundamental Change, which came 3 years later (Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR), 2001). This made it clear that local authority planning was considered to be not simply performing poorly, but actually blocking development and thereby economic prosperity. It called for a new aim, namely, to ‘streamline’ the planning system in order to ‘help authorities to be proactive in encouraging development’. With the new Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, introduced in 2004, a whole new planning system was launched. The Act not only introduced a new framework for plan-making but also new tiers and new contexts for decision-making. The reform was built around the core concept of ‘spatial planning’, introduced partly as a way to establish a new coordinating role for local authority planners. However, considering the previous conclusion that the system was not delivering, it was clear that such changes would not come without challenges. In order to foster a ‘greater consensus about the value and role of planning’ (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), 2005), achieve ‘a shift in attitudes’ and ‘re-invigorate both the skills and capacity of planners’ (Shaw, 2006), the UK Central Government, in parallel with the new Planning Act, launched its wider ‘culture change agenda’.

Deconstructing power as ability

From the above, it is clear that there was growing concern about failures in planning from at least the late 1990s. In New Labour’s first policy statement on planning, the required changes listed primarily focused on greater effectiveness of the system (DETR, 1998). At this time there was a concern for ‘clearer statements of national policy’, ‘effective arrangements’, ‘improvements in local efficiency’ and ‘a willingness to consider economic instruments’. Apart from the latter point, there was nothing that clearly indicated a lack of ability among planners.

A few years later, The RTPI conducted its own investigation into current conditions for planning. In its statement A New Vision for Planning (RTPI, 2001), it supported the Central Government’s request for change, underlining a need for ‘fundamental shifts’. However, according to the RTPI, such a shift would have to address ‘the balance of power and responsibility’. Moreover, planning failures were attributed to the fact that planning processes are characterised by decisions ‘already taken as matters of principle before the local community, politicians and “planners” are involved’ (RTPI, 2001).

The Central Government’s next statement on planning, the Green Paper, left no doubts about the political concern for improvement in planning (DTLR, 2001). As Gunn and Hillier point out, the term ‘fail’ or ‘failure’ occurs as many as 10 times in this document ¹ . There was also a clear shift in how planning’s inabilities were posited. Planners were now identified as a ‘seriously demoralised’ profession, with a lack of self-confidence. As a consequence, ‘able planners’ were recognised as being in increasingly short supply. This prompted the Central Government to take action: ‘We need to improve skills and build the profession’ (DTLR, 2001).

This positing of lack of ability within the planning profession led the Deputy Prime Minister to announce a review of skills among built environment professionals. Suggestions for improvements were presented in The Egan Review (ODPM, 2004). However, already in a pre-study, the Deputy Prime Minister’s investigator concluded that ‘Overall the local authority skills gap is seen as so large that it need co-ordinated action following a pro-active lead by the government’ (ODPM, 2003). The RTPI at this time appointed its own Education Commission. Its Final Report adopted a somewhat more subdued tone than the RTPI statement from 2001, describing the current interest in planning as ‘a moment of rare opportunity’ and emphasising that the RTPI must ‘show leadership’ in order to ‘strengthen the discipline and the profession’ (RTPI, 2003).

It is also worth mentioning that the Confederation of British Industry, in a 2005 assessment of the culture change agenda, reported major dissatisfaction with ‘the ability of the system to function effectively’ and identified skills and capacity expansion within local authorities and other key organisations as a priority for future achievements (Confederation of British Industry (CBI), 2005). In a subsequent national assessment by the Audit Commission, the abilities of planners were again questioned. Having interviewed a number of stakeholders, the Commission identified ‘evidence of lack of skills’, as well as inabilities, in several key areas (Audit Commission, 2006). Indeed, many researchers have not hesitated to place the potential success of planning system reforms with planners (Campbell, 2003; Dixon, 2003; Harrison, 2003; Shaw and Lord, 2007). A recurring view is that the ability to make a difference is not only up to planners but also dependent on planners:

It is clearly up to planners to grasp the opportunity being afforded to them, to do things differently from the recent past and demonstrate how they make a positive contribution. (Shaw and Lord, 2007: 70)

It should be clear from the above that ability, or rather lack of ability, was a prevalent focus in many stakeholder statements informing the culture change agenda in England. Moreover, this lack of ability was increasingly attributed to planners. In the context of English planning reform, the above deconstruction of ‘power as ability’ shows how different political stakeholders, in the name of the culture change agenda, directed their focus towards the ‘void in signification’ in planners, in order to fill it with new hegemonic articulations (for a detailed survey of different stakeholder agendas, see, for example, Inch, 2009a, 2009b; RTPI, 2007). Analysed within Dyrberg’s (1997) circular structure of power, such a process, circulating around the empty core of the subject, could well be perceived to be aimed at identifying an effect (the unable planner), which can be presented as a cause for further actions. It should be underlined that such a self-reinforcing ‘diagnosis of failure’ also works by positing, in the subject, an anxious desire for improvement (Miller and Rose, 2008).

Deconstructing power as authority

The changes brought about by the English planning reform have largely been described as an ongoing devolution of power from national to local level whereby the aim was not only to strengthen planning but also to create a more central role for local authority planning in general (Audit Commission, 2006). However, the changes which came into effect with the 2004 Planning Act are widely, and almost unanimously, perceived as having resulted in an accumulation of power by the Central Government (Allmendinger, 2006; Campbell and Marshall, 2005; Hull, 2000; Morphet, 2005; Wilks-Heeg, 2009; Wood, 2005).

The evidence cited for this conclusion includes the implementation of performance indicator targets, such as time-limited targets for assessment of planning applications; the linking of Planning Delivery Grant to fulfilment of these performance targets by local authorities; the duty of local authorities to prepare Community Strategies in conjunction with other public, private and community sector organisations; the Planning Inspectorate’s binding test of soundness in local plan and strategy making; the introduction of evidence-informed planning in which local plans and strategies are deemed sound only if they are based on a ‘robust and credible’ evidence base; and the duty of local authorities to produce annual monitoring reports. In order to guide local authority planners in the right direction, a wide range of guidance documents such as new Planning Policy Statements and assistance in the form of a Planning Advisory Service were introduced. As a further attempt to get to grips with perceived planning failures, the Central Government stated in a White Paper in 2001 that its intention was to ‘intervene decisively where there is persistent failure’ (DTLR, 2001).

However, it is questionable whether these strategies actually are actions aimed at reinforcing Central Government power. An alternative interpretation is that the strategies are articulations aimed at reinforcing the political objectives of the Central Government, but through a subtle informing and shaping of networks of hegemonic interdependencies, between a range of different authorities, rather than through a controlling state (Dean, 2010; Miller and Rose, 2008).

The prime example contributing to the picture of a more complex governance structure, in which a range of stakeholders are interconnected and authority seems to be dispersed in a net of interdependencies between different actors, is perhaps that described above under the heading of ‘Power as ability’. Thus, a range of different stakeholders can exercise control through the reproduction of a discourse and thereby achieve a wish for improvement with an agent. Other examples of the dispersion of authority through networks of interdependencies are the strengthening of civil servant authority at the expense of that of elected councillors, for example, through binding tests of soundness (Wood, 2005) and through minimising the amount of planning applications being debated by elected councillors (Wilks-Heeg, 2009); the strengthening of market imperatives and local businesses at the expense of local authority, for example, by shifting the distribution of resources from statutory to non-statutory decision-making bodies (Finlayson, 2009; Hull, 2000; Prior, 2005) and the fact that local authorities’ plans and strategies are only deemed sound if they are drawn up in collaboration with other stakeholders (Shaw and Lord, 2009).

The above shows how within English planning reform, ‘power as authority’ was exercised through manifold mechanisms aimed at dispersing power and informing networks of interdependencies. More importantly, it shows how these strategies were targeted at predetermining and guiding the actions of local authority planners and thereby largely predetermining the political moment of ‘being able’. The introduction of an extensive audit culture by the Central Government can be seen as one such mechanism. Performance targets, inspections and soundness tests all contributed to the shaping of professional self-governing. Thus, instead of local authority planners grasping their moment of ‘political authority’, they were governed to seeking their ‘legitimate authority’ in an established chain of cause and effect.

Deconstructing power as identity

In order to analyse how the planning reform affected the acting space of English local authority planners, a total of 11 interviews were conducted within the framework of this study in autumn 2010. It should be mentioned that by that time, New Labour was no longer in government, and the many changes to the planning system announced by the new Coalition Government when it came to power in May 2010 are one reason for uncertainties expressed in interviews. However, this change in the Central Government provided an opportunity to analyse the extent to which ‘political authority’ existed within the planning profession itself.

As the focus was on processes of identification among local authority planners, all 11 interviewees were either working, or had worked, for at least one, but in many cases several, local authorities. In order to represent the local authority planner from a subject position point of view, interviews were conducted not only with planners currently working in different local authorities but also with planners who had previously worked for local authorities and who for different reasons had moved on to other roles within the field. Thus, the 11 planners interviewed represented local authorities (4), retired from local authority (1), consultancies (2), Government Office (1), Planning Inspectorate (1), Planning Advisory Service (1) and RTPI (2). One of the interviewees represented both a workplace and an organisation at the time of interview and all but one held, or in the case of the retired planner had held, a senior position.

Many of the interviewees referred to planning as a field of professional activity struggling for approval. Several referred to the fact that planning often gets a bad press, although many felt that planning is sometimes blamed for things they believed had little to do with the activity of planning. Many also referred to what they identified as a more or less general perception of both planning and planners as being negative. This was seen partly as a consequence of the media reproducing a negative view of planning, partly as something of a political legacy, perceived by some of the interviewees as characterising an older generation of planners in particular:

I think one of the difficulties that exists is a lot of the planners have been on the scene for 20–30 plus years and they had a negative mind-set. And that has in many respects held planning back. (Planner 2)

To some extent, the interviewees internalised the problems they perceived and posited them in the profession itself. For example, the planning profession was referred to as being inward looking, inclined to use incomprehensible language, not able to engage fully, not able to stand criticism, not able to make an impact on public debate, demoralised and without good leadership. Regarding planning reform as a means of getting to grips with such failures, the introduction of evidence-informed planning, with soundness tests and different forms of auditing, was seen initially by many as something that could add new credibility to the planning profession. A few of the interviewees also referred to their professional role as though it had been strengthened. However, for the majority, these changes appeared to have resulted in a form of apprehension within the profession:

We are all a little bit scared that we are not gathering enough. And I think that planners have lost trust in their own abilities and skills a bit. (Planner 9)

[T]he problem has been the fear then with the system, which also had soundness tests, and a lot of plans initially failing those soundness tests. So a culture of fear developed, of ‘Well you know, if we don’t do everything perfect, and even if we do, we still might get challenged’. You got into a situation, I think, of anarthria. Fear. (Planner 7)

Although improved confidence in planning was a major goal for the culture change agenda, few of the interviewees believed that confidence had improved. Many expressed concerns over what could perhaps best be described as a lack of authority. This was perceived not only in relation to the media and the public, as mentioned above, but also in relation to the Central Government, local politicians and other actors within the sphere of the local authority:

I also sort of feel that there has come this thing, and perhaps not with the Planning Inspectorate and so on, but perhaps with the members and other officers, in other services; if a consultant doesn’t say something to you, if it is ‘just the planners’ telling them something, they don’t really believe it, whereas if a consultant comes along and says it, they believe it. And you have paid them 20 000 pound to do so, you know. So there is that sort of credibility gap. That might be a very cynical attitude, but I feel that it is very much so. (Planner 9)

I mean, I do feel there is an element of we try to consult with across key sectors of the council but they don’t tend to work the other way quite so much and whereas we only find out about things that they have done later on. (Planner 8)

It gets political, you know. I mean, the development management, you can spend a long time trying to get to the right decision, which is the most equitable decision you could get. And then a local member comes in and just, you know, walks roughshod over the whole thing. Maybe he hasn’t even read the case properly. (Planner 10)

Some of the interviewees also reflected on situations where they would act according to the system, even if it meant acting against their professional judgment. One planner pointed out that as a local authority planner, one is expected to accept political influence guiding one’s judgement. Others pointed to the fact that they sometimes had to defend decisions taken against their original recommendation. One planner noted that local authority planners work under the risk of losing their job, if they are not seen as loyal:

At the local authority the counsellors can influence planning scenes, obviously at the planning committee, but also behind the scenes. And I think that was something that I struggled with. I think to some degree. Regardless of what you thought the planning phase was there was a political influence there and you were encouraged to make decisions one way or the other and in accordance with that. (Planner 3)

You end up things going to appeal and when it comes to an appeal, the council’s having to defend their decision, but they are actually having to defend that of a member who has gone against the officer’s professional decision, or recommendation. So it gets very difficult sometimes. (Planner 8)

A lot of planners I know, they are demoralised. And of course they are used to work into local politicians so they, they are, they tend not to challenge local politicians. And when they do, they get criticised. Sometimes they get taken out of their job. (Planner 11)

[W]e seem to be just pushed back to defenders of the system. You know: ‘You have got to go through that process before you do it’. And not seen as innovative or, you know, able to have new or imaginative ideas. That seems to be taken away from us. (Planner 9)

In view of the above, there appears to have been a decrease in the ability of local authority planners to exercise ‘political authority’. Another important finding was that although many of the interviewees referred to conditions with which they were uncomfortable, the majority continued to seek their legitimacy within the system. An extreme view of this attitude was expressed by one planner, whose statement appears to hint at devaluation of planners’ judgement:

In the old system, and I still find this incredible, I wasn’t really realising it when I was younger, you only produced evidence if somebody challenged you about your policy. Taking it another way, your policy didn’t have to have any evidence. Which means you didn’t have to say to anybody why you were doing this. It was almost as if it was your professional judgment. (Planner 6)

However, another planner described what he/she perceived as an unwillingness within the profession to question current conditions in the following way:

That’s a bit like the Emperor’s got no clothes. Until somebody shouts you don’t know that the Emperor is nude. And I am afraid this is how I see planning. The profession is moribund. (Planner 7)

Within the scope of this study, planners’ ‘becoming of oneself’ should be perceived as the outcome of processes of identification, in which much more than professional skills is at stake. The discursive reproduction of failures in English local authority planning and the positing of such failures with planners (e.g. negativity, especially with an older generation; demoralisation; lack of ability and skills) contributed to creating an acceptance among planners to conform to the system (e.g. acting in accordance with political influence regardless of the phase of the planning process, not challenging local politicians and defending the system even if it meant acting against professional judgement). This deconstruction of ‘power as identity’ shows that the ‘becoming’ of the planner in every sense is political; it is the power to install, or de-install, authority into a subject’s former/present position, in order to facilitate and foster its choice of future direction.