ABSTRACT
Discourse analysis understands discourses as ways of arguing and structuring the world. It can also be explained as a coherent way of talking about and practicing ideas and policies. The Bretton Woods agreement from 1944, that replaced gold standard with United States (US) dollar in a global regulation of commercial and financial relations, can be seen as a major, historical foundation for the development a new powerful international discourse in the 1980s. The proponents of this idea got pivotal assistance from transnational agencies like the World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO) and not least the European Union (EU), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). There is a shift away from hard governance by regulation to soft governance by persuasion. The social contract is a mixture of hard and soft governance and of loose and tight coupling between national and local authorities and institutions.
