ABSTRACT
Politicians in representative democracies often make decisions on issues with a level of complexity that ordinary citizens are not usually in a position to appreciate. Involvement in the war was then sold to the public via a system of meaning that drew on deep cultural grammar and therefore resonated with Australians. Before clarifying some of the ontological and epistemological claims that underpin this question, the nature and importance of the how possible question as a springboard for social explanation should be addressed. Exploring the possibilities for discursive change appears to be something normally credited in international relations literature to constructivism, and this almost certainly can be attributed to the way in which traditional social constructivism is seen to be inherently more agentic than other approaches. Discourse theory, devised by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe is, as the name suggests, less method and more theoretical framework, and it is heavily geared towards poststructuralist linguistic analysis.
