(De)politicisation and the Father’s Clause parliamentary debates

Abstract

Studies making use of (de)politicisation have flourished as governments have embraced technocratic and delegated forms of governance. Yet this increase in use is not always matched by conceptual or analytical refinement. Nor has scholarship generally travelled into empirical terrain beyond economic and monetary policy, nor assessed whether politicising and depoliticising processes could occur simultaneously. It is within this intellectual context that we make a novel contribution by focusing on the (de)politicising discourses, processes and outcomes within policy surrounding assisted reproductive technologies. We reveal a pattern of partial repoliticisation that raises questions about the relationship between governance, technology, society and state.