Manufacturing Politics

There has been extensive research in the social sciences on political discourse; yet its actual production has received very little attention. In this article I explore this dimension, by describing the way in which ordinary political documents (leaflets, programme, website, speeches, etc.) were produced during a municipal election campaign in 2014. The material used is drawn from my work as communication advisor of an opposition candidate and his team of activists for nine months. This immersion in the making of politics allows me to provide an account of the various socio-technical processes underpinning the manufacturing of electoral discourse, from the first drafts to the final publications and diffusion. This article thus seeks to consider the political as a specific regime of enunciation which cannot be reduced to other registers, so as to identify its salient features, distinctive ingredients and particular felicity conditions.