Liminalation in the evaluation of regional programs

Abstract

Over the course of the last few decades, research based on postmodern discourse methodologies has been increasingly gaining force in social sciences, including public administration. We have made sure of its empirical value while experimenting recently with dispositive analysis. It empowered us to reveal what it means to evaluate regional programs in European Union texts and contexts while looking for disremembered general social rules. This time we would like to proceed with the slightly modified type of methodology directed at illuminating some other common patterns of meanings related to liminalation. The term refers to the discursive processes by which a system progresses from one state to a different one, losing the old structures, hierarchies, and statuses. What has been changed in the narratives on the evaluation of the EU regional programs during the period in which two reports on the implemented programs have appeared? Which old mental structures, hierarchies, and statuses have been transformed? What are some interesting conceptual shreds that have been evolving in the investigated discourse? It is claimed that policy actors tell stories and listen to others’ stories, as well as change meanings to their own context (Needham, 2012).We discuss new stories envisaged in the select texts of evaluated programs and are looking for new meanings, values and emotions as engines for change, sharing experience with the utmost social aim to transcend the boundaries of positivistic perspective while applying its alternative approach.