Understanding emerging discourses of Marine Spatial Planning in the UK

This paper investigates the emergence of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) through Rhetorical Analysis of three UK marine policy documents. The analysis focuses on the rhetorical presentation of key MSP policy documents located within the previous Government period and seeks to reveal the rationality of how MSP was constructed at that time. This highlights the assumptions and ideologies emerging from this area of Government regulation and suggests that MSP reveals a discourse that may be aligned with New Labour and that bears the hallmarks of post-political environmental consensus. The findings of the analysis allow us to understand the significance of MSP's emergence and to question the future of MSP within a new political context.