‘What’s the Problem?’: Political Theory, Rhetoric and Problem‐Setting

Abstract

This essay argues that political theorists interested in analysing, understanding or evaluating political problems in the ‘real world’ should consider the ways in which such problems are specified through a rhetorical process of definition. It discusses, in general terms, the relationship of rhetoric to political theory and examines in some detail the way in which different writers, developing applications of political theory to Northern Ireland, employ literary and figurative techniques in specifying the problem they propose to ‘resolve’. I argue that much of the dispute between such writers turns on different claims about the ‘facts’ and thus on different ways of conceiving the ‘problem’. In conclusion the essay calls for closer attention to the rhetoric of problem‐setting.

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