Liberal discourse – An invisible hand in free trade research? : An investigation into how global trade discourse is created through discourse interaction within research.

Abstract: This paper uses a quantitative content analysis informed by a critical realist framework to study the patterns of international political economy discourse prevalence within research articles concerning free trade. Once categorized, there are observable differences in the extent to which articles in the different categories address other discourses. Analyzing these patterns using concepts from discourse theory, we suggest that the liberal discourse constitutes a regime of truth to which the other discourses must relate. It is also found that articles published in higher ranking journals are less likely to address other discourses. We argue that this could be explained as being an effect of the larger readership of those journals.