Paper long abstract:

Considering their ubiquity in almost all fields of welfare policy, guidelines seem to play a vital role in the efforts to govern practitioners in the frontline of the welfare state through the supply of scientific knowledge. This paper interrogates the seemingly successful guideline genre. The argument builds on an ethnographical study of the production of a science-based governmental guideline aiming at governing teachers in Norwegian schools towards more efficient prevention of alcohol and drugs related problems. As the authorship progressed, an ongoing shrinking pattern emerged in terms of textual volume, imperative language and scientific content. For each new draft the document became less of the governing tool as it was commissioned. Yet, for reasons other than its science-shipping and governing capacities, the guideline was finalized and published after more than four years of production. This paper suggests that explanations to the Guideline's successful genesis must be sought beyond the part it is set to play within the field of prevention of alcohol and drugs related problems. The disarming shrinking pattern was also a productive transformation that afforded for the guideline's casting in the staged play of governance. Notwithstanding its lenient script and unostentatious launching, it became a policy document reinforcing a hierarchy of expertise conducive to its own genesis. It was a governing tool protected by and simultaneously protecting the envelope of science-based practice as a recursive, self-reproducing structure.