Using Post-Structuralism to Explore The Full Impact of Ideas on Politics

Abstract

Colin Hay's constructivist institutionalism and Vivien A. Schmidt's discursive institutionalism are two recent attempts to theorize ideas as potential explanations of institutional change. This new attention to the causal role of ideas is welcome, but Hay and Schmidt do not take into consideration the constitutive and structural aspects of ideas. Instead they reduce ideas to properties of individual conscious minds, scanting the respects in which ideas are intersubjectively baked into the practices shared by individuals. This aspect of ideasarguably, the institutional side of ideasis developed in post-structuralist thought, which therefore demands a place in ideational research.

Keywords

neo-institutionalism; discourse; constructivism; agency; ideas; political change; ideational turn

Published in

Critical Review
2015, volume: 27, number: 2, pages: 174-197

SLU Authors

• Larsson, Oscar

  • Uppsala University

UKÄ Subject classification

Political Science (Excluding Peace and Conflict Studies)
Public Administration Studies

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2015.1073883

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/91082