Ideational Explanations Research Articles

Intellectual Property and the Politics of Public Good during COVID-19: Framing Law, Institutions, and Ideas during TRIPS Waiver Negotiations at the WTO

Context: To facilitate the manufacturing of COVID-19 medical products, in October 2020 India and South Africa proposed a waiver of certain intellectual property (IP) provisions of a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement. After nearly two years, a narrow waiver agreement that did little for vaccine access passed the ministerial despite the pandemic's impact on global trade, which the WTO is mandated to safeguard. Methods: The authors conducted a content analysis of WTO legal texts, key-actor statements, media reporting, and the WTO's procedural framework to explore legal, institutional, and ideational explanations for the delay. Findings: IP waivers are neither legally complex nor unprecedented within WTO law, yet these waiver negotiations exceeded their mandated 90-day negotiation period by approximately 18 months. Waiver opponents and supporters engaged in escalating strategic framing that justified and eventually secured political attention at head-of-state level, sidelining other pandemic solutions. The frames deployed discouraged consensus on a meaningful waiver, which ultimately favored the status quo that opponents preferred. WTO institutional design encouraged drawn-out negotiation while limiting legitimate players in the debate to trade ministers, empowering narrow interest group politics. Conclusions: Despite global political attention, the WTO process contributed little to emergency vaccine production, suggesting a pressing need for reforms aimed at more efficient and equitable multilateral processes.

Portrayal of Russian Foreign Policy towards Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 in the Western and Russian Academia

This study examines how the Russo-Georgian War in 2008 and the Ukraine Crisis in 2014 were discussed in Western and Russian academic circles. The findings show that historical accounts as well as various theoretical frameworks were used to explain the Russian foreign policy (RFP) regarding these conflicts. In comparison, although mono-theoretical models were utilized in both cases, they are more dominant in the works of Western scholars. On the other hand, inductive historical explanations were used more in the works of Russian scholars. Another important point is that in the latter studies, alternative accounts to the Western unilateralism are more popular. These accounts reveal themselves with concepts such as “multipolar world” or “Eurasianism”. As for the mono theoretical accounts, realist approaches seem to be the dominant framework in both cases. Realist frameworks emphasize the improved material capabilities of Russia and external pressures in its sphere of influence. The later component of the realist approach is stressed more by scholars from both academic circles. Moreover, even the studies that utilize different approaches, such as ideational explanations, domestic political factors, decision-maker related approaches, or the ones that highlight the regional competition, emphasize the role of the strategic or geopolitical imperatives as a factor that cannot be ignored regarding how RFP is formed and implemented.

Exploring the ideational explanation for pro-immigrant sentiment: evidence from a South Korean survey

A consistent finding in the public opinion literature shows that individuals who attain higher levels of education are more likely to express pro-immigrant attitudes. The ideational hypothesis suggests that ideas learned during formal education drive this empirical relationship. In this article, we develop this hypothesis further by asking, "What types of ideas socialize pro-immigrant attitudes?" We argue that exposure to social theories during higher education promotes social inclusivity and tolerance, leading to positive views toward immigrants. This article draws theoretical insights from attitudinal-based theories of immigrant sentiment to construct a mediation model linking ideas from the classroom to attitudes toward immigrants. Using original data from a population-based survey in South Korea, we examine the relationship between respondents’ prior enrollment in different academic courses and their attitudes toward immigrants. We measure exposure to social theories as enrollment in social science and arts & humanities and find that only social science courses are positively associated with pro-immigrant attitudes. We also examine whether enrollment exhibits indirect effects via previously identified attitudinal determinants of immigrant sentiment. Results from our mediation analysis show that enrollment in social science courses is associated with stronger cosmopolitan views and negatively correlates with isolationist attitudes. In contrast, we find that enrollments in courses unrelated to social theories, like math & science and engineering, are not statistically significant predictors of immigrant attitudes. We interpret our results as observational evidence consistent with ideational-based explanations for pro-immigrant attitudes.

Populist attitudes in Croatia: first analysis with notes on conceptualisation and measurement

Abstract This paper analyses individual-level populism in Croatia. Starting from the ideational definition of populism, the study tests to what extent the economic grievances, sociocultural and ideational explanations, respectively, reflect the average populism subscriber in Croatia. The analysis was made using hierarchical linear regression based on field survey data from 2020 (n=979). Results show how populism is mostly associated with authoritarianism, conspiratorial thinking and institutional (dis)trust. The economic grievances explanation has only marginal relevance, revealing that sociotropic perception is more important than the socioeconomic position of the individual. Furthermore, the study emphasises the importance of operationalising populism in accordance with the assumed structure of the concept. In the same vein, it is noted that populism on an attitudinal level should be separated from the concepts of thick ideologies. If this is not done with caution, the conclusions drawn are questionable, and the analytical contribution of populism is imprecisely determined.

Trumpism and the rejection of global climate governance

This paper explains the ideational foundations of Donald Trump’s rejection of global climate cooperation and its implications for the future of global climate governance. We argue that Trumpism’s antipathy is a fundamental normative challenge to the key ideas that underpin global climate cooperation. Here we explore two specific norm contestations: (1) Collective action versus extralegal sovereignty, and (2) Common but Differentiated Responsibility versus fairness-as-reciprocity. Trump’s aggressive norm rejections are quite novel. His rejection of climate politics in particular and his desire to return to a status quo ante in world politics, positions him as a distinct type of actor in the spectrum of norm contestation – a reactionary norm entrepreneur. We contribute an ideational explanation of Trumpism’s rejection of global climate cooperation by identifying the fundamental clash of ideas and his role as a reactionary norm entrepreneur within the broader framework of global climate governance. It offers a case study in a high-profile instance of norm contestation and its implications for the survival of the global climate change regime.

The power of the economic outlook: An ideational explanation of the distinct pattern of Finnish wage setting within the Nordic context

Industrial relations scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of ideas in explaining shifts in bargaining systems and wage policies. This article contributes to this growing body of literature by conducting a meso-level analysis of the uses and impacts of ideas in wage regulation policy processes in coordinated market economies. Through our in-depth case study of the Finnish policy process leading to the Competitiveness Pact of 2016, we argue that certain ideas – which we call the ‘economic outlook’ – prescribed and legitimized exhausting institutional resources in wage regulation and enabled temporary consensus among divergent interests regarding wage policy. The economic outlook linked and enabled compromises between wage policy and wage regulation interests and effectively solidified a commitment to an uncertain policy process. The case study suggests that an ideational analysis of policy processes can offer explanations for shifts in wage policy and regulation that deviate from macro-level regime shifts. While all Nordic countries have faced similar economic and institutional reform pressures, Finland’s readoption of centralized bargaining shows that national policy ideas can drive distinct industrial relations patterns within the Nordic context.

Ideas and power in employment relations studies

AbstractMotivated by the efforts to understand shifting dynamics of change and stability in employment relations—not least ones brought on by a decade of crisis in what was a neoliberal consensus—scholars increasingly focus on the role of ideas, discourses, and identities. This paper argues for the potential of continuing down this path of employing ideational explanations in employment relations. First, it highlights four key weaknesses of employing more pure materialist–institutionalist approaches that have traditionally dominated employment relations scholarship. Second, it argues that to recognize and build on existing efforts to bring in ideas to employment relations, it is useful to place these on the macro‐, meso‐, and micro levels. Third, to further advance an ideational perspective on employment relations, it proposes to place more centrally the concept of ideational power. Fourth, it presents key insights from the papers that make up the Special Issue and fleshes out how the individual papers of the Special Issue contribute to this agenda.

What does gender got to do with it? PMSCs and privatization of security revisited

ABSTRACT While war and the military have been recognized as being gendered sites, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) are only rarely studied through a gender lens. Compared to functional, political-instrumental or ideational explanations with respect to the privatization of security, such a lens captures, however, the micro-dynamic and political processes of PMSCs’ boom. We show that gender is, first, constitutive of companies’ corporate identities as hero warriors and professional security experts. Second, it is relational, (re-)producing hierarchical power relations among and within PMSCs and with state security actors. Third, gender is a legitimizing factor helping PMSCs to establish themselves as acceptable security actors vis-à-vis others.

Don’t think it’s a good idea! Four building sites of the ‘ideas school’

Ideational explanations of policy change are popular in the fields of political economy, comparative politics and policy analysis. And yet, to make the case for ideational explanations, we must make further progress on the nature of ideas, where they come from, what they consist of, and how they change over time. We highlight four critical building sites concerning the definitional aspects of ideational explanations, micro-foundations, mechanisms and the difference between ideational and cognitive analysis. We make recommendations on how to carry out work in the building sites and describe the range of suggestions and ways forward found in the articles of this Symposium. We also suggest cross-fertilising political science with the findings of neighbouring disciplines that have developed empirically robust models of ideation and cognition.

Office Politics: Tatarstan’s Presidency and the Symbolic Politics of Regionalism

Abstract This article explores developments in center-region relations between the Russian federal government and the Republic of Tatarstan, a federal subject of the Russian Federation. I argue that instrumentalist accounts are unable to satisfactorily explain several key moments in Tatarstan’s relations with the federal center, and that a focus on symbolic politics provides important analytical leverage. I examine three such episodes: aborted plans to introduce a Latin script for the Tatar language in 1999, the expiration of treaty-based relations and the assault on the region’s Tatar-language education policy in 2017, and the institution of the presidency – which exists to this day. In all three cases, interest-based explanations alone fail to account for what actually happened, whereas ideational explanations can help explain and interpret regional leaders’ actions. This has important implications for how we understand regional political dynamics in Russia amidst conditions of centralization.

Misremembering Weimar: Hyperinflation, the Great Depression, and German collective economic memory

AbstractThe well‐known German aversion to inflation has attracted a lot of interest and is often attributed to a specific historical memory: Weimar. Yet we do not know much about why hyperinflation seems to overshadow the Great Depression in German collective economic memory. To answer this question, we study what exactly it is that Germans believe to remember about their past. Using original survey data, we show that many Germans do not distinguish between hyperinflation and the Great Depression, but see them as two dimensions of the same crisis. They conflate Weimar economic history into one big crisis, encompassing both rapidly rising prices and mass unemployment. Additionally, more educated and politically interested Germans are more likely to commit this fallacy. Our finding thus nuances ideational explanations for Germany's economic policy stance in the European Union.

Roles, identity, and security: foreign policy contestation in monarchical Kuwait

The 2011–2012 Arab Spring posed an existential threat to the Gulf Cooperation Council’s six monarchies. A major response was the 2012 GCC Internal Security Pact, an innovative project to enhance cross-border repression of domestic opposition and thus bolster collective security. Yet despite its historic weakness, ongoing domestic unrest, and initial enthusiasm for the agreement, Kuwait’s monarchy did not ultimately ratify the accord. Building on theories of foreign policy roles and identity, this article presents an ideational explanation for this puzzle. The Security Pact failed because it sparked identity contestation. For many Kuwaitis, the prospect of the Sabah monarchy imposing this scheme for greater repression was incompatible with the regime’s historical role of tolerating domestic pluralism and protecting Kuwait from foreign pressures. This role conception of a tolerant protector flowed from historical understandings and collective memory and was cognitively tied to a national self-conception of “Kuwaiti-ness.” The mobilizational scope and symbolic power of this popular opposition convinced the regime to acquiesce, despite possessing the strategic incentive and resources to impose the treaty by force. The Kuwaiti case therefore exemplifies how domestic contestation over regime identities and roles can constrain foreign policy behavior, even in authoritarian states facing severe crises of insecurity.

How China views North Korea’s readiness to reform and its influence on China’s North Korea policy in the post-Cold War era

China’s policy of restraint (avoidance of crippling economic sanctions) towards North Korean provocation is typically explained in terms of geopolitical concern with North Korean regime stability. The strategic and diplomatic costs of restraint would suggest the presence of non-geopolitical influences behind China’s approach. Ideational explanations emphasise the persistence of shared socialist identity as well as the traditional Sino-centric worldview as shaping influences. There is much less detailed analysis of how China views North Korea’s political economic evolution and how this view has changed over time to produce fluctuations in the bilateral relationship. In order to capture China’s motivations more fully, I introduce two additional variables, namely China’s view of the state of its own reform path (which provides the domestic context shaping policy towards North Korea), and the extent of North Korea’s readiness to prioritise economic reform. I will then use these variables to explain two contrasting phases which represented the worst (1992–1999) and best (2009–2012) of times in the bilateral relationship in the post-Cold War era. These variables also help us to understand the potentials and limitations of the upturn in bilateral relations which has occurred since 2018.

The financialization of the state: Government debt management reforms in New Zealand and Ireland

The financialization of sovereign debt management has received attention in comparative political economy studies. While previous studies have highlighted the cross-national commonality of this process and the congruence of interests between finance and governments, the analysis of the role of finance and state agency in domestic reform processes is still under-exposed. By analysing the financialization of government debt management in the two early adopter countries, New Zealand and Ireland, this study seeks to close this gap. The study shows that differences in the structure of financial markets and the civil service systems resulted in different policymaking processes through which Treasury civil servants brought financial economics into the reforms. In New Zealand, economists had an in-house position within the Treasury and were able to frame the decision-making process (ideational explanation), while in Ireland, finance successfully lobbied senior civil servants who sponsored these efforts (interest explanation). With this finding, this article reveals the multiple channels that lead to sovereign debt management financialization.

Social barriers to biophilia: Merging structural and ideational explanations for environmental degradation

Erich Fromm argues that the only reliable way to solve the environmental crisis is to alter current social formations in a way in which biophilia can flourish, so humankind can solve its existential dichotomy as well as meet survival needs in an ecologically sound way. However, society's preoccupation with the non-alive—elements such as technique, the mechanical, gadgets, and commodities—shows that the modern social character is far from biophilous. Instead, modern societies are inherently ecologically destructive due to systematic processes and attraction to its progress is a less acute form of, what Fromm terms, necrophilia. His insights can help formulate a social theory of environmental degradation that includes structural and ideational variables. Prescriptively, this means appeals for value changes must correspond with fitting appeals for structural changes in social systems.

Strategic Cultures and Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific

Reflecting the culturalist turn in security studies, this special issue shows how one of the most powerful tools of security studies illuminates the origins and implications of the region's difficult issues, from the rise of China and the American pivot, to the shifting calculations of other regional actors. Strategic culture sometimes challenges and always enriches prevailing neorealist presumptions about the region. It provides a bridge between material and ideational explanations of state behaviour and helps to capture the tension between neoclassical realist and constructivist approaches. The case studies survey the role of strategic culture in the behaviours of Australia, China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and the United States. They show the contrast between structural expectations and cultural predispositions as realist geopolitical security threats and opportunities interact with domestic elite and popular interpretation of historical narratives and distinctive political-military cultures to influence security policies. The concluding retrospective article devotes special attention to methodological issues at the heart of strategic cultural studies, as well as how culture may impact the potential for future conflict or cooperation in the region. The result is a body of work that helps deepen our understanding of strategic cultures in comparative perspective and enrich security studies. As disputes intensify over territory and resources, as regional militaries develop and leaders adjust their strategic calculus and defence commitments, the dovetailing of culture and politics in the Asia-Pacific shows through.

House of cards? India's rationales for contributing to UN peacekeeping

India has always been a major troop contributor to UN peacekeeping missions. In recent years, however, the benefits of these efforts have been increasingly questioned by some of the country's strategic elites, as are some of the guiding norms of contemporary peace operations. This article scrutinizes the contemporary and historical plausibility of both ideational and materialistic explanations of India's comprehensive peacekeeping engagement. Against this backdrop, it provides an estimation of the likelihood of a future Indian retreat from these efforts. Our conclusions are neither reassuring nor alarmist. Status and economic considerations, normative disagreements, and growing frustration with the stalemate of UN reforms all complicate India's peacekeeping policies. Neither of them, however, unambiguously hints at a complete withdrawal.

The Forum: The Decline of War

The debate on the waning of war has recently moved into higher gear. This forum contributes to that debate. Steven Pinker observes that a decline in war does not require a romantic theory of human nature. In fact, it is compatible with a hardheaded view of human violent inclinations, firmly rooted in evolutionary biology. Homo sapiens evolved with violent tendencies, but they are triggered by particular circumstances rather than a hydraulic urge that must periodically be discharged. And, although our species evolved with motives that can erupt in violence, it also evolved motives that can inhibit violence, including self-control, empathy, a sense of fairness, and open-ended cognitive mechanisms that can devise technologies for reducing violence. Bradley Thayer argues that the decline of war thesis is flawed because the positive forces identified by these authors do not rule outside of the West or even fully inside of it. Their analysis also neglects the systemic causes of conflict and its insights for increasingly intense security competition between China and the United States. Jack Levy and William Thompson question some of the theoretical arguments advanced to explain the historical pattern of declining violence. They argue that cultural and ideational explanations for the decline in interstate war underestimate the extent to which those factors are endogenous to material and institutional variables. Arguments about the pacifying effects of the rise of the state and of commerce fail to recognize that in some historical contexts, those factors have contributed to the escalation of warfare. The introduction to the symposium outlines briefly some of the major issues: nature versus nurture, the reliability of the data, how broadly violence should be defined, whether there is more agreement on the phenomenon than on its causes, and finally whether the future will be like the past.

Fathers at a Crossroads: The Combined Effect of Organizational and Cultural Factors on the Making of Gender-Related Policy

Ideational explanations of social policy formation have gained a prominent role in the analysis of social policy formation in recent decades. Of late, researchers have taken up the task of creating explanations that combine ideational explanations with non-ideational ones. In this work, I will try to address this task at the intra-organizational level, creating an explanation for policy formation within a welfare state institution while taking into account both ideational and organizational factors. This method will be demonstrated using the legislative debate over the parental leave for fathers in Israel as a case study. The formation process of this program was long and complex, and included a struggle about the program’s existence and its shape. This process allows us to look into the institutional interests of various participants shaping the struggle over the program. Coincidently, it offers a look into the cultural perceptions of those participants—operationalized as policy frames—and the effect these perceptions have on policy formation. This dual view provides an insight into the inter-relation and inter-dependence of both factors. This analytical framework creates a rich explanation, combining both types of analysis, showing how, at times, policy makers adopt perceptions most fitting their institutional interests, while at other times, policy frames serve as the basis for determining institutional interests.

The origins of European competition policy: redistributive versus ideational explanations

This article examines the origins of European competition policy. Whereas a new and influential view holds that German ordoliberal ideas were the driving force behind the emergence of that policy, I argue that such ideational explanations are theoretically unconvincing, methodologically biased and substantively wrong. Based on a careful observation of the most relevant actors' preferences, the terms of their interaction during the Paris negotiations of 1950–51, and the institutional context of their operations, I conclude that French planners' preferences, German reactions and US policy must all be examined together to produce a more convincing account of the emergence of the most supranational of all European policies. The finding that European competition policy emerged out of an acrimonious bargaining episode between pro-competition French bureaucrats and anti-competition German politicians points to the redistributive nature of European competition rules, and thereby severely challenges ideational theories, liberal-intergovernmentalism and delegation-for-credibility theories alike.