Ideational Shifts Research Articles

‘Pirates’, ports, politics: The Gulf (khalīj) & international society’s expansion

Abstract This paper examines how Britain, through ‘gunboat diplomacy’ campaigns against so-called Arab pirates, overran the pre-existing Gulf suzerain system and became the predominant power in its waters. By filling a gap in the classical English School ‘international society’ expansion thesis, this article describes how and when political and ideational shifts in the Gulf allowed sovereignty to manifest into its present dynastic form. It argues British imposition of rules, norms, and institutions through a series of nineteenth-century Anglo-Arab treaties against Arab ‘pirates’ broke traditional conditions of divisible sheikhly authority to embed a new telos of sovereign indivisibility, facilitating indirect colonisation. Colonialism as an overlooked primary institution in the classical international society expansion story reinforced political inequality to create dynasticism to simplify colonial statecraft. The 1836 Restrictive Line was a central institution introduced by Britain to manage the transition from divisible to indivisible authority. Drawing from colonial archives, the paper argues that British control over cross-coastal movements through a Restrictive Line reinforced domestic sovereignty of British treaty signatories while weakening agency of maritime sheikhs outside the Anglo-Arab treaties framework. This unsettled traditional structures, transforming maritime tribal confederacies from participation to compliance and reconfiguring Gulf coastal security imperatives for treaty-signatory sheikhs from sea to desert.

Buying into new ideas: the ECB’s evolving justification of unlimited liquidity

Abstract In 2012, Draghi put an end to rising euro area sovereign bond yield spreads by resolving to do ‘whatever it takes’. The crisis rhetoric and institutional practices of unlimited liquidity have since become commonplace, as countermeasures to recent market turmoil show. This article sets out to explain how and why ‘unlimited liquidity’ ideas moved to the ECB’s center of economic analysis during the euro crisis. Previous work fails to decipher that the ideational shift was highly anomalous when viewed against German ordoliberalism or scholarly support for ‘expansionary austerity’. Addressing this relative neglect in other accounts, we draw on qualitative text analysis and expert interviews to argue that this shift was due to norm entrepreneurs who capitalized on the uncertainty of the crisis. We employ constructivist arguments to identify four scoping conditions that account for the ascendance of ‘unlimited liquidity’: an indicative reference, credibility, institutional positioning and—as an extension to the literature—intellectual sensitivity. Our analysis suggests that the euro crisis changed economic ideas, and fundamentally remodels the constructivist framework for studying monetary policy in crisis times.

The impact of rebordering on cross-border cooperation actors’ discourses in the Öresund region. A semantic network approach

ABSTRACT The succession of rebordering shocks that occurred in recent years raises questions about the implications of these (geo)political events for cross-border cooperation. Based on the premise that special attention should be paid to the evolution of ideas pertaining to borders as a forerunner of significant policy changes, this paper seeks to show the extent to which the reintroduction of temporary border controls between Sweden and Denmark since 2015 has changed the meaning cross-border cooperation stakeholders give to the national border crossing the Öresund region. In order to identify ideational shifts in the mindset of cross-border cooperation actors, the multiplicity of meanings concerning borders is captured according to a relational perspective using semantic network analysis. In doing so, an innovative method is proposed. The comparative analysis of actors' collective mental representations of the border in 2014 and 2021 allows us to show the impact of rebordering shocks. If the connecting role of the border is now considered marginal, the opportunities it is likely to represent for the Öresund region's economic growth are still relevant. Moreover, the recognition of a common regional identity also appears to have been strengthened. In the meantime, the idea that the border could be a source of conflict has gained momentum. The increasing recognition of the ambivalence of the border reminds us that a crisis is often a source of new challenges, but also of opportunities.

The Fragmented Deinstitutionalisation of Russian Child Welfare

The essay discusses the ongoing child-welfare reforms in Russia, conceptualised as deinstitutionalisation, which link Russia closely to international trends in child rights-based child-welfare systems. Drawing from the neo-institutional framework, we ask what kind of institutional change has followed the new ideals of care, with what consequences, and what factors explain the obvious flaws. The essay is the outcome of two research projects and discusses their main findings. We argue that ideational shift is real at the policy and programme level; however, the overall execution remains sporadic and fragmented. The essay discusses four factors that affect the fragmentation of deinstitutionalisation, including an authoritarian political regime, a kinship-like understanding of foster care, the subordinate position of children’s rights to other rights and interests, and a low level of societal trust.

Different pathways of the second demographic transition in four East Asian societies: evidence from the 2006 and 2016 East Asian Social Surveys

This study uses the 2006 and 2016 East Asian Social Surveys to map value changes related to the second demographic transition in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The study examines trends in attitudes towards cohabitation, childrearing, and divorce over a 10-year period in the four East Asian societies. The findings suggest that the second demographic transition, if any in East Asia, is an uneven process between societies, and mainland China stands out as the only society in which attitudes had become more conservative, even after controlling for compositional differences in population. In the other three societies, attitudes had shifted to be more liberal. Moreover, the study finds little evidence on the diffusion within societies, given their similar trends across different sociodemographic groups. From an ideational perspective, mainland China and the other three East Asian societies illustrated different patterns of attitude changes regarding marriage and family. From a behavioral perspective, trends in attitudes do not always align with demographic patterns at the macro level, especially in mainland China. More studies are needed to understand the nuanced differences in ideational shifts between societies and the relationship between ideational and behavioral changes in East Asia.

Gendering the second demographic transition: gender asymmetry, gendered tension, and cohabitation in contemporary urban China

The Second Demographic Transition (SDT) framework highlights individuals’ ideational shift toward greater individualism in explaining the rise of non-marriage unions. Contemporary China has seen a substantial increase in premarital cohabitation. Drawing on 65 in-depth interviews with highly educated young urban Chinese women and men, this article examines the gendered ways in which young Chinese adults perceive and make decisions about premarital cohabitation, as they envision their ideal lives and what autonomy and self-realization mean to them. I demonstrate that while male respondents predominantly view cohabitation positively as a risk-reduction strategy for avoiding incompatible marriages, female respondents still consider cohabitation to be a risk-amplification arrangement in practice that increases the possibility of uncertain marriage prospect, unsafe sex, and reputational damages. Young women, but not men, often have to strategize—through carefully managing information disclosure—about persistent parental expectations that discourage women’s premarital cohabitation. As a result, while male respondents regard marriage to be neither the necessary precondition nor the end goal of cohabitation, female respondents, who otherwise emphasize autonomy and individualistic fulfillment, continue to desire a close linkage between cohabitation and marriage. Leveraging the unique strength of qualitative data in demographic research, this article articulates the gender asymmetry in how women and men perceive cohabitation’s risks, benefits, and link to marriage. I elucidate the gendered tension between privately-held ideals of individualism vis-à-vis enduring social norms of female marriageability, as women and men differentially navigate parental expectations surrounding cohabitation. In so doing, this article makes a theoretical contribution by bringing a careful treatment of gender into the SDT framework.

Anti-transparency within the EU shift to open science

Abstract In 2014, the European Commission initiated a process to strengthen science 2.0 as a core research policy concept. However, this turned into a substantial ideational shift. The concept of science 2.0 was dropped. Instead, open science became established as one of the three pillars of the €94 billion research framework programme Horizon Europe. This article scrutinises the official narrative regarding the shift of concepts, identifying transparency issues, specifically misrepresentation of concepts and data, and the redaction of key material. This can be characterised as problems of input legitimacy. A public consultation did take place, but numerous transparency issues can be found. From science 2.0 to open science, the ideational shift was portrayed as simply a matter of exchanging two synonymous concepts. However, science 2.0 is a descriptive concept referring to science being transformed by digitalisation. In contrast, open science involves normative assumptions about how science should work and be governed.

In Search of Authenticity: Humanist Weddings in the Polish Context

The post-1989 transformation in Poland entailed not only institutional change, but also an ideational shift. Among other things, this ideational shift gave rise to a growing emphasis on individual autonomy, expressive values, and secularization, which has had an impact on the means of symbolic communication (e.g., rituals) and prepared the ground for the emergence of humanist marriage ceremonies in Poland. The secularization process has gradually undermined the taken-for-granted character of some religious practices, such as rites of passage. Additionally, with the increased focus on authenticity rather than on accuracy in the usage of some pre-stipulated scripts, social actors often tend to replace “ossified” meanings that are communicated through rituals with new meanings, which are perceived as more relevant. This paper sheds light on the issue of authenticity, which is an important category in studies of symbolic, ritual-like actions. Perceptions of authenticity were recurring themes during interviews conducted with couples who decided on a humanist wedding ceremony in Poland. Interviewees often asserted that they rejected the dominant Catholic rite because they perceived it as inauthentic.

Changing the text through explicitation. How trainee interpreters perceive the role of explicitating shifts

ABSTRACT The paper reports on process- and product-oriented analysis of trainee interpreters’ motivations in explicitating the translated message and their own perception of the role of such shifts. The research method is self-retrospection triangulated with product analysis (manual comparison of source and target texts). The study aims to find out to what extent the effects produced by explicitations in target texts coincide with the reported motivations of trainee interpreters to perform explicitating shifts. The results show a low level of correspondence between trainee interpreters’ motivations in performing explicitations and the actual effect such shifts exert on target texts. Trainees’ awareness of the consequences of explicitation appears to be related to the metafunction of such shifts. While the subjects in this study show some degree of awareness how their textual and interpersonal shifts affect the message, very few of them appear to be conscious of the consequences of ideational shifts.

Technocratic Keynesianism: a paradigm shift without legislative change

ABSTRACT Despite anticipated curtailment of their powers, the past decade saw technocratic actors take on an increasingly powerful role in economic governance. Focusing on the EU, I analyse these epochal shifts as a move away from the market liberal paradigm that informed the 1992 European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The 1992 EMU combines a highly restrictive attitude to public money creation with a permissive laissez-faire attitude to private credit money. In the face of the dual crises of COVID-19 and the climate emergency, EU technocrats have abandoned key tenets of the EMU. The European Central Bank provides targeted and large-scale support for pandemic-related fiscal expenditures. Banking regulators and supervisors actively guide the allocation of credit with an eye to its economic and environmental impact. However, constitutional structures lag ideational shifts and the new technocracy is haunted by issues of legality and legitimacy. To pursue the new policies within the old constitutional structures, policymakers engage in strategic ambiguity: the policies are justified in terms of both new economic policy priorities, as well as by reference to the instruments and goals of the earlier market liberal paradigm.

Trade, health and social reproduction in a COVID world

ABSTRACT Building on feminist International Political Economy scholarship, my paper traces the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the trade and health nexus, taking into account the global productive economy and the realm of social reproduction. I argue that COVID-19 has exacerbated the socio-economic inequalities, including the crisis in social reproduction, that characterised the trade and health nexus prior to COVID-19. However, no ideational shift has taken place during the pandemic whereby trade policy communities conceive of trade as a tool for equitable and sustainable forms of social reproduction, as advocated by feminists, environmentalists, and others. This leaves the exploitative nature of global trade relations and their ambivalent relationship with health and social reproduction intact. I conclude that building back better from COVID-19 requires an ambitious redrawing of global trade relations and discuss a number of reforms that could be applied by global trade institutions today.

A Keynesian Revolution or Austerity? The IMF and the COVID-19 Crisis

This commentary for the “Political Economy Section COVID-19 Collection’’ discusses ideational continuity and change at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that, despite an initial advice to increase the government spending, the Fund has later reverted back to the market orthodoxy recommending fiscal discipline and balanced government budget in the longer-term. The piece argues that, although a global crisis and increased government spending by influential member states such as the United States might have prompted an ideational shift at the Fund, a lack of clear theorization of longer-term Keynesian policies in academic circles and in the economics profession, prevented a paradigmatic change at the Fund.

The Trump administration and China: policy continuity or transformation?

ABSTRACT The long-run consequences of the Trump presidency on US foreign policy have been a subject of debate. Policy towards China is one arena in which observers have argued that Trump's impact has been significant and is likely to outlast him. Indeed, it might be considered transformational. Many of the commentaries have, however, been largely anecdotal. So as to provide a more rigorous analysis of policy transformation we employ a previously developed framework that focuses on ideational shifts, the development of new or reconfigured interests that are allied to a particular policy, and institutional changes as a basis for change to be considered transformational and thereby enduring. Applying these criteria to Trump's China policy we argue that while there has been a paradigmatic change structured around the embrace of “strategic competition”, there have been some, but rather more limited, shifts in the character of interest configurations and institutional structures. We nonetheless conclude that while policy transformation is incomplete the changes that the Trump White House wrought have been profound and are very likely to shape the actions of future administrations.

The power of ideas in policymaking processes: The role of institutionalised knowledge production in state bureaucracies

AbstractIn recent decades, several important contributions have been made to further our understanding of whether and how ideas affect policies. More recently, research have turned towards the question of why certain ideas gain prominence in policymaking processes at the expense of others. However, in answering this question there seems to be a continuing blind spot in terms of fully understanding the role of knowledge production within state bureaucracies in determining which ideas are inscribed into policy and which are not. This article offers new insights to the ideational literature by showing how the use of institutionalised and systematic production of knowledge within state bureaucracies is pivotal for explaining the power of ideas. This is demonstrated through an in‐depth and illustrative case study of the policymaking process leading up to a major reform of Danish activation policies in 2014. In this case, an evaluation system institutionalised within the Ministry of Employment significantly shaped the types of knowledge utilised in the policymaking process and the final design of the policy reform. Consequently, the evaluation system instated a bulwark against ideational shifts in every phase of the policymaking process. Thus, ultimately steering the policymaking process in the direction of ideas grounded in a Work First approach rather than the Human Capital approach initially promoted by the Minister of Employment.

Can a leopard change its spots? Strategic behavior versus professional role conception during Ukraine's 2014 court chair elections

AbstractDo judges respond to institutional and strategic incentives or do they strictly follow dominant professional role conceptions? This article weighs in by exploring whether an ideational shift toward judicial empowerment and independence can germinate from institutional reforms. Ukraine's 2014 Euromaidan revolution and the comprehensive judicial reform adopted in its wake provide a test of the competing theoretical accounts. A judicial lustration law sacked all incumbent court chairs, who had been appointed by the executive, and gave Ukrainian judges the right to elect new chairs via secret ballot. I analyze this radical step toward judicial self‐government using an original data set with individual‐ and court‐level data. The key finding is that less than a fifth of Ukrainian judges embraced their newly granted agency and elected a new chair for their court, whereas the overwhelming majority followed dominant professional norms of deference and reelected the sacked court chairs. This finding holds for all rungs of the judicial hierarchy and for all regions of Ukraine. Even protégés of ousted president Yanukovych won the secret ballot vote by their peers more often than they lost it. Beyond Ukraine, these results suggest that empowering individual judges in the highly hierarchical structure of a civil law judiciary is unlikely to lead to a judicial behavior shift, at least in the short run.

RE(DIS)COVERING MULTICULTURAL CAPITAL IN LEICESTER’S SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES: HISTORICAL LEGACIES AND POSSIBILITIES FOR CHANGE

ABSTRACT This paper empirically re(dis)covers a moment of conjuncture within Leicester when an opportunity opened up through multicultural/anti-racist education for schools and colleges to develop their ‘multicultural capital’. It does this through the thematic analysis of the key proximate document Report of the Working Party on Multicultural Education as well as drawing on interview data provided by two important agents who helped to implement Leicester’s/Leicestershire’s moment of multicultural education. This moment generated a symbolic, ideational, and conceptual shift within Leicester’s education provision toward a more culturally inclusive position that began to recognise the cultural capital of non-white students. However, this moment was to be lost in the ‘neoliberal epoch’. It is argued in this paper that neoliberal education policy/practice has become an enabling mechanism for renascent colonial ideology. By re(dis)covering this vision for the official recognition of non-white cultural capital, this paper demonstrates the possibilities for alternative directions within Leicester’s schools and colleges that can challenge neoliberal and colonial conceptions of education. It suggests that there are still spaces and structures that can be re(dis)covered in order for this vision to be enabled.

LEGISLATION, IDEAS AND PRE-SCHOOL EDUCATION POLICY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: FROM TARGETED NURSERY EDUCATION TO UNIVERSAL EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE

ABSTRACT This paper explores legislative provision and pre-school education policy in England over the course of the twentieth century. The paper argues that there has been a significant ideational shift over this period, from a policy focus on nursery education for poor children to universal early childhood education. Not only have ideas changed but provision and funding have changed. Although there have been major revisions to legislative provision, there are elements of continuity as regards the institutions delivering early childhood education, particularly maintained nursery schools and nursery classes, but with layering of private-for-profit and not-for-profit institutions to ‘fill the gap’ in provision. At the same time, the central state has taken increasing control of publicly funded early childhood education through legislative provision.

A discursive institutionalist approach to American foreign policy – principled and cognitive interpretations of Bosnia

ABSTRACTThe disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 was a pivotal challenge in U.S. foreign policy during the early 1990s. Specifically, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia proved to be a particularly contentious issue across two presidential administrations. Even as both Presidents Bush and Clinton recognised the humanitarian atrocities - initially, neither was willing to use military force in response, fearing any U.S. intervention would lead to a Vietnam-like quagmire. Yet, following the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, Clinton's position changed, favouring decisive action. Given that during this time, the U.S. remained a great power and enjoyed relative stability in coalitional arrangements - what explains this variation in policy? To explain this variation, I build on discursive institutionalist approaches, which distinguish between different types of ideas, offering two mechanisms - normative displacement and cognitive repression - by which agents come to interpret interests in more principled, or cognitively-laden ways, leading to variation absent systemic or ideational shifts.

Um estudo comparativo das mudanças ideacionais na representação de Brás Cubas no par-linguístico português-espanhol

Neste estudo de caso, objetiva-se analisar as mudanças ideacionais nas representações de Brás Cubas, narrador e personagem principal de Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (ASSIS, 1881) presentes na tradução de Alatorre (1951). Neste artigo, o conceito de mudanças ideacionais, cunhado por Rodrigues-Júnior e Garcia de Oliveira (2015), é entendido como a alteração em qualquer elemento da transitividade que provoca uma representação no texto alvo (TA) diferente daquela do Texto Fonte (TF) (HALLIDAY; MATTHIESSEN, 2014). O procedimento metodológico utilizado foi o uso das ferramentas do WordSmith Tools para descrição e análise dos elementos de transitividade. As análises confirmam a hipótese da pesquisa, a de que houve escolhas que provocaram mudanças ideacionais na representação ficcional de Brás Cubas. Verificou-se, igualmente, que as mudanças ideacionais nem sempre provocam a alteração na equivalência semântica.

Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics

In Polarized Families, Polarized Parties, the Fairfield University political scientist Gwendoline M. Alphonso examines the politics of family values in the United States across the twentieth century, focusing on three key periods: the Progressive Era, the post–World War II years, and the span from 1970 to the present. Her goal is to study American political party development through charting ideational shifts in how parties discuss family. Alphonso uses qualitative discourse analysis of congressional committee hearings in which legislators discuss specific family cases to discover “patterns in the content of how legislators talk about, illustrate, and justify their policy responses” (p. 6). Alphonso's focus on which family examples legislators drew on during policy discussions is innovative and illuminating; for example, she finds that in the post-1970 period, legislators from both political parties disproportionately drew black family examples “from those on welfare with an extramarital family structure,” with 32 percent of black family cases including welfare compared to just 5 percent of white family cases (p. 149). She also examines congressional bills addressing family sexuality, family structure, parenting, family property and wealth, and public assistance.