Ideational Turn Research Articles

Political communication from the standpoint of ideational turn: cognitive representation of the idea of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (in English)

The article examines the specifics of political cognition as a structural element of political communication. The main task of the study is to identify, in the conditions of an ideational turn, the characteristics of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization political and media axis, modeled in scientific and media publications and conditioned by different logic and political cognitions of the authors. The mediatization of modern political discourse makes it possible to consider ideology as a potential opportunity that creates grounds for organizing the institutional present through the symbolism recontextualization of the institutional past. The Argentine sociologist, anthropologist and semiotic, Professor of Communication Sciences at the University of San Andres, Elisio Verona’s position is recognized as a priority in understanding ideology. Critical linguistics is considered to be the most productive in terms of representing and describing the multiplicity of interaction between participants in political communication, balancing communication of political cognitions. In the conceptual modeling process, elements of political analysis are used, based on the appeal to ideas as causal variables. The research is carried out taking into account the importance of causal-constitutive logics, while causal logic is recognized as the priority logic of communication, with an orientation towards the idea as a focal point. The authors consider the idea of cooperation, which models the SCO’s institutional functions, through cognitive presentations in scientific and media sources, and ground its interpretation on the terminological and conceptual apparatus of Russian constructivism.

An ideational turn in economic geography?

Over the last years, economic geography has witnessed a growing interest in the role of imaginaries, narratives, visions, and similar ideational concepts. This article sketches the contours of what might be seen as an emerging ideational turn in economic geography by discussing how ideational concepts have been retheorized and applied in the field. The article elaborates on open questions about the state of research on ideational concepts in economic geography and related fields and lays out avenues for future research that an ideational turn could enable.

How ideas matter in public policy: a review of concepts, mechanisms, and methods

The recent ideational turn in political science and public administration implies that ideas matter. Ideas are an essential explanatory concept for understanding policy changes and decision-making processes. The aim of the paper is to specify how ideas matter as a variable in public policy research, providing students and scholars of public policy with a stock take of the current state-of-the-art literature on ideas in political science and public administration. The paper first identifies three approaches to ideas as a variable in the policy process. It then discusses where ideas come from and the dynamics and drivers of ideational change to shed light on the ideational mechanisms underpinning policy processes. Furthermore, it taps into different research methods that can be used to study ideas. Finally, the paper concludes with five lessons for future research endeavours on the study of ideas in public policy.

The battle of ideas on the euro crisis: evidence from ECB inter-meeting speeches

ABSTRACT The European Central Bank (ECB) has often been portrayed as highly resistant to ideational change. This paper paints a different picture. A battle of ideas dominated the academic debate on the euro crisis: one view stressed crisis-stricken countries’ fiscal laxity, whereas the other highlighted the systemic roots of financial turmoil. I argue that the failure of policy experiments inspired by the fiscal discipline view favoured the ECB’s adoption of systemic risk ideas, which shaped its crisis response. Empirically, I use an innovative technique combining automated text classification and unsupervised scaling methods to detect ideational variation in ECB Executive Board members’ public speeches. Results indicate that the ECB has progressively moved from a fiscal to a systemic narrative of the euro crisis. Significantly, this shift anticipated and accompanied the ECB’s commitment to unlimited bond purchases in summer 2012. Evidence suggests that this ideational turn was incremental and driven by policy learning dynamics.

Narrative stories, institutional rules, and the politics of pension policy in Canada and the United States

ABSTRACTDeborah Stone’s Policy Paradox stresses the role of narrative stories in the construction of policy problems. This article takes a critical look at the Policy Paradox and at the claim that paying close attention to narratives is essential to the analysis of policy change. Drawing on recent scholarship on the role of ideas in public policy, the article shows that the analysis of narratives is part of a broader intellectual project associated with the ideational turn in policy analysis. The article explains how the analysis of narrative stories should take institutional factors into account, which can shape policy decisions. To illustrate these theoretical claims, the article analyzes the debate over public pension reform in the United States and Canada during the last 25 years. More specifically, the article compares the reform of the Canada Pension Plan during the mid-1990s and the failed push to privatize US Social Security during the Bill Clinton and the George W. Bush presidencies. The analysis stresses that, while narrative stories shape problem definition, institutional legacies influence policy adoption.

The Battle of Ideas on the Euro Crisis: Evidence from ECB Inter-Meeting Speeches

The European Central Bank (ECB) has often been portrayed as highly resistant to ideational change. This paper paints a different picture. A battle of ideas dominated the academic debate on the euro crisis: one view stressed crisis-stricken countries' fiscal laxity, whereas the other highlighted the systemic roots of financial turmoil. I argue that the failure of policy experiments inspired by the fiscal discipline view favoured the ECB's adoption of systemic risk ideas, which shaped its crisis response. Empirically, I use an innovative technique combining automated text classification and unsupervised scaling methods to detect ideational variation in ECB Executive Board members' public speeches. Results indicate that the ECB has progressively moved from a fiscal to a systemic narrative of the euro crisis. Significantly, this shift anticipated and accompanied the ECB's commitment to unlimited bond purchases in summer 2012. Evidence suggests that this ideational turn was incremental and driven by policy learning dynamics.

Myths on local use of natural resources and social equity of land use governance: Reindeer herding in Finland

Previous literature on social equity has focused on procedure, distribution and recognition related to land use governance. We propose novel approach to examine social equity by following ideational turn with an aim to explore globally used and locally persistent myths that (mis)inform governance in practice and effect on the three dimensions of social equity for reindeer herding in northern Finland. We take synthetizing approach and elaborate and employ a comparative cognitive mapping method to classify the reviewed literature according to its linkage to the three dimensions of social equity, and type of relationship (utilizing, questioning, contextualizing) to the examined four myths. The myths of “tragedy of the commons”, “non-human wilderness ideal”, “noble savages”, and “majority will constituting democracy” are persistently used in land use governance mainly because they provide justifications for furthering particular interest. Yet, these myths are also widely questioned due to the problems that their employment produces for reindeer herders. Furthermore, the background assumptions of the myths are often somewhat problematic. We discuss reinterpretation of these myths revolving around 1) a holistic approach, 2) considering non-indigenous local people as noble savages, 3) problems of melding herders as a stakeholder group similar to other groups, 4) steps from majority democracy towards self-governance, 5) whether social equity can be bought, and 6) biocultural diversity. These reinterpretations can inform land use policy and governance also beyond the case study. Therefore, critical view on the explanatory and constitutive powers of myths should be part of the portfolios to achieve social equity.

Hajer\u2019s institutional void and legitimacy without polity

Maarten Hajer’s “Policy without polity? Policy analysis and the institutional void” (2003) was a harbinger of an age of uncertainty. Instead of a classical-modernist model, where political institutions dominate policy-making structure, regulated actors and provided clear legitimation norms, he outlined a new form of policy-making, devoid of settled norms. This essay provides a summary of the article’s impact on scholarly research over the past 14 years along three lines—ontology, processes and outcomes. In relation to the latter, which has attracted the most research efforts, it argues that recent research on the new design orientation can shed some light on why policy-making in the institutional void can lead to poor outcomes. This completes the ideational turn required by Hajer’s interpretive ambition.

The Idea of Austerity in British Politics, 2003–2013

Employing a dataset of 1843 think tank publications containing 37 million words, computer-assisted text analysis was used to examine the idea of austerity in British politics between 2003 and 2013. Theoretically, the article builds on the ideational turn in political research. However, in contrast to much ideational work which argues that ideas are important at times of crisis because they can address uncertainty, this article argues that moments of crisis can lead to the reformulation of ideas. Empirically, this article demonstrates the transformation of the idea of austerity. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, austerity was largely understood either in historical terms or as a practice applied in other countries. In the aftermath of the crisis, both the political right and left attempted to co-opt the idea of austerity for their own ends, combining it with various other ideational strands on which they have historically drawn.

Denying the Dalai Lama: South Africa’s visa diplomacy, human rights and the media

South Africa has declared human rights a cornerstone of its foreign policy. However, its denial of visas to the Dalai Lama to visit South Africa on three successive occasions is illustrative of the contradictions in the country’s human rights foreign policy. South Africa’s decision to promote Sino-South African relations rather than address the causes of the Dalai Lama’s exile, and China’s occupation of Tibet and poor human rights record has resulted in widespread media reaction in South Africa and abroad. Three related matters were highlighted, namely South Africa’s human rights foreign policy; the country’s visa diplomacy and its refusal of visas to the Dalai Lama to promote Sino-South African bilateral trade and diplomatic relations; and the media as a key domestic foreign policy actor. This study uses a constructivist approach. It concludes that the South African media framed and constructed the South African government’s public and visa diplomacy in respect of the Dalai Lama from the ideational turn (the promotion of human rights) whereas South Africa’s foreign policy is presented as replaced by a hegemonic turn in favour of China.

The British Political Tradition and the Material-Ideational Debate

This article: Critically discusses recent material on the British Political Tradition (BPT) using broader discussions of the relationship between material relations, institutions and ideas as a frame for that discussion. Argues that the BPT has played a key role in shaping the institutions and processes of British politics and that it provides a key element of the context in which any attempt at change occurs. Operates as a path-dependency which constrains, but does not prevent, change; Argues that there are three path-dependencies not one, an institutional one, a discursive one and a political-economic one. Makes significant contributions to our understanding of British politics and to debates about historical institutionalism and path dependency.Recently there has been a revival of interest in debates about the British political tradition. In part, this is a reflection of the ‘ideational turn’ in Anglophone comparative politics. However, this ideational turn immediately raises two of the most important meta-theoretical debates in social science; the relationships between institutions and ideas and the material and the ideational. In our view, anyone who suggests that political traditions shape political outcomes has to take a position on these debates, although they are rarely addressed. This article seeks to address that omission. We argue that, while the predominant ideas about democracy and political practice in the UK, what we term the British Political Tradition, do affect the institutions and processes of government, these ideas exist in a dialectical relationship with those institutions and, more broadly, with the material context within which the tradition, and indeed the institutions, operate(s).

Rites of Passage: Discursive Strategies in the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill Debate

The transformational impact of the ideational turn in political science has been profound, but academic inquiry into the role of discursive strategies has remained limited. This article examines this issue through a study of the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. The debate surrounding the Bill was characterised by two competing discourses of ‘hope’ and ‘fear’. Established during previous debates over the regulation of research using human embryos, these contrasted the potential medical benefits to be derived with the social and ethical dangers of an unregulated science. This article deconstructs these discursive strategies and considers their impact on both the course of the debate as well as the mechanics of the Bill's passage through Parliament itself. It maintains that discursive and institutional contexts are mutually constitutive.

From universalism to selectivism: the ideational turn of the anti-poverty policies in Finland

In the universalistic Nordic welfare states, targeted anti-poverty policies have not been considered as specific aims of social policy. The situation has, however, altered in Finland and there is now a new element in Finnish social policy that can be called ‘anti-poverty policy’. This article explores when, how and why the policy paradigm relating to poverty changed in Finland. It includes an empirical analysis of the documents produced by key actors. Analyses show that the basic idea behind the policy prescriptions for alleviating poverty in Finland has changed from the idea of universalism to the idea of selectivism. The results emphasise that the Church, non-governmental organisations, the European Union’s Lisbon agenda as well as an active opposition politics had an important agenda-setting role behind the ideational turn from universalism to the idea of selectivism.

When Experts Do Politics: Introducing Water Policy Reform in Brazil

This article brings to the fore the role of experts as policy agents by analyzing the water management reform in three Brazilian states. Seeking to contribute to the recent ideational turn in political science, it contends that in studying the emergence and implementation of new policy ideas, more attention must be paid to the role of experts as policy innovators and to the interplay between experts' knowledge brokerage and the influence of party politics. To examine the interaction between knowledge brokerage and party politics, comparative case studies were conducted to trace back throughout their different phases the reform processes of the Brazilian states of Ceará, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul. The purpose of this research design is to test the argument that experts are major reform agents and that what experts can effectively achieve depends on both the reform phase and the political context they find themselves in.

OECD organisational discourse, peer reviews and sustainable development: An ecological-institutionalist perspective

As part of the recent ‘ideational turn’ in research on international organisations, the study of organisational discourse has gained popularity. Yet ecological economics has thus far paid little attention to the role of organisations as sites for the discursive battles over the meaning of sustainable development. For an international organisation without regulatory powers, such as the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), discourse is the main vehicle for policy influence, but it also plays a key role in (re)defining the organisation's identity and authority. The OECD's organisational discourse has been strongly dominated by ‘modern mainstream economics’, and has given little room for marginalised discourses. This paper compares, from the perspective of institutionally oriented ecological economics (IOEE), and borrowing from critical discourse analysis, the experience from attempts to integrate the concept of sustainable development within two OECD peer review mechanisms – the Economic Surveys and the Environmental Performance Reviews. The extent to which the respective conceptions of sustainable development in the two reviews are in line with the principles of IOEE and the reasons for the apparent failure of sustainable development discourse to gain foothold within the organisation are analysed.

Structures Do Not Come with an Instruction Sheet: Interests, Ideas, and Progress in Political Science

This article questions the centrality of interest-based explanation in political science. Through an examination of the “turn to ideas” undertaken in the past decade by rationalist and nonrationalist scholars in both comparative politics and international relations, it seeks to make three points. First, interests are far from the unproblematic and ever-ready explanatory instruments we assume them to be. Second, the ideational turn of historical institutionalism and constructivist international relations theory marks a substantive theoretical shift in the field precisely because it problematizes notions of action that take interest as given. Third, such scholarship emerged from, and in reaction to, the inherent limits of rationalist treatments of interests and ideas. That it did so suggests that progress in the discipline may be more dialectic—rather than linear or paradigmatic—than we realize.

From Comparative Capitalism to Economic Constructivism: The Cornell Series in Political Economy

The Cornell Series in Political Economy was established twenty years ago by Cornell University Press. Since 1982 over 70 titles have appeared under its auspices, and over time the series has established itself as perhaps the leading political economy series in the USA. What makes the Cornell Series distinctive is how it has consistently eschewed both formal fads, for example, hard-core rational choice analyses, and thematic diversions, for example, globalisation, at a time when many other presses were ‘ambulance chasing’ the next big thing. In doing so, not only has the series kept its identity, but that identity has progressively evolved over time. The series as a whole can be grouped into three broad areas: the comparative study of capitalism (Europe and Asia); international organisation and governance; and the study of foreign economic policy. Having said this, there are of course overlaps, and volumes sometimes do not fit neatly into one or other category. Nonetheless, this is probably as general a grouping as one can make. Yet, despite such generality, trying to review the entire series comprehensively would be pointless given its sheer volume. Consequently, this essay will instead give a partial overview of what I see as some of the main contributions both to, and of, the series, especially in the area of comparative capitalisms. Indeed, rather than simply review, I wish to make the following argument. Implicit in this part of the series is a progression that begins in the mid 1980s with studies of European capitalism. The basic historical institutionalist framework that this initial work utilised takes an ideational and constructivist turn within the analysis of comparative capitalism and international relations in the 1990s. As a consequence, the series is now, perhaps more than any other, pushing forward the insights of constructivist theory into political economy. In doing so, the Cornell Series in Political Economy continues to provide consist-

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

Thick Rationality and the Missing "Brute Fact": The Limits of Rationalist Incorporations of Norms and Ideas

Anomalies and problems internal to the basic "thin" version of rational choice theory, together with the absence of persuasive endogenous resolutions, have led many rationalist analysts to "thicken" thin rationality by incorporating norms and ideas into their analyses. This essay analyzes the sources, manifestations, and limitations of this ideational turn in rational choice theory. It delineates and critiques four rationalist incorporations of norms and three rationalist incorporations of ideas. Yet all of these thick-rational analyses do not adequately explain the "brute fact" that largely enables norms and ideas to affect the behavior of actors. Recently, however, some rationalist analysts have advanced an alternative approach that incorporates cultural and communicative factors into rationalist analysis This "interpretive rationality" (or a related "cognitive rationality") merits further investigation because it directly analyzes the "brute fact" in ways that "thick rationality" cannot.

"Any More Bright Ideas?" The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy

"Any More Bright Ideas?" The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy