The Role of Ideas in Policy and Institutional Change: A Comparison of the Open Functional Approach, Constructivism and Discourse Theory
Political Studies, 2015
Posted: 5 Feb 2015 Last revised: 5 Jul 2016
Date Written: 2015
Abstract
Most scholars engaged in ideational analysis agree that the availability of new ideas may cause existing welfare state policies and institutions to alter. In this paper I consider the extent to which, the open functional approach and constructivist approaches are able to explain the role of ideas in policy and institutional change. I argue that notwithstanding their contribution to the study of the role of ideas in policy and institutional changes, these approaches suffer from some shortcomings as they fail to view ideas as non-stable entities. In order to address these shortcomings, I develop an alternative poststructuralist discourse theoretical explanatory model. Applying this model to the case of the rise and fall of Dutch life course policy, I show how a discourse theoretical view on ideas as floating signifiers contributes to the study of the role of ideas in welfare state change..
Keywords: constructivism; discourse theory; David Howarth; open functional approach
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