Taking ideas and discourse seriously: explaining change through discursive institutionalism as the fourth ‘new institutionalism’

TLDR

Traditional new institutionalisms increasingly endogenize change by turning to ideas and discourse, yet the article identifies gaps in discursive institutionalism such as limited analysis of ideational change, reliance on older neo‑institutional theories for background, and insufficient integration of interests and positional power. The article proposes discursive institutionalism as a fourth new institutionalism that focuses on the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse within institutional contexts, arguing it offers the greatest potential to explain actors’ preferences, strategies, and normative orientations. Discursive institutionalism defines institutions dynamically as internal structures of meaning, where agents’ background ideational abilities create and maintain institutions and their foreground discursive abilities enable critical communication that can change or sustain them. The article demonstrates that discursive institutionalism extends beyond traditional frameworks by addressing interests and uncertainty, critical junctures and incremental change, and norms and culture through a wide range of analytic approaches.

Abstract

All three of the traditionally recognized new institutionalisms – rational choice, historical, and sociological – have increasingly sought to ‘endogenize’ change, which has often meant a turn to ideas and discourse. This article shows that the approaches of scholars coming out of each of these three institutionalist traditions who take ideas and discourse seriously can best be classified as part of a fourth ‘new institutionalism’ – discursive institutionalism (DI) – which is concerned with both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse in institutional context. It argues that this newest of the ‘new institutionalisms’ has the greatest potential for providing insights into the dynamics of institutional change by explaining the actual preferences, strategies, and normative orientations of actors. The article identifies the wide range of approaches that fit this analytic framework, illustrating the ways in which scholars of DI have gone beyond the limits of the traditional institutionalisms on questions of interests and uncertainty, critical junctures and incremental change, norms and culture. It defines institutions dynamically – in contrast to the older neo-institutionalisms’ more static external rule-following structures of incentives, path-dependencies, and cultural framing – as structures and constructs of meaning internal to agents whose ‘background ideational abilities’ enable them to create (and maintain) institutions while their ‘foreground discursive abilities’ enable them to communicate critically about them, to change (or maintain) them. But the article also points to areas for improvement in DI, including the theoretical analysis of processes of ideational change, the use of the older neo-institutionalisms for background information, and the incorporation of the power of interests and position into accounts of the power of ideas and discourse.