#Awalkinthepark: Policy wonkery, discursive institutionalism, ideational power and climate denial

Gah.  My bag got stolen yesterday, because I trusted the staff at the AgeUK shop in Withington to, you know, do their jobs.  Sign above change room said don’t take bags in, so I gave my bag to the staff for ‘safe keeping’.  And it was gone when I came out (along with the bike helmet I’d attached to it). Both he and the manager were adamant that it was nothing to do with them, not their responsibility to, um, look after the possessions of customers who were requested not to take bags into the changing room.  Very classy,  AgeUK.

The good news is that all that was in there was my appointments book, a truly ancient mobile and… an article I’d read and marked up (Cerna, 2013), and another I’d started in on (Bell, 2012). So the thief will have been bitterly disappointed, I suspect…  Enough soap opera, on with the stuff. Here’s what I read yesterday and today as I walked around t’park.

Jacques, P. 2012. A General Theory of Climate Denial. Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 12, (2), pp.9-17.

Cerna, L. 2013. The Nature of Policy Change and Implementation: A Review of Different Theoretical Approaches. Paris: OECD.
Hope, M. and Raudla, R. 2012. Discursive institutionalism and policy stasis in simple and compound polities: the cases of Estonian fiscal policy and United States climate change policy. Policy Studies, Vol. 33, (5), pp.399-418.
Bell, S. 2012. The Power of Ideas: The Ideational Shaping of the Structural Power of Business. International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 56, pp.661-673.

Jacuqes piece is short and fine.  Trend, attribution and impact denial.  Why have academics etc had difficulty in naming ‘the counter-movement’. Why reject the premise, and what is the result of the binary choice between the orthodoxy and its rejection.

“Finally, “contrarian” has a flavor of heroic daring, a David versus Goliath connotation of debunking myths from a repressive mainstream through courage and intelligence the rest of us lack. Indeed, some of the aforementioned leaders see themselves in the context of scientific history in which heroic contrarians face Copernican opposition but expect to be vindicated.”
(Jacques, 2012:10)

Yup, thus groups with names like “Lavoisier Group” or “Galileo Movement”

“Climate skepticism comes as an anti-reºexive counter-movement to beat back the ontological threats to Western modernity, organized through conservative think tanks, mostly in the US, with some in the UK.”
(Jacques, 2012:11)

There’s an imminent/immanent confusion that should have been picked up at the proofing phase.

“The willful attacks on science by the counter-movement mislead the public and work to stall accountability, civic obligation, and critical ecological problem-solving in ways that make the counter-movement different not only epistemologically, but morally.”
(Jacques, 2012:10)

Yep.

Jacques ends with an intriguing claim, which could do with further investigation –

“The climate denial counter-movement comes from, I posit, the defensive fear that the possessive individualistic ontology of the West lies uncomfortably in the guillotine.”
(Jacques, 2012:15)

Cerna’s piece is packed FULL of useful stuff.  I can’t quote any specific bits, but if you’re looking for micro- assessments of any of the following;

• path dependence,
• advocacy coalition framework,
• policy learning,
• policy diffusion,
• punctuated equilibrium,
• institutional change,
• multi-level governance,
• policy networks,
• disruptive innovation as well as
• the politics of change and reform.

Then look no further!

Hope and Raudla have written a corker!  Really useful for thinking about “discursive institutionalism” and, instead of policy change, policy stasis.
There’s really good explanations of neo-institutionalism

“While ‘new institutionalism’ has generally served to reassert the importance of political institutions within the broader policy studies research agenda, the three established perspectives that comprise it (‘rational choice’ institutionalism, ‘sociological’ institutionalism, and ‘historical’ institutionalism)1 remain somehow static. Rational choice institutionalism identifies interests as the catalyst for decision-making within institutions but fails to locate these motives within the less-formal organisational context (Powell and DiMaggio 1991), and fails to account properly for how such ‘interests’ are formulated and perceived within the institutional context (Blyth 1997). Sociological institutionalism invokes cultural norms and institutionalised social practices to understand institutional processes but can be guilty of excluding the actors involved within the interpretation and reproduction of these practices, leaving ‘action without agents’ (Hall and Taylor 1996, p. 954). Finally, historical institutionalism cites the limiting effect of past actions to explain specific moments in the process of institutional decision-making through reference to path-dependence and transferral costs but fails to properly account for punctuations that see institutions forging new policy paths in unexpected directions (Schmidt 2002). As such, while each of the established three ‘older’ new institutionalisms is useful as an approach to understanding institutional policy processes, none of them are complete. Enter discursive institutionalism.
(Hope and Raudla, 2012: 400-401)

They then turn on to discursive institutionalism, outlining the ideational dimension (cognitive and normative) and the ‘interactive dimension (co-ordinative and communicative)

There’s good stuff on the power of discourses being able to cause gridlock…

In the same way that discourses can be formulated to drive progress on a policy issue, their very formulation can also be obstructive to action. In the same way that ‘interests’ compete and cause gridlock, so can the discourse that informs and constructs them. In the same way that cultural norms can entrench a particular understanding and approach to a policy issue, so can the discourse of the status-quo provide a default which there must be a concerted effort by policy-makers to move away from.
(Hope and Raudla, 2012: 403)

 

And a corking graph that helps you understand it all (or possibly not. But it helps explain the text, if you read it)

I’ll admit to skimming the Estonia stuff, but the US stuff – about the importance of the Byrd-Hagel resolution was excellent.

“Where discursive institutionalism can contribute to understanding policy stasis in particular, however, is to go beyond this truism and turn it on its head: not only is change difficult, but stasis is easy.”
(Hope and Raudla, 2012: 412)

And this bit is crucial.  Making sure nothing happens takes effort!!

in the United States, the climate change policy discourse turned into a vehicle for diffusing responsibility for policy action. The arguments entrenched into the climate change policy discourse diluted accountability by spreading the policy debates across different sectors and institutions to such an extent that no actor felt the need to act decisively, leading to policy stasis. Thus, as can be seen in both cases in their different ways, maintaining policy stasis _ far from being a situation in which the government ‘does nothing’ – in fact requires a large amount of discursive activity by numerous policy actors.
(Hope and Raudla, 2012: 415)

Last up, Bell – the basic point is that state managers are not dupes and dopes and tabulae rasa on which businesses – via think tanks and business associations can scrawl.  Their mindsets and assumptions matter.

“Hence, the focus is on ‘‘situated agents’’ operating in mutually shaping or dialectical relations with wider institutional, structural, and ideational contexts. Crucially also, it is these changing contexts which helped shape the ideas and agendas of key agents…. An analysis that focuses on situated agents, on their ideational processes and how these are shaped by wider contexts, also allows us to tease out important connections between power and ideas.”
(Bell, 2012:663)

And business knows, and gets nervous about things like this –

“Smith’s (1999, 2000) evidence from the United States suggests that institutional incentives, such as electoral pressures on governments in high stakes contests, can override the need to secure business investment, even during economic downturns.”
(Bell, 2012:664)

Bell distinguishes constructivism form rationalist approaches nicely –

Constructivists have instead highlighted the ‘‘social’’ and the subjective and inter-subjective ‘‘ideational’’ realms as key drivers of identities, interests, purpose, and action in politics. Furthermore, in contrast to rationalist approaches, where situations or contexts are largely seen as shaping agents,2 constructivism reverses this logic and sees agents and their ideas as shaping situations (Dessler and Owen 2005:598).
(Bell, 2012:666)

And there’s good stuff on what Giddens would probably call structuration –

Institutions and structures matter because of the ways they reflect, refract, restrain, and enable human behavior, while in turn, it is the behaviour of agents that reproduces or transforms institutions and structures over time. Moreover, as argued above, actors are interpretive, partly constructing the experience of their institutional situation using cognitive and normative frameworks….It may be possible under extraordinary (say revolutionary) conditions for agents to collectively overturn or deny institutions, but more ordinarily, institutions confront agents in the here and now as embedded, already structured terrains.

Institutions are thus ontologically prior to the individuals who populate them at any given time. The temporal dimension is important here. Institutions have properties that help structure thought and behaviour at one remove from the immediacy of thought or action by agents at any given point in time. Institutions can thus shape or even impose behavior. This is what gives institutions causal properties and why at bottom we pursue ‘‘institutional’’ analysis. By essentially eschewing a meaningful institutional analysis, recent constructivist institutionalists place almost all explanatory weight onto agency and lose sight of institutions
(Bell 2011).
(Bell, 2012:667)

[That last is a dig at discursive institutionalism, I think. I will be reading about this more…]

And there’s some specific important context for my Australian case study –

“by the mid-1990s, important structural and institutional shifts were also occurring in the Australian economy, which further helped entrench this new mindset. Most importantly, there was a shift toward far stronger terms of trade for Australia as commodity exports (especially to a booming China) strengthened. This was enough to reverse a process of declining terms of trade that had been underway for decades in Australia. It was a profound structural shift that further emboldened policymakers regarding the CAD and was a further strong facilitator in helping to alter mindsets and the stance of economic policy.”
(Bell, 2012: 670)

And finally (!), a nice hint of the importance of the power of organisations –

Offe and Wiesenthal (1980:86) have argued that the structural power of business might be ‘‘exploited and fine-tuned by the operation of business associations,’’ and the insights offered in this paper help us understand why. If the ideas and perceptions of government policymakers matter in mediating and shaping the impact of structural power, then overt activism, lobbying, and the generation and dissemination of new policy ideas on the part of business can be an important component in fine-tuning, exploiting, and even amplifying the structural power of business in the eyes of government policymakers. On this basis, classic understandings of the ‘‘automaticity’’ of the structural power weapon should be treated with caution.
(Bell, 2012: 670)

Offe, Claus, and Helmut Wiesenthal. (1980) Two Logics of Collective Action: Theoretical Notes on Social Class and Organisational Form. Political Power and Social Theory 1: 76– 115.

Outfits like the MCA, BCA, AIGN and so on, matter…

Heaps that I am going to have to get my head around, and this below is a small selection-

 

Blyth, Mark. (2003) Structures Do Not Come with an Instruction Sheet: Interests, Ideas and Progress in Political Science. Perspectives in Politics 1: 695–706.

Dowding, Keith. (2008) Agency and Structure: Interpreting Power Relationships. Journal of Power 1: 21–36.

Fligstein, Neil. (2001) Social Skill and the Theory of Fields. Sociological Theory 19: 105–125.

Fuchs, Doris. (2005) Commanding Heights? The Strength and Fragility of Business Power in Global Politics. Millennium 33: 771– 801.

Fuchs, Doris, and Markus Lederer. (2007) The Power of Business. Business and Politics 9: 1–19.

Konings, Martijn. (2009) The Construction of US Financial Power. Review of International Studies 35: 69–94.

Mann, Michael. (1984) The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results. European Journal of Sociology 25: 185–213.

Marsh, David. (2009) Keeping Ideas in Their Place: In Praise of Thin Constructivism. Australian Journal of Political Science 44 (4): 679–696.

Meyer, John W. (2010) World Society, Institutional Theories, and the Actor. Annual Review of Sociology 36: 1–20.

Peters, Jon Pierre, and Desmond S. King. (2005) The Politics of Path Dependency: Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism. Journal of Politics 67: 1275–1300.

Pierson, Paul. (2000a) The Limits of Design: Explaining Institutional Origins and Change. Governance 13 (4): 475–499.

Pierson, Paul. (2000b) Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics. American Political Science Review 94: 251– 267.