So, five laps but only one and a half articles. What’s going on? Did I get distracted by squirrels? Nope, it’s just that both of these (especially the latter) are dense with ideas and terminology that I am not yet familiar enough with, but need to be. I rarely skim, but on these I did not at all.
Kern, F., 2011, ‘Ideas, institutions and interests: Explaining policy divergence in fostering ‘system innovations’ towards sustainability’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Vol. 29(6), pp.1116-1134.
Schmidt, V. 2008. Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse. Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 11, (1), pp. 303-326.
Kern uses “ideas, interests and institutions” to tease out differences between how the Dutch and Uk states have approached energy innovation for more sustainable energy systems. He compares an “Energy Transition” scheme in the Netherlands and the Carbon Trust in the UK.
He knows how much to bite off (emphasis added)
In the policy studies and comparative politics literatures explanations of policy change are often based on one or more of three concepts: ideas, institutions, and interests (Campbell 1998; Hay 2004; Poteete 2003; Schmidt 2001; Scott 2008). The debate over the extent to which ideas matter or whether interests dominate politics is a controversial issue in social science and depends partly on epistemological assumptions. Solving this long-standing debate cannot be the aim of this paper – the aim is rather more modest.
(Kern, 2011:1119)
Narratives and storylines are important (see yesterday’s reading about importance of policy-makers own beliefs andmindsets). Selling storylines to them relies on catchy and upbeat tales –
A central concept used to promote this storyline was the existence of an `innovation chain’, which is “a very, very powerful tool to sell the concept of innovation to people who don’t know anything about it” (interview 26).
(Kern, 2011:1125)
And ambiguity can be a wonderful thing –everyone can believe/tell their supporters what is convenient-
The environmental organisations were very much in favour of a business carbon tax and also supported the idea of hypothecation (interview 22). A central success factor in achieving agreement was the interpretative flexibility of the storyline, which allowed actors to interpret the initiative as being in line with their interests.
(Kern, 2011:1126)
There’s good stuff on how the state has been stripped of its planning ability (my words, not Kern’s). We must always be careful not to assume ‘the state’ has an unchanging identity and capacity. A major effort has been made to strip it of its strength and legitimacy (yes, neoliberalism, I’m looking at you.)
Another institutional factor important for the way in which the CT was designed is the way the British civil service is organised. The structure of the civil service changed substantially in the 1990s when a lot of the policy implementation was `outsourced’ to executive agencies and the civil service was to focus on the core needs of policy development and relations with Parliament. While the thrust of the reforms was to focus on policy development, the civil servants available for policy development shrank as four-fifths of the nearly 500 000 civil servants became employed in executive agencies, and the overall number of civil servants was reduced drastically (Saalfeld, 2003, page 639). In addition, Helm has argued that, because of the UK government’s belief in the liberalisation discourse in which the setting up of regulators was believed to be sufficient energy policy, the intelligence of civil service with regard to energy policy was diminished as there was no need for other policies (Helm, 2002). This factor partly explains why private actors were so dominant in the creation of the storyline and the subsequent design of the CT.
(Kern, 2011:1126)
He closes out with optimistim about what might be done, that there is no ‘silver bullet’ to fix everything and this –
“coalitions of actors with the `right’ ideas can make a difference in bringing about policy and institutional change despite being constrained by existing discourses, interests, and institutions.”
(Kern, 2011: 1130)
Yes, and coalitions of actors with the right contacts and cash can also prevent policy and institutional change. And do, at least in the colonies…
This is one I need to re-read.
Schmidt has staked out a good claim for ‘discursive institutionalism. This is distinction/extension to three older forms of ‘neo-institutionalism’. I’m going to let her speak for herself on what they are and why “DI” is superior.
The so-called new institutionalism emerged in the mid-1980s in response to an overemphasis on agency without structure (i.e., rational choice methodology) or, worse, on agency without sentient agents or structures (i.e., behaviorism).
The new institutionalists brought institutions “back in” in an effort to right the balance, but they may have tipped it too far in the other direction. The problem for all three of the older new institutionalisms is that in their effort to develop explanations that took account of institutions, the institutions they defined have had a tendency to be overly “sticky,” and the agents (where they exist) have been largely fixed in terms of preferences or fixated in terms of norms. The turn to ideas and discourse by scholars in all three of the new institutionalisms represents their effort to unstick institutions and to unfix preferences and norms. In so doing, however, those who really took ideas and discourse seriously, whom I call discursive institutionalists (whether or not they would label themselves as such), have challenged the basic premises of the older new institutionalisms. The challenge is both ontological (about what institutions are and how they are created, maintained, and changed) and epistemological (about what we can know about institutions and what makes them continue or change with regard to interests and norms).
(Schmidt, 2008:313)
There’s heaps of other good stuff here – she has synthesised a vast amount of material, found fruitful gaps, plugged them quite well (as best I can tell – but not everyone agrees, see below). I will return to this article, and do a better gloss, complete with some diagrams of my own. This could be EXTREMELY useful for the PhD, I suspect, but I have to figure out how the neo-institutionalisms and the policy theories mesh (or don’t).
That sentence has probably never been typed before? Anyway, I feel a video about discursive institutionalism coming on, as per the “Advocacy Coalition Framework” one I did a while back.
And tomorrow I get to read these –
Bell, S. 2011. Do We Really Need a New ‘Constructivist Institutionalism’ to Explain Institutional Change? British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41, (4), pp.883 – 906.
Schmidt, V. 2012. A curious constructivism: A response to Professor Bell. British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 42, (3), pp 705-713.
Woohoooo!!!
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