Advancing Post-Structural Institutionalism: Discourses, Subjects, Power Asymmetries, and Institutional Change

• Published in: Critical review (New York, N.Y.) Vol. 30; no. 3-4; pp. 325 - 346
• Main Author: Larsson, Oscar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Astoria Routledge 02.10.2018; Critical Review
• Subjects: Causality; Change agents; constructivist institutionalism; Discourses; discursive institutionalism; ideas; Institutional change; Institutionalism; Institutionalization; Intellectuals; Meaning; neo-institutionalism; Political power; Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies); post-structural institutionalism; post-structuralism; Poststructuralism; Power; power/knowledge; Social reality; Statsvetenskap (exklusive studier av offentlig förvaltning och globaliseringsstudier)
• ISSN: 0891-3811; 1933-8007; 1933-8007
• DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2018.1567982

Colin Hay's and Vivien Schmidt's responses to my previous critical engagement with their respective versions of neo-institutionalism raise the issue of how scholars may account for the ideational power of political processes and how ideas may generate both stability and change. Even though Hay, Schmidt, and I share a common philosophical ground in many respects, we nevertheless diverge in our views about how to account for ideational power and for actors' ability to navigate a social reality that is saturated with structures and meaning. There continues to be a need for an analytical framework that incorporates discourse and a constitutive logic based upon the power in ideas. Post-structural institutionalism (PSI) analyzes discourse as knowledge claims by means of the concept of a constitutive causality, analytically identified in respect to institutions, such that the substantive content of ideas/discourse provides ideational power and generates immanent change.