This paper sets out an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This framework, while rigorous and broadly applicable and an advance on the frameworks currently employed, primarily seeks to incorporate an a priori element. Until now the frameworks utilized in examining critical junctures were entirely postdictive. Adding a predictive element to the concept will constitute a significant advance. The new framework, and its predictive element, termed the "differentiating factor," is tested here in examining macroeconomic crises and subsequent changes in macroeconomic policy, in America and Sweden. Résumé. Cet article propose un cadre amélioré pour analyser les conjonctures critiques. Bien que rigoureux, largement applicable et représentant en soi une avance sur les modèles actuellement utilisés, ce cadre cherche principalement à incorporer un élément a priori. Jusqu'ici les cadres servant à l'étude des conjonctures critiques étaient entièrement fondés sur la postdiction. L'ajout d'un élément prédictif constituera une avance notable. Cet article examine la validité du nouveau cadre et de son élément prédictif, appelé «facteur de différenciation», à la lumière des crises macro-économiques en Amérique et en Suède et des changements de politique macroéconomique qu'elles ont entraînés dans leur sillon.

Abstract.This paper improves our understanding of critical junctures, a concept employed in historical institutionalism for exploring change. However, the concept lacks rigour, weakening our ability to define critical junctures. Of late, academics have utilized other mechanisms to identify change in historical institutionalism. Thus, it is within this context that the critical junctures approach is remoulded through the specification of standards, hence reducing uncertainty as to what constitutes a critical juncture. The remoulded approach is employed here in examining change in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' (ICTU) influence over public policy in 1987.Résumé.Cet article permet de mieux comprendre le concept de conjoncture critique, qui est utilisé en institutionnalisme historique pour explorer le changement. Ce concept, en effet, manque de rigueur, si bien qu'il est difficile de définir les conjonctures critiques. Récemment, les théoriciens de l'institutionnalisme historique ont eu recours à d'autres mécanismes pour cerner le changement. C'est dans ce contexte que nous remanions la méthode des conjonctures critiques en établissant des normes de manière à pouvoir déterminer avec plus de certitude ce qui constitue une conjoncture critique. Nous employons cette méthode remaniée pour examiner l'évolution de l'influence de l'Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) sur les politiques publiques en 1987.

This article joins with others in this special issue to examine the evolution of our understanding of how the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic impacted policy ideas and routines across a wide variety of sectors of government activity. Did policy ideas and routines transform as a result of the pandemic or were they merely a continuation of the status quo ante? If they did transform, are the transformations temporary in nature or likely to lead to significant, deep and permanent reform to existing policy paths and trajectories? As this article sets out, the literature on policy punctuations has evolved and helps us understand the impact of COVID-19 on policy-making but tends to conflate several distinct aspects of path trajectories and deviations under the general concept of “critical junctures” which muddy reflections and findings. Once the different possible types of punctuations have been clarified, however, the result is a set of concepts related to path creation and disruption—especially that of “path clearing”—which are better able to provide an explanation of the kinds of policy change to be expected to result from the impact of events such as the 2019 coronavirus pandemic.

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This paper seeks to investigate the inner mechanics of policy change. It aims to discover how ideas enter the political arena, and how endogenous forces within the policy making environment transform ideas into new policies. The central hypothesis is that in times of crisis, new ideas emanate from a number of change agents, but in order for any of these ideas to enter the institutional environment, one specific agent of change must be present: the political entrepreneur. Without political entrepreneurs, ideational change, and subsequent policy change, would not occur. The paper sets out a framework for identifying and explaining the endogenous drivers of policy change, and then tests this framework on two case studies, from two countries.