Arguing deep ideational change

Kornprobst, Markus; Senn, Martin

doi:10.4324/9781315149264-7

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…In an effort to break with the understanding of background ideas and public philosophies as essentially immovable objects, a number of recent interventions have sought to bring greater attention to how public philosophies may develop significantly over time and how such processes may help account for institutional change. Kornprobst and Senn (), for example, ask how agents change the public philosophies in which they are embedded, but they uphold a distinction between times of stability, where foundational ideas remain decontested, and periods of greater uncertainty that offer actors opportunities to contest public philosophies. Boswell and Hampshire () argue that strategies of selective mobilisation may over time bring about adjustments to public philosophies themselves, while Schmidt () and Carstensen and Schmidt () also highlight the possibility of changing public philosophies as certain elements of such foundational ideas may eventually lose their central role, with others gaining in importance.…”

Section: From Static To Dynamic Policy Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article follows on the back of recent discursive institutionalist efforts to theorise how public philosophies play into processes of policy change (Boswell & Hampshire ; Kornprobst & Senn ; Schmidt ). Taking these conceptual advances as our starting point, we utilise insights from French Pragmatic Sociology (FPS) to argue, first, that discursive institutionalist analysis may benefit from conceptualising public philosophies as composite and in need of continuous justification.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Legitimation as justification: Foregrounding public philosophies in explanations of gradual ideational change

Carstensen

Hansen

2018

European J Political Res

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In accounts of institutional change, discursive institutionalists point to the role of economic and political ideas in upending institutional stability and providing the raw material for the establishment of a new institutional setup. This approach has typically entailed a conceptualisation of ideas as coherent and monolithic and actors as almost automatically following the precepts of the ideas they hold and support. Recent theorising stresses how ideas are in fact composite and heterogeneous, and actors pragmatic and strategic in how they employ ideas in political struggles. However, this change of focus has, until recently, not included how foundational ideas of a polity, often referred to as ‘public philosophies’, are theorised to impact on institution‐building. Drawing on French Pragmatic Sociology, and taking as a starting point recent efforts within discursive institutionalism to conceptualise the dynamic nature of public philosophies, this article seeks to foreground moral justification in accounts of ideational and institutional change. It suggests that public philosophies are reflexively used by actors in continual processes of normative justification that may produce significant policy shifts over time. The empirical relevance of the argument is demonstrated through an analysis of gradual ideational and institutional change in French labour market policy, specifically the development from the state‐guaranteed minimum income scheme of 1988 to the neoliberal make‐work‐pay logic of the 2009 scheme, Revenu de solidarité active. The analysis shows that public and moral justifications have underpinned and gradually shaped these radical changes.

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Section: From Static To Dynamic Policy Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%