Ideas and Social Policy: An Institutionalist Perspective

Abstract

Since the beginning of the  s, historical institutionalism has emerged as one of the most influential theoretical perspectives in social policy studies. Although their work is insightful, most institutionalist scholars tend to relegate policy ideas to the back of their theoretical constructions dealing with welfare state development. The objective of this paper is to show how institutionalist scholarship can pay greater attention to ideational processes without abandoning its core assumptions about the structuring impact of political institutions and policy legacies on welfare state development. If institutions truly influence policy-making, policy ideas matter in and beyond the agenda-setting process. Related to existing policy legacies, perceived problems mesh with policy alternatives grounded in a specific paradigm. When stressing the need to reform, and promoting new alternatives, policy entrepreneurs draw on existing ideological repertoires to frame these alternatives. The ability to successfully frame policy alternatives can become a decisive aspect of the policy process. A discussion of recent European and North American policy debates illustrates these claims.Since the beginning of the  s, historical institutionalism has emerged as one of the most influential theoretical perspectives in political analysis and policy studies. This is especially true in the field of social policy research, where students of welfare state politics have frequently cited and debated the contributions of Paul Pierson (  ) and Theda Skocpol (  ), among others. Historical institutionalism is based on the assumption that a historically constructed set of institutional constraints and policy feedbacks structures the behaviour of political actors and interest groups during the policy-making process (Immergut  ). Although their work is insightful, most institutionalist scholars tend to relegate policy ideas to the back of their theoretical constructions dealing with welfare state politics (Merrien  ). Certainly, a number of institutionalist authors studying the welfare state deal with policy

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