The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis: A Portrait of Contemporary Debates 020308702X, 0415391563, 9780415391566, 9780203087022

Table of contents :
Book Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The ideational turn and the persistence of perennial dualisms
Part I Reflections on the ideational turn
2 Varieties of ideational explanation
3 Ideational analysis, political change and immanent causality
4 Everyday legitimacy and institutional change
Part II Ideas, discourses and policy analysis
5 Narratives of neoliberalism: The role of everyday media practices and the reproduction of dominant ideas
6 Beyond the rationalist bias?: On the ideational construction of risk
7 Examining ideas empirically: The political discourse of globalisation in Ireland
Part III Responses
8 Some reflections on ideas, ontology and where we go next
9 On setting and upsetting agendas: Blyth on Gofas and Hay, Tønder, and Seabrooke
10 On putting ideas into perspective: Schmidt on Kessler, Martin and Hudson, and Smith
Index

Citation preview

The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis

Despite the proliferation of ideational accounts in the last decade or so, the debate over the role of ideas remains caught up in a series of disputes over the ontological foundations, epistemological status and practical pay-off of the (re)turn to ideational explanations. It is thus unsurprising that there is still little clarity about just what an ideational approach is and what it would take to establish the kind of fully fledged ideational research programme many seem to assume has already been developed. The contributors to this volume address these dilemmas in diverse but engagingly complementary ways. They argue that what plagues most attempts to accord ideas an explanatory role is the persistence of the perennial dualisms in political analysis. In aspiring to eschew the current vogue for dualistic polemic, the present volume reveals elements of dualistic thinking in the ideational turn and assesses the impact of the persistence of these perennial dualisms in the attempt to accord ideas an explanatory role. Andreas Gofas is a Lecturer in International Relations at Panteion University, Athens. Colin Hay is Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Sheffield.

Routledge/Warwick Studies in Globalisation Edited by Richard Higgott and published in association with the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick.

What is globalisation and does it matter? How can we measure it? What are its policy implications? The Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick is an international site for the study of key questions such as these in the theory and practice of globalisation and regionalisation. Its agenda is avowedly interdisciplinary. The work of the centre will be showcased in this series. This series comprises two strands: Warwick Studies in Globalisation addresses the needs of students and teachers, and the titles will be published in hardback and paperback. Titles include: Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific Contested territories Edited by Kris Olds, Peter Dicken, Philip F. Kelly, Lily Kong and Henry Wai-chung Yeung Regulating the Global Information Society Edited by Christopher Marsden Banking on Knowledge The genesis of the global development network Edited by Diane Stone Historical Materialism and Globalisation Edited by Hazel Smith and Mark Rupert Civil Society and Global Finance Edited by Jan Aart Scholte with Albrecht Schnabel Towards a Global Polity Edited by Morten Ougaard and Richard Higgott New Regionalisms in the Global Political Economy Theories and cases Edited by Shaun Breslin, Christopher W. Hughes, Nicola Phillips and Ben Rosamond Development Issues in Global Governance Public-private partnerships and market multilateralism Benedicte Bull and Desmond McNeill

Globalizing Democracy Political parties in emerging democracies Edited by Peter Burnell The Globalization of Political Violence Globalization’s shadow Edited by Richard Devetak and Christopher W. Hughes Regionalisation and Global Governance The taming of globalisation? Edited by Andrew F. Cooper, Christopher W. Hughes and Philippe De Lombaerde

Routledge/Warwick Studies in Globalisation is a forum for innovative new research intended for a high-level specialist readership, and the titles will be available in hardback only. Titles include: 1 Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System Edited by Richard Higgott, Geoffrey Underhill and Andreas Bieler 2 Globalisation and Enlargement of the European Union Austrian and Swedish social forces in the struggle over membership Andreas Bieler 3 Rethinking Empowerment Gender and development in a global/local world Edited by Jane L. Parpart, Shirin M. Rai and Kathleen Staudt 4 Globalising Intellectual Property Rights The TRIPs Agreement Duncan Matthews 5 Globalisation, Domestic Politics and Regionalism The ASEAN free trade area Helen E. S. Nesadurai 6 Microregionalism and Governance in East Asia Katsuhiro Sasuga 7 Global Knowledge Networks and International Development Edited by Diane Stone and Simon Maxwell 8 Globalisation and Economic Security in East Asia Governance and institutions Edited by Helen E. S Nesadurai 9 Regional Integration in East Asia and Europe Convergence or divergence? Edited by Bertrand Fort and Douglas Webber

10 The Group of Seven Finance ministries, central banks and global financial governance Andrew Baker 11 Globalisation and Poverty Channels and policy responses Edited by Maurizio Bussolo and Jeffery I. Round 12 Democratisation, Governance and Regionalism in East and Southeast Asia A comparative study Edited by Ian Marsh 13 Assessment and Measurement of Regional Integration Edited by Philippe De Lombaerde 14 The World Bank and Governance A decade of reform and reaction Edited by Diane Stone and Christopher Wright 15 Nationalism & Global Solidarities Alternative projections to neoliberal globalization Edited by James Goodman and Paul James 16 The Evolution of Regionalism in Asia Economic and security issues Edited by Heribert Dieter 17 The World Bank and Social Transformation in International Politics Liberalism, governance and sovereignty David Williams 18 The Political Consequences of Anti-Americanism Edited by Richard Higgott and Ivona Malbasic 19 The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis A portrait of contemporary debates Edited by Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay 20 Governance of HIV/AIDS Making participation and accountability count Edited by Sophie Harman and Franklyn Lisk

The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis A portrait of contemporary debates

Edited by Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay

First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors their contribution All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay. p. cm.—(Routledge/Warwick studies in globalisation; 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Political science. 2. Idea (Philosophy) I. Gofas, Andreas. II. Hay, Colin, 1968– JA71.R6245 2009 320—dc22 2008054176 ISBN 0-203-08702-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–39156–3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–08702–X (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–39156–6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–08702–2 (ebk)

Contents

List of illustrations Contributors Acknowledgements

ix xi xiii

Introduction

1

1

3

The ideational turn and the persistence of perennial dualisms ANDREAS GOFAS AND COLIN HAY

PART I

Reflections on the ideational turn

11

2

13

Varieties of ideational explanation ANDREAS GOFAS AND COLIN HAY

3

Ideational analysis, political change and immanent causality

56

LARS TØNDER

4

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change

78

LEONARD SEABROOKE

PART II

Ideas, discourses and policy analysis 5

Narratives of neoliberalism: the role of everyday media practices and the reproduction of dominant ideas

95

97

DAVID HUDSON AND MARY MARTIN

6

Beyond the rationalist bias?: on the ideational construction of risk OLIVER KESSLER

118

viii

Contents

7 Examining ideas empirically: the political discourse of globalisation in ireland

144

NICOLA JO-ANNE SMITH

PART III

Responses 8 Some reflections on ideas, ontology and where we go next

163 165

MARK BLYTH AND VIVIEN SCHMIDT

9 On setting and upsetting agendas: Blyth on Gofas and Hay, Tønder, and Seabrooke

167

MARK BLYTH

10 On putting ideas into perspective: Schmidt on Kessler, Martin and Hudson, and Smith

187

VIVIEN SCHMIDT

Index

205

Illustrations

Figures 1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 7.1

The ideational turn and the persistence of perennial dualisms Ideas as road maps guiding strategic action Ideas as focal points Ideas encased within institutions The morphogenesis of culture Public opinion in the EU towards globalisation

4 23 26 27 42 157

Tables 2.1 3.1 7.1 7.2

Varieties of ideational explanation Ideational analysis, causality and political change Discourses of globalisation Irish policy-makers’ attitudes towards globalisation

17 59 150 155

Contributors

Mark Blyth is Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Political Science at Brown University. His research interests lie in the field of international political economy, particularly regarding questions of uncertainty and randomness in complex systems. He is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press 2002). His articles have appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics and World Politics. Andreas Gofas is Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of International and European Studies, Panteion University, Athens. His research interests lie in the fields of International Relations theory, social theory and comparative politics. Recent publications have appeared in Democracy and Security, the Journal of Conflict Resolution and Defence and Peace Economics. Colin Hay is Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Sheffield. His recent publications include The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (Oxford University Press 2009), Why We Hate Politics (Polity, winner of the W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize in 2008), Political Analysis (Palgrave 2002), The State (Palgrave 2006), European Politics (Oxford University Press 2007) and Demystifying Globalization (Palgrave 2000). David Hudson is Lecturer in International Relations and Political Economy in the Department of Political Science, University College London. His research interests are development and finance plus international political economy more generally. He co-edited Governing Financial Globalization (Routledge 2005) and is currently working on Global Finance and Development (Routledge). Oliver Kessler is Assistant Professor of International Relations and acting Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bielefeld. His most recent publications include ‘Risk and the Changing Temporality of International Law’ in the Leiden Journal of International Law, ‘Uncertainty, Rationality, and the Study of Social Institutions’ in the Review of Social Economy and (with Wouter Werner) ‘Extra Juridical Killing as Risk Management’, in Security Dialogue.

xii

Contributors

Mary Martin is a Research Fellow and Director of Communications and Research for the Human Security Programme at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. She was previously European director of the financial public relations group Citigate Dewe Rogerson, European business editor for The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph, and a financial and City correspondent for The Guardian and the Evening Standard. Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. Recent publications include Democracy in Europe (Oxford University Press 2006), ‘Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse’, in Annual Review of Political Science (2008), and ‘Putting the Political back into Political Economy by Bringing the State Back in Yet Again’, in World Politics (2009). Among recent awards and distinctions are an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels (ULB) (2008) and the Franqui Interuniversity Chair, Belgium (2007). Leonard Seabrooke is Professor in International Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, at the University of Warwick. His publications include The Social Sources of Financial Power (Cornell Univeristy Press 2006), US Power in International Finance (Palgrave 2001), Everyday Politics of the World Economy (co-edited with John M. Hobson, Cambridge University Press 2007), The Global Standard of Market Civilization (co-edited with Brett Bowden, Routledge 2006) and The Politics of Housing Booms and Busts (co-edited with Herman Schwartz, Palgrave 2009). Nicola Jo-Anne Smith is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Showcasing Globalisation? The Political Economy of the Irish Republic (Manchester University Press 2005) and was the principal investigator of an ESRC-funded research project on ‘Discourses of Globalisation and European Integration in the UK and Ireland’ (ref. RES000220780). Lars Tønder is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Northwestern University. His interests include early modern political thought, political theology, phenomenology and new theories of democracy. His research focuses on two projects: one that rethinks the concept of tolerance and another that expands the notion of pluralism. He is the co-editor of Radical Democracy: Politics between Abundance and Lack (Manchester University Press 2006) and has published articles in journals such as Theory & Event, Culture and Politics and Politologiske Studier. He is the recipient of the 2007 Leo Strauss Award for the best dissertation in political philosophy.

Acknowledgements

Ideas, we think, are important – sometimes more important than we give them credit for. The idea for this book grew out of discussions at a conference hosted by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Warwick Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR) back in 2002. As this already indicates, and as is often the case with edited volumes, this book has had a gestation period that was far longer than we had initially intended. Yet we hope that both the wait and the effort were worthwhile. During the process we have incurred a number of debts that we would here like to acknowledge publicly. First off, we would like to thank the then director of the CSGR, Richard Higgott. Richard not only ensured the funds for organising the initial conference but was the first to grasp the publishing potential of the project. We would also like to thank Ben Rosamond and Diane Stone for acting as exemplary discussants at that conference. Our appreciation goes to our contributors and particularly those who submitted their drafts early and waited patiently for the book to appear. Finally, and in a similar vein, we thank Caroline Richmond for her editorial assistance and Emma Davis and Lucy Dunne from Routledge for their patience at every stage on the path to publication. Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay

Introduction

1

The ideational turn and the persistence of perennial dualisms Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay

After a period of neglect, if not hostility, towards ideational explanations, where scholarship on ideas was conducted by a few dedicated researchers on the fringes of the discipline, we are now faced with a burgeoning literature on the role of ideas. Contemporary political analysis – broadly conceived – is awash with talk of ‘ideas’, to the extent that, as Jacobsen (1995: 283) notes, it now seems obligatory for every work to consider the ‘power of ideas’ hypothesis – even if only then to dismiss it. Indeed, even Moravcsik (2001: 185), one of the most materialist students of European integration and political analysis, now concedes that ‘[s]urely few domains are more promising than the study of ideas’. It is this (re)turn to ideational explanations in political analysis that forms the central focus of this book. This turn has taken a variety of different forms and can be understood from different vantage points. But as this already hints, despite the proliferation of ideational accounts in the last decade or so, the debate remains caught up in a series of heated disputes over the ontological foundations, epistemological status and practical pay-off of the turn to ideational explanations. It is thus unsurprising that there is still little clarity about just what sort of an approach an ideational approach is and about what it would take to establish the kind of fully fledged ideational research programme many seem to assume has already been developed. Given the diversity of the intellectual topography of ideational explanations, the purpose of this volume is not to produce some new orthodoxy. Rather, the contributors engage with the above general dilemmas in diverse but engagingly complementary ways. Nonetheless, what unites them is the assertion that what maintains the heated disputes over the status of ideas and what, at the same time, plagues most attempts to accord ideas an explanatory role is the persistence of the perennial dualisms in political analysis. Figure 1.1 offers a pictorial representation of these dualisms at the ontological, epistemological and methodological level of analysis. At the level of ontology, the persistence of a dualistic thinking is manifest in terms of the reference to ideational and material factors as independent entities that are locked in a struggle with each other for dominance. It is this commitment to a dualistic ontology that leads Peter Hall to argue that

4

Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay

Ontology

Dualism between material and ideational factors, whose relationship is conceived in terms of a zero-sum game

Epistemology

Dualism between causal and constitutive logics where the joint appeal to both is conceived as incommensurable

Methodology

Dualism between qualitative and quantitative methods, which are seen as tools of different research cultures that cannot be combined

Figure 1.1 The ideational turn and the persistence of perennial dualisms.

‘contemporary political science is gripped by a neomaterialism even more reductionist than that of the Marxist analyses of the 1960s and 1970s’ (2005: 129). Although we would not necessarily go as far as to talk of a dominant reductionist neomaterialism, one of the core features of the ideational turn within rational choice theory is an irreducibly materialist conception of (self-) interest, where ideas are grafted on to existing rationalist accounts as an auxiliary variable only if, as and where necessary (Blyth 1997). The contaminating effect of dualistic thinking also appears in accounts of self-styled constructivists, albeit in a concealed and less intense form, when uncertainty is conceptualised as an exogenously induced critical juncture that provides the structural preconditions for the causal efficacy of ideas and constitutes the only period under which they matter. At the level of epistemology, dualism takes the form of a binary opposition between the allegedly incommensurable causal and constitutive logics – a mirror image of the explaining versus understanding controversy (see, for instance, Hollis and Smith 1990). Within a causal logic, ideas are treated as distinct ‘variables’ whose power can be established only by demonstrating a mechanistic and autonomous effect of ideational factors on specific (political) outcomes. Within a constitutive logic, by contrast, ideas provide the discursive conditions of possibility of a social or political event, behaviour or effect. This distinction leads many scholars to locate ideational explanations in the realm of understanding that is distinct from causal explanation. In effect, the current vogue for epistemological polemic between causal and constitutive logics continues to plague almost all of the literature that strives to accord an explanatory role to ideas. At the level of methodology, dualistic thinking takes the form of a sharp divide between qualitative and quantitative methods. The debate between proponents of each of the associated research traditions is as heated as those

The ideational turn 5 at the ontological and epistemological level to the extent that comparisons between them sometimes call to mind religious metaphors (Mahoney and Goertz 2006; Moses and Knutsen 2007). This is hardly surprising once we realise that this distinction is fuelled by sharp philosophical assumptions according to which qualitative methods are associated with an idealist ontology and a constitutive/interpretative epistemology, while quantitative methods are associated with a materialist ontology and a causal/explanatory epistemology. While fully acknowledging the importance of the directional dependence between ontology, epistemology and methodology (Hay 2002), and despite our own insistence on their consistency, we have to recognise the inconclusiveness of the philosophical assumptions informing contending methodological persuasions. In this context, it might be ‘worthwhile to set aside the quest for uniform methodological tenets in favour of greater methodological pluralism, shifting the focus from common rules or standards to a common appreciation of the trade-offs involved in pursuing different methods and research products’ (Sil 2000: 500). Landman (2008: 179) argues that the importance of the above dichotomous representation between materialist and idealist ontologies, causal and constitutive epistemologies, and quantitative and qualitative methodologies has been overstated by being invoked for rhetorical purposes and in the context of constructing false dichotomies. Indeed, the oppositions upon which these dualisms rest have been criticised for misrepresenting the relationship between different modes of inquiry, and, in so doing, for overplaying distinctions that are much thinner than formally stated by such schemes (ibid.). If that is the case – that is, if these dualisms and the associated sense of disciplinary unease they generate are mostly self-fabricated – then we might just as well simply be sustaining fashionable disciplinary polemics that cannot be overcome. This is an important point. Yet we contend that, schematic and overstated as these dualisms may sometimes be, they do not simply represent shorthand expressions for analytical convenience. Rather, they capture real tendencies in political analysis, where these dualisms have colonised our collective disciplinary registry and provided the backdrop of the discipline’s self-image. The above point brings us to another related potential criticism. As Topper (2005: 13) perceptively and ruefully notes, this schematic representation of the field as paired dichotomies is so common even among those purporting to eschew it that it may sometimes appear as if a particularly sinister form of the cunning of reason is at work, one that inconspicuously reconstitutes oppositions at the very moment in which a writer announces emancipation from them. The contributors to this volume, in aspiring to eschew the current vogue for dualistic polemic, do not replace one opposition with a new one. Rather, the purpose is to reveal elements of dualistic thinking in the ideational turn and

6

Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay

to assess the impact of the persistence of this perennial dualism in the attempt to accord ideas an explanatory role.

The structure of the book The volume contains ten chapters divided among three sections. This short introduction is followed by chapters by Gofas and Hay, Lars Tønder, and Leonard Seabrooke that provide theoretical reflections on the ideational turn. Gofas and Hay engage in a ground-clearing exercise. The fact that the ideational turn spans several theories, with differing, if not competing, ontological and epistemological underpinnings, has served the development of an often unacknowledged perception of ideas as ontologically neutral variables that can be arbitrarily invoked when and if a materialist explanation is inefficient. Yet, as they argue, ideas are far from innocent variables – and can rarely, if ever, be incorporated seamlessly within existing explanatory and/or constitutive theories without ontological and epistemological consequence. Because of this inadequate reflection on the consequences of ‘taking ideas seriously’, too much ostensibly ideational scholarship in political science and international studies is ontologically and/or epistemologically inconsistent. The authors contend that this tendency, along with the limitations of the prevailing Humean conception of causality and the associated epistemological polemic between causal and constitutive logics, continues to plague almost all of the literature that strives to accord an explanatory role to ideas. In trying to move beyond the current vogue for epistemological polemic, they argue that the incommensurability thesis between causal and constitutive logics is credible only in the context of a narrow, Humean, conception of causation. If we reject this in favour of a more inclusive (and ontologically realist) understanding, then it is perfectly possible to chart the causal significance of constitutive processes and reconstrue the explanatory role of ideas as causally constitutive. Tønder addresses the central epistemological dualism of the ideational turn heads on with a chapter devoted to ideational analysis and the question of causality. His central claim is that ideational analysis has been brought to an impasse because scholarship has been forced to choose between (a) defining the framework of ideational explanation in such a way that it adheres to the dominant concept of efficient causality or (b) refuting the concept of causality altogether as inadequate. This dichotomous straightjacket he finds unsatisfactory and proposes that the alternative is to be found in the concept of immanent causality that draws its inspiration from thinkers such as Spinoza and Deleuze. This conceptual reformulation of causality follows from the proposition that the ideational and the material are equivalent in an ontological sense. Moreover, a basic claim of immanent causality is that the cause and the effect are so closely related to each other that it is impossible to assume a strict separation between them. That is because ideas, by virtue of causing the world to follow a specific rather than any other path,

The ideational turn 7 become the very stuff that gives meaning to the outcome of this path. In so doing, the ideational ends up on both sides of the cause and effect divide. In that sense, immanent causality also provides the conceptual resources to break away from linear notions of time and change and to appreciate the ways in which feedback loops of various sorts place the causality of ideas into circulation. The final chapter of the section, by Seabrooke, explores three main approaches to institutional change in comparative and international political economy – rationalist and historical institutionalism and economic constructivism. His central line of criticism is that the ideational turn in institutional theory has been focused primarily on elites whose ideational entrepreneurship is to provide the reconstitution of the perceived self-interests of the population at large. In effect, the masses are left as ‘institutional dopes blindly following the institutionalized scripts and cues around them’ (Campbell 1998: 383), and their role in providing impulses for institutional change is obscured. A second point that the chapter raises is that the perennial ontological dualism of material and ideational factors bedevils even economic constructivism by means of reappearing in the concealed, yet no less important, form of a selection bias towards moments of uncertainty. This bias prevents the development of a strong sense of legitimacy. Contra this, Seabrooke puts forward the view that periods of ‘normality’ are just as significant as, if not more important than, periods of crisis and uncertainty. Put differently, the focus on everyday politics provides a challenge to this aspect of the ideational turn, and invites us to re-examine the social sources of political and economic change. The next section of the volume is on ideas, discourses and policy outcomes. As the opening chapter by David Hudson and Mary Martin points out, there have been rather too many sweeping claims made in the name of ideas and rather too few examinations of the concrete mechanisms by which ideas become institutionalised. This is, in essence, the central focus of this section, which, nonetheless, does not lose sight of the perennial dualisms of the ideational turn. So, Hudson and Martin focus on the importance of media narratives in the reproduction of public discourse. By examining the case of the collapse of the London-based Barings Bank, they unravel the mechanisms by which neoliberalism as the dominant discourse is reproduced through media accounts. Against the material–ideational dualism, they claim that the reproduction of ideas and hegemonic narratives cannot be reduced solely to the interplay of material interests, but should be seen as a much more mundane affair accomplished via everyday practices. In the Barings case it was everyday media practices that explain why the concept of the rogue trader became ingrained within the public and policy-making discourses. By revealing the symbiotic relationship between a dominant idea and its modes of representation, they first add an important media-based perspective to our understanding of ideational factors, and, second, reveal additional mechanisms at work in the way ideas are disseminated. Furthermore, a major goal

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Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay

of the chapter is to question the tendency of ideas to remain vague and amorphous. Indeed, the examination of micro-ideas, such as that of rogue trading, challenges the unfortunate portrayal of discursive regimes as monolithic and secure ideologies that are singular in their effects. Contra this, they maintain that it is essential to move from macro- to micro-ideas, because each moment is contested on its own terms and may draw upon an inconsistent variety of different discourses which are not necessarily logical. The following chapter by Oliver Kessler explores a central concept in the discourse of the ideational turn, namely uncertainty. He argues that ideas do not produce only the things we know but also those that we do not know. For example, the rise of derivates in financial markets has created not only new knowledge about how to manage risks but also new non-knowledge in the form of new systemic risks, unfamiliar contingencies and unintended consequences. Because of that his contribution approaches the notion of uncertainty by focusing on the structure-forming capacity of non-knowledge. That is, it examines the role that the production of non-knowledge, which is as socially constructed as that of knowledge, plays in examining the ideational foundations of social institutions. In the course of his analysis, he challenges both the utility of the dominant notion of efficient causality, together with its associated epistemological underpinnings, and the mainstream treatment of uncertainty as structural informational asymmetries. Rather, he argues, echoing the arguments by Gofas and Hay and by Seabrooke, that uncertainty is to be treated more as everyday experience than being associated with the exceptional. After this redirecting of our attention to the construction of nonknowledge and the constant reproduction of uncertainty, the chapter examines empirically how governance regimes, in particular Basel II, deal with non-knowledge, how they try to reduce it and in this very act reproduce it. The final chapter of the section, by Nicki Smith, seeks to map political discourses of globalisation in Ireland by using a variety of methods and techniques, both qualitative and quantitative. In so doing, it addresses the perennial methodological dualism head on. Indeed many would argue that, since contending methodological perspectives are founded on irreconcilable philosophical assumptions, recurrent calls for methodological pluralism are bound to be fruitless. While acknowledging the directional dependence of ontology, epistemology and methodology upon which the commonly posited qualitative versus quantitative dualism rests, Smith maintains that there are clear empirical externalities in fostering greater communication between differing methodological approaches and research products. Most scholars have tended to emphasise the appropriateness of qualitative methods and techniques in the analysis of discourse. Yet Schmidt’s (2002) distinction between public ‘communicative’ discourses (used to legitimate policies) and private ‘coordinative’ discourses (invoked in internal negotiations over the content of policy), which Smith is adopting in this chapter, opens up space for the quantitative analysis of discourse too. Given this distinction, we cannot

The ideational turn 9 take public statements as fully representative of policy-makers’ understandings. It is here that quantitative methods (for example, in the form of attitudinal surveys) may be useful. The use of a multi-methods approach allows Smith to map the different dimensions of discourse and to consider how they are mediated by the broader context in which they are constituted. Indeed the findings of the chapter highlight the contingency and complexity of globalisation discourse in Ireland and reveal a number of tensions in the way in which such discourses are articulated and understood – tensions that would not have come to light if either qualitative or quantitative methods had been used in isolation. In an attempt to facilitate further communication and dialogue, the final section of the book takes the form of a lengthy and engaging response by Mark Blyth and Vivien Schmidt. We believe that the inclusion of this section, where Blyth and Schmidt engage in a ‘reflective discord’ with all of the contributors, highlights important considerations over theoretical choices and analytical strategies to a degree not normally found in edited collections. The collective result of the book may not be a synthesized ideational research programme, let alone the emergence of a new orthodoxy. Yet, as we made clear from the outset, that was never our task. Instead, we hope that what does emerge is a lively dialogue over the role of ideas in political analysis and the pressing question of where we go next.

References Blyth, M. (1997) ‘“Any More Bright Ideas?” The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy’, Comparative Politics, 29(2): 229–50. Campbell, J. L. (1998) ‘Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy’, Theory and Society, 27(3): 377–409. Hall, P. A. (2005) ‘Preference Formation as a Political Process: The Case of Monetary Union in Europe’, in I. Katznelson and B. R. Weingast (eds) Preferences and Situations: Points of Intersection between Historical and Rational Choice Institutionalism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Hay, C. (2002) Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hollis, M., and S. Smith (1990) Explaining and Understanding International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jacobsen, J. K. (1995) ‘Much Ado about Ideas: The Cognitive Factor in Economic Policy’, World Politics, 47: 283–310. Landman, T. (2008) ‘Paradigmatic Contestation and the Persistence of Perennial Dualities’, Political Studies, 6(2): 178–85. Mahoney, J., and G. Goertz (2006) ‘A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research’, Political Analysis, 14(3): 227–49. Moravcsik, A. (2001) ‘Constructivism and European Integration: A Critique’, in T. Christiansen, K. E. Jorgensen and A. Wiener (eds) The Social Construction of Europe. London: Sage. Moses, J. W., and T. L. Knutsen (2007) Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

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Schmidt, V. (2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sil, R. (2000) ‘The Division of Labour in Social Science Research: Unified Methodology or ‘Organic Solidarity’?’ Polity, 32(4): 499–531. Topper, K. (2005) The Disorder of Political Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Part I

Reflections on the ideational turn

2

Varieties of ideational explanation Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay

Introduction The appeal to ideas as causal variables and/or constitutive features of political processes increasingly characterises international and European studies. Yet, perhaps because of the pace of this ideational intrusion, it is undoubtedly still the case, as it was in 2001, that ‘studies of ideational variables add up to less than the sum of their parts’ (Berman 2001: 231). Too often ideas have simply been grafted onto pre-existing explanatory theories at precisely the point at which they seem to get into difficulties, with little or no consideration either of the status of such ideational variables or of the character or consistency of the resulting theoretical hybrid. This is particularly problematic, for, as we shall see, ideas are far from innocent variables and can rarely, if ever, be incorporated seamlessly within existing explanatory and/or constitutive theories without ontological and epistemological consequence. In effect, we suggest, the burgeoning literature on the role of ideas has tended to lack solid, coherent and explicitly stated theoretical underpinnings. As a consequence, and despite the proliferation of ostensibly ‘ideational approaches’, there remains little clarity about just what sort of an approach an ideational approach is, about the range of ontological and epistemological positions with which such an approach might be compatible, and about what it would take to establish the kind of fully fledged ideational research programme many seem to assume they have already developed. These questions and dilemmas provide the context and backdrop for the present contribution. Our aim in this chapter is at least to begin to develop a cartography of existing ideational approaches and to submit these to critical assessment by teasing out their often implicit ontological and epistemological assumptions. To be clear from the outset, our aim is not to engage in ontological proselytising (on the dangers of which, see Hay 2005). Though we defend against potential objections the critical realist perspective we ultimately prefer, we see this as but one of many (potential) ways to take forward ideational analysis in political science and international relations. In this respect, though arguing in general for a recognition of the significance and salience of ideational factors, we welcome theoretical plurality and diversity

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when it comes to dealing with them. Yet plurality is one thing, eclecticism another. Too much ostensibly ideational scholarship in political science and international studies, we argue, is ontologically and/or epistemologically inconsistent – and it is so precisely because it does not reflect adequately on the consequences of ‘taking ideas seriously’. In order to differentiate between theoretical diversity (a good thing) and theoretical inconsistency/eclecticism (a bad thing), we need to be able to isolate, to spell out clearly and to assess the internal consistency of the ontological and epistemological assumptions underpinning various approaches to ideational analysis. That is the principal task of the present contribution. It entails opening up the ‘black box’ of constructivism – a term which has become something of a catch-all concept spanning all ideational analysis and which, as Onuf rightly suggests, is ‘in danger of becoming all things to all scholars, finally suffering the fate of all fads’ (2002: 130). It is in recognition of this potential danger and out of a desire to make sense of the diversity of approaches to ideational analysis and explanation that this chapter proceeds by way of a stock-taking exercise of existing approaches. In so doing our aim is threefold. First, and as an immediate corollary of the above, we wish to challenge the overhasty and unfortunate tendency to lump together all existing ideational approaches as if they presented a single alternative to an equally singular (positivist and materialist) mainstream. This exercise in retrieval is not an easy one, as the distinctions do not involve stable and fixed theories that can be directly contrasted. In effect, it risks creating ideal-type categorisations that obscure, rather than illuminate, fruitful tendencies in research. Theories and theorists are never as neatly compartmentalised as cartographical narratives would have them to be. Moreover, the allocation of different research approaches to discrete intellectual boxes is an inevitably artificial process fraught with subjective bias (Jarvis 1998: 107). As Jacobsen (2003: 39) ruefully notes, ‘the exercise can be a subtly negating one that simply fits an adversary’s argument inside one’s own framework in order to tell them what they meant to say if only they had sufficient rigour and wit to do so.’ We do not pretend to overcome these problems; we simply wish to acknowledge from the outset the limitations inherent in such an exercise. But, such issues notwithstanding, their continued use throughout the social sciences surely bears testimony to the utility of schematic typologies when deployed as heuristic tools. It is the contention of this chapter (as it is of the collection more broadly) that some inevitable simplification is a price well worth paying for a sharper and more focused delineation of the ontological and epistemological issues involved in gauging the significance of ideational factors. As such, we make no apology for our inevitable failure to reflect the full subtlety and range of existing ideational scholarship; nor do we claim that our review is exhaustive. A second ambition of this chapter is to take us beyond the current vogue for epistemological polemic, typically pitting causal versus constitutive logics. This, we suggest, has tended both to produce rather more heat than

Varieties of ideational explanation 15 light and to fragment the discipline. Despite the undeniable importance of epistemological considerations and our own emphasis on the need for consistency in such matters, we suggest that the frequently claimed incommensurability of causal and constitutive logics is misplaced. More specifically, we argue, the incommensurability of causal and constitutive logics is credible only in the context of a narrow, Humean, conception of causation. If we reject this in favour of a more inclusive (and ontologically realist) understanding, then it is perfectly possible to chart the causal significance of constitutive processes. The third purpose of this chapter is to elaborate and defend such a position. Here we turn to the promise (still, to a significant extent, unrealised) of critical realism in the development of an approach to political analysis that is sensitive to the significance of constitutive logics yet unapologetically explanatory in its concerns. In so doing we build from a critical engagement with the ‘morphogenetic approach’ of Margaret Archer. Given that critical realism and the morphogenetic approach have had a relatively limited influence in the ‘ideas debate’, some might object to its inclusion in an exercise whose main purpose is cartographic. However, it is included here for two straightforward reasons. First, the critical realist prioritisation of ontology reminds us that this is the level at which theories genuinely clash (Wight 2007). Consequently, it may contribute to a redirection of the focus away from the current ‘epistemological paradigm wars that have riven the field in the past decade’ (Wendt 1998: 102). Second, we suggest, some of the core analytical concepts of critical realism (that of ‘emergence’ and the appeal to a nonHumean conception of causality, in particular) offer a particular purchase on ideational variables. After the preceding preliminaries, it is important to establish the organising principles which underpin our mapping of the diversity of existing ideational approaches. As noted elsewhere, the controversy over the role of ideas in political analysis ‘tends to resolve itself into the question of whether ideas should be accorded a causal role independent of material factors or not’ (Hay 2002: 205). This controversy is actually double faceted – with distinct (if, of course, related) ontological and epistemological dimensions. The ontological controversy concerns the relationship between the material and the ideational. Positions adopted range from simple views, such as idealism and materialism, which assume a rigid ontological distinction between material and ideational factors and privilege one or other moment, to more dialectical approaches, such as constructivism and critical realism, which posit the complex interdependence of the two. The simple view is predicated on an ontological or ontic dualism. This conceives of social reality in terms of a rigid division between the separate and opposing realms of the ideational and the material. The dialectical view, by contrast, posits either an ontic or an analytical duality. Whether this duality is ontic or analytical, the realms of the ideational and the material are seen to have no independent existence – their existence is relational and dialectical. For those committed

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to an ontic duality, the ideational and the material are nonetheless real and distinct realms of the social. Yet for those committed to an analytical duality, the distinction between the material and the ideational is itself an abstraction. It is an analytical device rather than an appeal to innate constituent units of social reality. The epistemological controversy concerns the appropriateness of the appeal to ideas in causal and constitutive logics – a mirror image of the explaining versus understanding controversy (see, for instance, Hollis and Smith 1990). The distinction is well captured by Suganami (2002: 32). While a causal logic describes a ‘mechanistic relation of production’, constitutive logics describe a ‘relation of logical or conceptual enablement’. In other words, within a causal logic, ideas are treated as distinct ‘variables’ whose power can be established only by demonstrating a mechanistic and autonomous effect of ideational factors on specific (political) outcomes. Within a constitutive logic, by contrast, ideas provide the discursive conditions of possibility of a social or political event, behaviour or effect. A very similar rendition of the distinction between causal and constitutive logics leads Wendt (1998; 1999: 79–88) to argue that constitutive logics violate two central assumptions of causal explanation – namely, the independent existence of, and the temporal asymmetry between, cause and effect. Yet this, we contend, relies on a narrow – if nonetheless highly conventional – Humean understanding of causality. As Parsons puts it (2007: 105), within such a framework, ‘for A to be a cause of B, A must exist independently of B, A must occur before B in time, and all instances of A must be followed by the appearance of B.’1 This already serves to indicate why it is that Wendt sees the constitutive and the causal as independent and mutually exclusive. Consider the following example. We might be tempted to argue that the (supposedly) anarchic character of the international system causes the state to adopt an identity of enmity towards other states. However, since the structure of the international system cannot be separated, either ontologically or chronologically, from the identity of the state, this cannot be conceived – in Humean terms – as a causal relationship. This is an important point. For it serves to indicate how the commensurability or incommensurability of causal and constitutive logics depends on one’s understanding of causation. This is a theme to which we return in greater detail presently, but it is important to introduce it here for one simple reason. In the following section, in which we categorise and review approaches to ideational analysis, we replicate the stark distinction drawn in the existing literature between constitutive and causal approaches to ideational analysis – considering each separately. Yet it is important to emphasise that, in so doing, we are by no means committing ourselves to such a dichotomisation of the causal and the constitutive. Indeed, towards the end of the chapter, where we set out our own perspective, we reject precisely such a rigid distinction between the causal and the constitutive, arguing for the causal significance of constitutive logics. In the process we come to reject the

Varieties of ideational explanation 17 Humean conception of causation which both dominates and, we suggest, continues to hold back ideational analysis in political science and international relations.

The role of ideas in political analysis In the following pages we discuss four currently influential perspectives on the relationship between the ideational and the material – rational choice theory, thick and thin constructivism, and critical realism. Their core ontological and epistemological assumptions and their approach ideas are outlined in the most general terms in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1 Varieties of ideational explanation Ontology (relationship between the ideational and the material)

Epistemology (appeal to causal and/or constitutive logics)

Approach to ideas

Rational choice theory

Rigid ontological distinction (dualism) between material and ideational factors; prioritises material explanations

Humean – independence and temporal priority of cause over effect

Ideas as auxiliary variables appealed to when and if materialist explanation falters

Thick (radical) constructivism

Material and ideational ontologically indistinguishable; materiality denied causal capacity

Rejects causal in favour of constitutive logics

‘Ideas all the way down’

Thin (Wendtian) constructivism

Accords an ontological equivalence to material and ideational factors; ontological dualism of material and ideational factors

Rigidly demarcates causal and constitutive logics while appealing to both; retains a Humean conception of causality

Ideas as constitutive; retains a residual (causal) materialism and tends towards a structural idealism

Critical realism

Assigns an ontological equivalence to material and ideational factors; ontological (or analytical) duality of material and ideational factors

Incorporates constitutive logics within an expanded and non-Humean conception of causation

Ideas as causal, constitutive and (potentially)2 causally constitutive

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Rational choice theory: ideas as auxiliary variables While the current ‘ideational turn’ is invariably presented in terms of the challenge it poses (or is seen to pose) to a prevailing materialist orthodoxy, it is important to acknowledge that by far the most influential attempt to ‘take ideas seriously’ has come from within that orthodoxy. Indeed, however unlikely it might seem, it has come from within rational choice theory itself. Yet ideational factors are not easily incorporated within the parsimonious theoretical core of rational choice. Indeed, the recognition of the potential significance of ideas may serve in itself to undermine the very elegance and analytical simplicity that has long constituted rational choice’s principal appeal. If, for instance, in order to render material interests actionable, actors must interpret them, and if they may do so differently, then the context in which actors find themselves is no longer a guide to their behaviour. Their behaviour is, in short, no longer a logical correlate of the materially given rational course of action. Perhaps more damagingly still for rational choice’s pretensions to offer a predictive science of politics, actors’ conduct is now contingent upon their interpretation of both their interests and the context in which they find themselves. As this suggests, an ontological commitment to the significance of the ideational is not easily reconciled with an epistemological positivism. Understandably, perhaps, even those rational choice theorists seemingly most enthusiastic to embrace ideas have stopped some way short of tracing the full implications of so doing in this way. Consequently, as a number of commentators have noted, the attempt to accord a role for ideas in rational choice has tended to result in a loose and internally contradictory hybrid in which ideas are grafted on to existing rationalist accounts as auxiliary variable only if, as and where necessary (see also Blyth 1997; Hay 2007). In this respect, a recognition of the causal significance of ideas is a very major, if largely unacknowledged, concession for rational choice theory. For it cuts to the heart of rational choice’s most cherished, basic and fundamental of assumptions – about the context-dependence of rationality, about the irreducibly material nature of context, and about the predictably rational character of all human conduct. Rational choice theory makes a virtue of parsimony, and it achieves that parsimony through a series of simplifying assumptions (Hay 2004a). Though rarely acknowledged explicitly, one of those assumptions is that ideas do not matter. Put slightly differently, rational choice holds that the distortion injected into its models by the assumption that ideas do not matter is a price worth paying for the analytical simplicity and parsimony such an assumption offers. However innocent it may seem, then, to concede a causal role for ideas – even as auxiliary variables – it is, in a sense, to acknowledge the inherent limitations of the rational choice as a research programme. As this in turn suggests, however much rational choice may have served to direct a welcome attention to ideas in contemporary political analysis, it

Varieties of ideational explanation 19 hardly offers a natural home for the development of a distinctly ideational research programme. Indeed, that so much of the ostensible attempt to take ideas seriously has taken place within the confines of rational choice theory has contributed to a failure to reflect systematically on the ontological and epistemological implications of giving to ideas a causal (or, indeed, a constitutive) role. If we are, then, to develop an ideational research programme in political science and international relations, we must look beyond rational choice theory. In particular, we suggest, we must reject two core features of rational choice theory which prevent a greater recognition of complex interdependence of the ideational and the material. These are (i) its ontological commitment to a rigid and dualistic distinction between material and ideational factors, as reflected in its irreducibly materialist conception of (self-)interest; and (ii) the epistemological commitments which follow from its adoption of a Humean conception of causation in which the cause must always be antecedent to, and independent of, the effect. We examine each in turn before proceeding to a more detailed assessment and critique of rational choice theory’s engagement with the ideational. Rational choice theory’s commitment to ontological dualism Rational choice theory is committed to a rigid and dualistic distinction between the ideational and the material. This ontological dualism is evidenced in (i) its disavowal of any role for ideas in the formation (and/or constitution) of an actor’s (material) interests; (ii) its commitment to a methodology of counterfactual argumentation; and (iii) its exclusive focus on the individual as distinct from collective and/or structural properties of ideas (see also Ruggie 1998: 20). Goldstein and Keohane’s Ideas and Foreign Policy (1993) is widely, and rightly, regarded as the most systematic and thoughtful statement, from a rational choice perspective, of how ideas influence policy. Interestingly, it proceeds from a quite explicit challenge to rationalism itself. As Goldstein and Keohane write, ‘[a]lthough we concede that the rationalist approach is often a valuable starting point for analysis, we challenge its explanatory power by suggesting the existence of empirical anomalies that can be resolved only when ideas are taken into account’ (1993: 6, emphasis added). Yet this challenge is strictly limited. For, as they go on to elaborate, their null hypothesis is ‘that variation in policy across countries, or over time, is entirely accounted for by changes in factors other than ideas’ (ibid., original emphasis). In other words, though the failings of rationalism are clearly acknowledged, there is no attempt to address these at source. Materialist explanations are privileged and potential ideational variables are considered only at the point at which all (evident) materialist options have been exhausted. There is a clear hierarchy of preference, then, between non-ideational factors and variables (which are to be preferred) over ideational factors and variables (to be

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considered only as and when necessary). Yet it is not just the materialism of rational choice that Goldstein and Keohane reproduce. Despite their ostensible ‘challenge’ to the ‘explanatory power’ of rationalism, they remain unbowed in their (rationalist) commitment to interests being given exogenously of the actors themselves. Indeed, it is presumably precisely because they remain wedded to both a rump materialism and a rump rationalism that ideas are brought into the analysis only if, as and when a materialist explanation proves inadequate. As Mark Blyth has suggested, ideas are reduced to a deus ex machina conjured to ‘mop up’ residual variance or to deal with the discomforting deficiencies of an existing research programme (Blyth 1997). Goldstein and Keohane, it seems, freely concede what they clearly regard to be the inherent limitations of rationalism – limitations they associate with the incapacity to accord a genuinely causal role to ideas. Yet, rather than revisiting and revising the core premises of rational choice theory such that they no longer preclude an appropriate role for ideas, they seem to prefer a strategy of patching up otherwise pristine rational choice models at the point at which they reveal themselves to be flawed empirically by the inclusion of variables (of an ideational kind) that would not normally be sanctioned. A rather arbitrary and ad hoc approach to political analysis is the result. Interestingly, in response to similar criticism, Keohane has protested that it is to exaggerate and caricature the position set out in the Goldstein– Keohane volume to see it as according only a residual role to ideas within an otherwise untainted rationalist ontology. Interests, he states, are ‘certainly not idea-free baselines’ (2000: 128). Moreover, as he continues, ‘the question – do ideas matter more fundamentally than material forces? – is . . . misguided . . . what is important is how ideas and material capabilities intermingle’ (ibid.: 129). Taken on their own, we have considerable sympathy with both comments – though the former perhaps begs the question of what, precisely, interests are if they are not ‘idea-free baselines’? But the point is that it is very difficult to reconcile either remark with the theoretical statement to which they purportedly refer. Indeed, they would seem to be flatly contradicted by Goldstein and Keohane’s statement of the ‘null hypothesis’ that we have already considered. But this, notwithstanding what Keohane’s comments do perhaps serve to indicate, is a desire, certainly on his part, to accord a rather more significant explanatory role for ideas than is consistent with an unqualified commitment to rationalism. The rationalist commitment to a dualistic ontology of the material and the ideational is also evident in the logic of counterfactual argumentation that Goldstein and Keohane deploy. Thus, in her own work, Goldstein (1993) uses a deductive counterfactual method to explore the degree to which ideas, rather than material interests alone, have influenced US trade policies historically. She begins by deducing, from a consideration of structural imperatives, the policy preferences of actors following their exogenously given interests. These she then compares to exhibited policy outcomes, attributing any difference between the two to the degree to which ideas rather than interests were

Varieties of ideational explanation 21 determinant. This is undeniably neat, but it is to commit the analyst to precisely the conception of interests as ‘ideas-free baselines’ that Keohane denies. Moreover, it is also to set up the problem as one of gauging the relative significance of ideational and material factors in determining specific outcomes – a problem, as we have seen, that Keohane dismisses as ‘misguided’. Finally, to deduce actors’ interest simply from the structural imperatives of the context in which they find themselves is also misleading. As Campbell (2000) suggests, the crucial question is not what actors’ material interests or structural imperatives are, but how they come to perceive of their interests and imperatives in the way in which they do – and, it might be added, the extent to which such largely instrumental considerations come to inform their behaviour (it being far from clear that all motivations for action are narrowly instrumental). As this suggests, however impoverished and underdeveloped existing ideational analysis in political science and international relations may presently be (and this is a theme to which we return in later sections), the kind of methodological bracketing of material and ideational factors in which Goldstein engages here is certainly not a part of the answer. A third problem with rationalism’s commitment to a dualistic ontology of the material and the ideational is what John Ruggie terms the ‘neo-utilitarian misspecification of . . . ideas’ (Ruggie 1998: 20). By this he refers to the characteristic focus (both ontologically and methodologically) on the individual – here, specifically, on the ideas (or cognitions) that actors hold in their heads rather than on the structural and/or collective properties of ideas. This ‘misspecification’ of ideas follows directly from the methodological (and ontological) individualism to which rationalism subscribes. Indeed, in this respect, it is less a misspecification than it is a direct and logical correlate of a prior ontological commitment – if one is committed to a socially atomistic ontology (such as rationalist individualism), then ideas are (and can be) no more and no less than individual cognitions. But the point is that most rational choice theorists who write about ideas do so in such a way as to indicate that they regard ideas to have an irreducibly social (or intersubjective) dimension. Again, it seems, we run into the inherent incommensurability of a rationalist ontology on the one hand and an often intuitive and largely untheorised hunch as to the causal significance of ideas in processes of social and political causation on the other. If ideas are irredeemably social, then they are not easily assimilated within a rationalist individualist ontology; nor are they easily analysed by an approach which subscribes to a methodological individualism. Rational choice theorists, it seems, must at pain of self-contradiction omit from their analyses the social context of ideas and neglect what many of them may well regard as a fact – namely that ideas exist as collective structures of meanings that are connected, but irreducible, to the actors who draw upon them. As Emmanuel Adler puts it (1997: 327),

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Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay intersubjective meanings are not simply the aggregation of the beliefs of individuals . . . Rather, they exist as collective knowledge . . . This knowledge persists beyond the lives of individual social actors, embedded in social practices as they are reproduced by interpreters who participate in their production and working.

Though such remarks are likely to prove unobjectionable to many of the rational choice theorists most prominent in the ideational turn, they are in fact a statement of a distinct ontological position. And, as we have sought to show, that ontological position is profoundly antithetical to rational choice theory. If we are right, then there is less space within rational choice theory than many recent scholars have assumed, and continue to assume, for ideas. Ultimately, something will have to give – for, we contend, to accord ideas an independent causal role is to violate the core ontological commitments of rational choice theory. If we are to develop an ideational research programme in political science and international relations, it cannot be constructed from within rational choice theory. The epistemological underpinnings of rational choice theory’s turn to ideas Given the anchoring of the rationalist ideational programme in a dualistic ontology which counterposes the ideational and the material, and given the directional dependence of ontology and epistemology, it should come as no surprise that there are also epistemological impediments to a rationalist turn to ideas. These are most evident in rationalism’s commitment to a Humean logic of causation. This stipulates not only a mechanistic notion of constant conjunctions – according to which each cause must always produce a specific effect – but also, and more significantly, that the cause must be independent of, and antecedent to, that effect. This, we suggest, is limiting – especially when it comes to a consideration of ideas. Indeed, rationalism’s epistemology is limiting in two respects: (i) as we show presently, its Humean understanding of causation is overly restrictive, effectively precluding a full recognition of the ways in which ideas in particular may prove causally effective; and (ii) its disavowal of the epistemological significance of constitutive logics in the narrow pursuit of simple logics of cause and effect leads it to overlook the constitutive power of ideas. Here Wendt is again interesting. Despite sharing with rationalism a Humean conception of causation, he argues for a recognition of the importance of both causal and constitutive logics – though he sees these as radically independent and incommensurate forms of reasoning (1998; 1999: 77–88). Moreover, he suggests that, despite the differences between the causal and the constitutive and the tendency to associate the ideational with the latter, we should not exclude the possibility of ideas as causes (even in the narrowly Humean sense of the term he deploys). This is an important point with which we largely agree. But equally important, we contend, is that ideas are not only

Varieties of ideational explanation 23 seen as causal in a narrowly Humean way. Indeed, this for us is the principal epistemological impediment within rationalism to the development of a more genuinely ideational perspective. The issues at stake here are important and take us to the heart of the epistemological fault-line that has tended to bifurcate the study of ideas in contemporary political science and international relations. And we will return to them when we discuss Wendt’s work. For now we restrict ourselves to a discussion of the limits of the Humean conception of causation as it is reflected in the rationalist turn to ideas, taking as a starting point Goldstein and Keohane’s (1993) threefold typology of the ways in which ideas can be invoked in causal logics. IDEAS AS ‘ROAD MAPS’

In the first of these, under conditions of uncertainty, ideas guide actors towards strategies for attaining their goals and realising their interests. Here ideas affect (or, at least have the capacity to affect) policy ‘by providing principled or causal road maps’ (Goldstein and Keohane 1993: 8). As Goldstein and Keohane themselves note, even the most ardent and purest of rational choice theorists tend to accept that individuals lack complete information. To the extent that this is the case (or is assumed to be the case), it is important to understand the mechanisms in and through which actors negotiate informational asymmetries. Such mechanisms are likely to be especially significant in periods of uncertainty, in which actors’ behaviour can only be informed by the anticipated consequences of potential courses of actions (ibid.: 13). In such scenarios ‘causal ideas’ serve to resolve the incompleteness of information ‘by stipulating causal patterns’ and by suggesting ‘strategies for the attainment of goals’. ‘Principled ideas’ do not resolve informational incompleteness. But, by providing ‘compelling ethical or moral motivations for action’, they allow actors ‘to behave decisively despite causal uncertainty’ (ibid.: 16). The argument can be presented schematically as in Figure 2.1. This type of conception has proved immensely influential both within and, indeed, beyond rational choice theory. Yet it is far from unproblematic and far from unambiguous, as even Goldstein and Keohane at times seem to concede. Thus, as they point out, their approach offers no analysis of ‘which Shaping Uncertainty

Ideas

Strategic action

Policy outcomes

Problems • Failure to specify the mechanism(s) of ideational (and hence strategic) selection – in effect, the social context of ideas is omitted. • The influence of ideas is restricted to periods of uncertainty – a context-based ontology.

Figure 2.1 Ideas as road maps guiding strategic action.

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ideas are available’, where they come from and how they become influential and/or persuasive (1993: 12, emphasis added). When it is considered that, even in their own terms, once a set of ideas proves influential and is selected, the pathway it opens up closes off other possibilities, this is a major lacuna (see also Yee 1997: 1024). Yet this should come as no great surprise. For wedded, as they remain, to an ontological and methodological individualism, they can offer little if any analytical purchase on what might be termed the ‘social context of ideas’. As Yee notes, ideas are treated as essentially freefloating entities, the ‘properties that give causal and principled ideas their causal effects’ simply being presupposed (ibid.). Yet this is principally an error of omission rather than one of commission. Altogether more problematic is the reliance of this stylised model of the influence of ideas on assumptions about uncertainty. In effect, Goldstein and Keohane treat ideas as random products of uncertainty – wherever uncertainly persists, ideas (both causal and principled) will proliferate. As already noted, this generates problems about where such ideas come from, how, in a context of uncertainty, they acquire authority and how they are ultimately selected. Yet there are bigger issues at stake here. Goldstein and Keohane, like many others before and since, vacillate uneasily between a conception of uncertainty as a universal and time-invariant human condition and as a periodic interruption to business as usual. They begin their reflections on ideas as road maps, for instance, by noting that virtually no one accepts the (nonetheless still prevalent) assumption of complete information. This surely implies that uncertainty is rife. Yet they go on to associate conditions of uncertainty quite explicitly with exogenous shocks – such as depressions, crises, wars and the overthrow of a government (1993: 17). If uncertainty is the exception rather than the norm, as this implies, and the degree of uncertainty defines the extent to which ideas matter, then a rump materialism may be defended and ideas may indeed be treated as residual or auxiliary variables, to be summoned only in disequilibrium scenarios. In effect, an ideationally augmented rational choice theory can be reserved for the (presumably rare) special cases in which equilibrium assumptions are violated; a rational choice without ideas will suffice for all other scenarios. But what this surely necessitates is an account of the conditions of existence of certainty and uncertainty. Such an account is notable only by its absence, and in its absence we have a tautology: ideas are important where there is uncertainty; and uncertainty is made visible to us by the failure of materialist accounts (and hence the need to import auxiliary ideational variables). Yet this is by no means the only problem with such a formulation. For, if complete information is nothing more than a convenient fiction to make the algebra simpler, as Goldstein and Keohane clearly imply, then ideas must ‘matter’ all the time. Yet if that is conceded – and, for rationalism, it is a very major concession – then ideas must be causally prior to material interests. For, in the absence of complete information, actors can never know what their genuine material interests are, and must, as a consequence, always be

Varieties of ideational explanation 25 reliant on a perception of their interests. If we are to understand and explain behaviour, we do not need to know what an actor’s material interests are, merely what they are perceived to be. The inexorable link between context and conduct opened up by the assumption that behaviour is a logical correlate of contextualised rationality is shattered – and, arguably, with it rational choice’s pretension to offer a predictive science of politics. Acknowledging the ontological significance of ideas has major epistemological consequences. Put slightly differently, if it is ideas that render interests actionable, then neither is ontologically primitive and there must be a general relationship between them that is constantly at work. If so, then bringing in ideas as a random product of uncertainty is suspect both methodologically and theoretically. It is, in effect, to commit a form of omitted variable bias. For it is to privilege arbitrarily ideas over interests when and if an interest-based explanation is insufficient. And, as this implies, it is also ontologically inconsistent (Gofas 2001: 9; Hay 2002: 214–15). While limits of space do not permit a full treatment, it is important to note both the significant role assigned to uncertainty in circumscribing the degree to which ‘ideas matter’ in current debates and the minimal attention the concept has thus far received (for a partial exception, see Blyth 2002: 31–3, 267–70; and, for a critique, Hay 2004b). This neglect is unfortunate. Moreover, as we shall see presently, the concept of uncertainty is widely invoked even by trenchant critics of rational choice theory as a necessary precondition of ideational influence. Thus, Mark Blyth, a leading figure in the ideational turn and advocate of a constructivist institutionalism, argues that, ‘while ideas do not “matter” all the time, in certain specific circumstances – particularly in moments of economic crisis, ideas, and the political control of those ideas – matter most of all’ (2002: 16, emphasis added). This temporal unevenness, in which the ontological status of ideas (and hence the nature of the relationship between the ideational and the material) varies, we categorically reject (see also Gofas 2003). We see it as an unfortunate residue of the rationalist terms of reference in which much of the ideational turn to date has been couched. To sum up, for those wishing to convince a sceptical mainstream of the place of ideational analysis, it may well be convenient to appeal to a temporally inconsistent ontology that ascribes significance to ideas only under (periodic and infrequent) conditions of uncertainty. But such a move can only serve to reintroduce a dualistic ontology of the material and the ideational through the back door. It also serves (perhaps inadvertently) to commit those who deploy it to the assumption that, other than in a few exceptional moments, the complete information hypothesis holds. Such a simplistic and convenient fiction may well be justified in rational choice theory in terms of the greater capacity for formal modelling that it offers. But no such utilitarian defence exists for those not wedded to the deductive inference from stylised assumptions. A more (ontologically) consistent and fruitful conceptualisation, we suggest, construes of uncertainty as both a

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universal human condition and a discursive regime that imposes distinct dispositional logics upon actors. Understood in such terms, the appeal to uncertainty is as much as anything else a political and discursive device in the process of enlisting subjects to alternative visions of change. In this conception, the future is always uncertain because it is contingent upon social and political behaviour – behaviour irredeemably informed by ideas. This view we elaborate in the final section of this chapter. IDEAS AS FOCAL POINTS

A second, and in fact radically different, way of conceptualising the relationship between the material and the ideational appeals to ideas as ‘focal points’ in Goldstein and Keohane’s terms (see Figure 2.2). In effect, ideas serve to ‘define cooperative solutions’ to problems by selecting between multiple Pareto-optimal potential outcomes. Here ideas are accorded a far more residual and second-order role and are clearly posterior to material interests. As Goldstein and Keohane put it, in such a causal sequence ‘ideas affect strategic interactions, helping or hindering joint efforts to attain more efficient outcomes – outcomes that are at least as good as the status quo for all participants. Here ideas contribute to outcomes in the absence of a unique equilibrium’ (1993: 12, emphasis added). The problems with this approach are principally twofold. Again, it seems, ideas are invoked merely as an auxiliary variable conjured, rather arbitrarily, to resolve a given theoretical puzzle – here a problem of indeterminacy in a more conventional formal model. There is a certain unevenness about this. For once one acknowledges a role for ideas in selecting among multiple equilibria, might one not also acknowledge a role for ideas rather earlier in the causal sequence? Indeed, is it credible to retain a purely material conception of self-interest while assigning entirely to ideational processes the resolution of any indeterminacy in the resulting model that follows from such a materialist understanding of self-interest? Is it legitimate (and/or ontologically consistent), in other words, to circumscribe the role of ideas – seemingly purely for the convenience of the model – in this way? Moreover, as Blyth notes, if one’s analytical starting point presupposes the fixity and materiality

Interests

Multiple (Pareto-optimal) equilibria

Focal points Ideas

Policy outcome

Problems • The environment within which ideas operate is one of exogenously given interests. • No mechanism explains how ideas serve to select among potential Pareto-optimal equilibria – consequently, the model is indeterminate.

Figure 2.2 Ideas as focal points.

Varieties of ideational explanation 27 of interests, then it is in fact quite unnecessary to accord any role to ideas in the translation of multiple equilibria into a unique outcome. For, as he puts it, ‘more traditional instruments such as side payments can perform the same function more efficiently’ (2002: 26). Second, although the appeal to ideas is here intended to resolve the indeterminacy of a formal model, it is not at all clear that this is achieved. For, as Goldstein and Keohane themselves concede, ‘which idea is chosen as the focal point cannot be fully explained by rational choice theory’ (1993: 19) – indeed, it is not at all clear that it can be partly explained by rational choice theory either. For, again, no mechanism is identified that might explain how and why ideas select among potential multiple cooperative equilibria (Bernstein 2000: 481; Blyth 2002: 26; Yee 1997: 1025–7). In the absence of such a mechanism, the outcome appears random. At best, then, all Goldstein and Keohane have done is to tell us what type of variable might explain the outcome; this is a long way short of providing an explanation for a specific outcome. We are forced to agree with Mark Blyth – ‘the problem of multiple equilibria persists despite the invocation of ideas to solve it’ (2002: 26). IDEAS ENCASED WITHIN INSTITUTIONS

The final way in which Goldstein and Keohane incorporate ideas within a causal sequence is through the mediating role of institutions (seen as instantiations and embodiments of ideas) on policy outcomes. As they put it, in this conception, ‘the impact of some set of ideas may be mediated by the operation of institutions in which the ideas are embedded’ (1993: 20). Such a causal sequence is outlined schematically in Figure 2.3. Eventually, it would seem, we have a model that assigns causal priority to ideas – after all, they appear first in the causal sequence described above. Yet this is potentially misleading. For, as any closer analysis cannot fail to reveal, once again ideas are reduced to second-order and auxiliary variables. There are in fact two reasons for this: (i) the content of the ideas which appear in Figure 2.3 as causally prior is itself invariably seen to be determined by material factors (such as interests); and (ii), even in the absence of this, it is not at all clear whether it is the ideas instantiated in the relevant institutions or the institutions which instantiate the ideas that carry the causal significance. Mediating ‘filters’ Ideas

Institutions

Policy outcome

Problems • Despite impressions to the contrary, ideas are reduced to an auxiliary variable whose content may be wholly determined by material factors. • Analysis is confined to identifying the institutional preconditions of ideational receptivity.

Figure 2.3 Ideas encased within institutions.

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Thus, although Goldstein and Keohane (1993: 13) argue that it is ‘ideas embedded in institutions [that] specify policy in the absence of innovation’, they go on to explain that ‘this institutional path says nothing about why [or, indeed, which] ideas were originally adopted; in fact, ideas may become important solely because of the interests and power of their progenitor.’ What is given with one hand is taken away with the other. For if ideas are nothing more than an expression of the (given) interests of actors, and if any clash of ideas is understood to be resolved simply in favour of the more (materially) powerful and resource-rich, then ideas are entirely empty variables with no independent causal significance. This shows that Goldstein and Keohane assign no independent role to ideas in the process of institutional formation (in path-shaping institutional change). Yet their perspective might allow ideas a role in post-formative or path-dependent institutional change.3 Yet further reflection reveals that this, too, is denied. For, as they elaborate, it is the ‘institution that embodies the ideas’, rather than ideas themselves, that do the explaining (Goldstein and Keohane 1993: 21, n. 34). Thus, as Yee has suggested (1996: 89), it is surely both ‘more accurate and less cumbersome to say that these institutions affect policies, rather than to argue that ideas affect policies by being encased in these institutions’. In effect, and despite superficial impressions to the contrary, this is not a form of ideational explanation at all. Of course, though undoubtedly influential and expressive of something of a developing rational choice institutionalist orthodoxy, Goldstein and Keohane’s variant of institutionalism is not the only one on offer. Limits of space prevent a detailed consideration of a now breathtaking range of alternatives (for a review of which, see Schmidt 2008). Suffice it to note for now that many of these are restricted in the role they assign to ideas by the notion that, if they are to be selected, ideas must ‘fit’ with pre-existing institutional arrangements. This, we suggest, makes it far easier to deal with path-dependent institutional change than it does path-shaping institutional change – which, as a consequence, tends to be exogenised. In its focus on ideas, then, much of the new institutionalism restricts itself to a consideration of the institutional preconditions of ideational receptivity. There is certainly much value in this – existing institutional arrangements do exert path-dependent effects and they do so, at least to some extent, by setting the ideational parameters of procedural and policy choice (Fligstein and Mara-Drita 1996: 4–5). But they also have a key role to play in the process of institutional formation and in post-formative yet path-shaping institutional change. Indeed, it is in such moments that their transformative (as distinct from their reproductive) power is truly revealed (Blyth 2002: 20–23). This far too much institutionalist scholarship denies.

Varieties of ideational explanation 29

From dualism to duality: constructivisms, thick and thin Having discussed in some detail the problems with rationalist-inspired readings of ideas, we turn now to those ‘dialectical’ conceptions of the material– ideational relationship which posit some form of (ontological or analytical) duality. In so doing, we again strive to resist the tendency to treat all such formulations as if they constituted a single alternative to the mainstream. The move from a position of ontological dualism to one of ontological duality is invariably presented, by those who wish to take it, as the move from a simplifying distortion of ‘reality’ to one of subtlety and sophistication. This kind of ontological proselytising we resist. It is nonetheless the case that many of those ostensibly committed to a dualistic and materialist treatment of the material–ideational relationship do feel the need to concede a role for ideas as causal variables (auxiliary or otherwise). In so doing, as we have shown, they invariably accord to ideas an ontological status that is incompatible with their commitment to materialism (rump or otherwise). Where this is indeed the case, we suggest, it is reasonable to suppose some disparity between ontological assumptions chosen (quite legitimately) for practical or analytical reasons and those truly reflective of the analyst’s own worldview. The latter are, we contend, far more likely to acknowledge a causal and/or constitutive role for ideas than the former. If this is correct, then, however dominant it may appear, materialism is in fact far less prevalent in mainstream political science and international relations than is often assumed. Moreover, its seeming prevalence owes far more to the parsimonious analytical modelling that it facilitates than it does to its innate ontological credibility. The point is that the move to a dialectical understanding of the material– ideational relationship almost inevitably entails a loss of parsimony and a seeping away of often cherished former epistemological certainties. As John Ruggie puts it, ‘the strength of neo-utilitarianism lies in its axiomatic structure, which permits a degree of analytical rigour, and in neoliberal institutionalism’s case also of theoretical specification, that other approaches cannot match’ (1998: 36). But the strength of that agenda is simultaneously its weakness – namely, its commitment to an ‘axiomatic structure’ and a largely asocial ontology that seemingly lacks credibility even among those ostensibly most wedded to it (ibid.). By the same token, however, there is an analytical price to be paid for adopting a more credible and complex set of ontological assumptions. Either we choose our ontological assumptions in such a way as to close off the need to deal analytically with the complex consequences of ‘taking ideas seriously’ or we face such analytical difficulties head on. There are advantages to each strategy – though, as we have seen, much of the existing attempt to take ideas seriously seems to vacillate uneasily between the two. In what follows we consider the work of those who have tended to refuse to choose their ontological assumptions for analytical convenience.

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Most such positions are, at least within political science and international relations, now labelled constructivist. This, in itself, is confusing, since many of these positions bear little or no relationship to the long-established tradition of constructivism in the philosophy of science (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Hacking 1999; Kukla 2000; and, for a review, Hay 2002: 197–204). Indeed, the range of positions labelled constructivist in contemporary international relations theory alone is far greater and far more internally diverse than the equivalent range in the philosophy of science literature. What such positions nonetheless tend to share is a rejection of the stark differentiation between ideas-based and interest-based approaches. For most constructivists, ideas provide the framework through which interests are defined. As Finnemore puts it, structures of shared knowledge and intersubjective understandings may shape and motivate actors. Socially constructed rules, principles, norms of behaviour and shared beliefs may provide states, individuals and other actors with understandings of what is important or valuable and what are effective and/or legitimate means of obtaining those valued goods. (Finnemore 1996: 15) Thus, constructivists have long argued that we should eschew thinking in terms of an oppositional dualism between ideas and interest-based approaches; the question is how the two are related, rather than which of the two is the more important. A second distinguishing feature of constructivism, despite its inner diversity, is its focus on the social and structural (rather than the individual) properties of ideas – that is, its focus on intersubjectivity rather than subjectivity. As Adler explains, intersubjective meanings are not simply the aggregation of the beliefs of individuals . . . Rather, they exist as collective knowledge . . . This knowledge persists beyond the lives of individual social actors, embedded in social routines and practices as they are reproduced by interpreters who participate in their production and working. (Adler 1997: 327) Yet if this might be seen to indicate a common core to constructivism, it cannot and should not serve to hide the vast chasm that has opened up between what are now invariably referred to as ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ variants of constructivism. Yet while is it relatively easy to differentiate between these twin constructivisms, in part precisely because the distinction has served to provide labels of self-identification, there is a danger that all internal divisions within a very broad church are presented in dualistic terms. In particular, we suggest, there is a danger that the constructivism of critical realism is overlooked. It is certainly unconventional to refer to critical realism as a form

Varieties of ideational explanation 31 of constructivism, and it is certainly true that, as a philosophy of (social) science, it long predates the ideational turn in political science and international relations. Yet, in the relatively loose and inclusive sense of the term used in international relations theory, critical realism is undoubtedly constructivist in its ontological commitments. Moreover, it is not just that critical realism can be labelled constructivist. It is, we suggest, useful to consider it as a variant of constructivism in reviewing the range of approaches to ideas in political analysis. In the proceeding discussion we follow this conventional distinction, differentiating between thin and thick constructivisms. ‘Thick’ constructivism: the challenge of postmodernism Once upon a time, a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this position out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence. This honest fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in Germany. (Marx and Engels, from the ‘Preface’ to The German Ideology)

The above passage, from The German Ideology, has become a key reference in ontological and epistemological disputes – invariably summoned to indicate the author’s contempt for, and exasperation with, the self-evident idiocy of an alternative ontological and/or epistemological position. Yet we cite it here for rather different reasons. For we eschew the kind of ontological and epistemological evangelism with which this passage is now almost inevitably associated and into which debate about postmodernism and thick constructivism seems invariably destined to descend. Indeed, our aim is precisely the converse – namely, to show that passages such as these, which increasingly litter the critical reception of thick constructivism, are little more than exercises in ontological evangelism. Yet our disavowal of ontological proselytising does not make us enthusiasts – or, indeed, ‘apologists’ – for thick constructivism either. Our concern is not with whether the thick constructivists, like their young Hegelian predecessors, choose, or refuse, to acknowledge natural forces such as gravity or, indeed, as Wendt would have it, the existence of cats and dogs (Wendt 1999: 49). Nor is our concern with postmodernists that they have spread the disease of unwarranted doubt that has decayed the foundations for a community of scholars . . . destroyed the bridges between alternate paths to knowledge, eroded the bases for interdisciplinary compromises and respect for the pursuit of understanding, and undermined the confidence in the value of research programs. (Kegley 2002: 66)

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Our problem is rather different. It has little or nothing to do with the ontological status of cats and dogs, nor the damage that a contagious epistemological scepticism might do to cherished claims about progress and the scientific status of political analysis. Nor, finally, does it entail caricaturing postmodernism as a form of naïve idealism that denies all materiality. Yet, for us, postmodernism remains a form of idealism nonetheless. By denying causal efficacy to material factors, it tends towards a simple view of the relationship between the material and the ideational. And this, in turn, leads it to jettison the baby with the bathwater – ultimately disavowing all appeals to causal logics (whether ideational or material). It is this that concerns us – not because it is innately wrong when judged against some universal ontological and epistemological standard, but because it is decidedly and unnecessarily limiting and because it imposes, analytically, a far more virulent form of idealism than is in fact entailed by its ontological assumptions. To see why it is useful to begin by considering what is, and what is not, at stake in the existing debate on the ontological status of cats and dogs (see Wendt 1999: 49; Doty 2000: 138; Kratochwil 2000: 95). The debate proceeds by way of an engagement with Wendtian constructivism (a position we consider in more detail in the following section); and it is important, as a consequence, to understand where Wendt is coming from in such exchanges. As we shall see presently, his overriding aim is to build bridges between a prevailing positivist orthodoxy which, partly as a consequence, he sees as defining the legitimate terrain of scientific enterprise and a decidedly thin constructivism which he grounds (or claims to ground) in a variant of critical or scientific realism. This bridge-building exercise brings him into inevitable conflict with postmodernists – for his intention, as much as anything else, is to show that to embrace (thin) constructivism is not to take the first step down the slippery slope to postmodernism. This he does by seeking to demonstrate the natural affinities, as he sees them, between positivism and constructivism and to show the natural incommensurability of both with the nihilistic epistemological relativism he ascribes to postmodernism. It is this playing to the galleries, we suggest, that leads him to the rather overstated assertion that, for postmodernists, ‘we cannot even know if seemingly observable entities, like cats and dogs, exist out there in the world’ (1999: 49). Doty’s response to his accusation is more careful and temperate. ‘Though I know of no postmodernist who has actually written about the existence or non-existence of cats’, she confesses, I think it is safe to suggest that for a postmodernist it is not the physical existence of furry little animals with whiskers that would be in question, but what these furry little creatures are, e.g. sacred and revered deities as in ancient Egypt or over-breeding pests that befoul the streets and alleys and should be euthanized. (Doty 2000: 138)

Varieties of ideational explanation 33 In similar vein, Kratochwil reminds us that these descriptions are not neutral and somehow objective but embrace all types of social practices and interests that then make the things into what they are called or referred to. Thus, while ‘dog’ might be the name for an animal, it is not a description which is appropriate under all circumstances. Part of what defines a ‘dog’ is not only its zoological characteristics, but a socially significant property such as ‘tameness’, which brings a dog under the description of ‘pet’. (Kratochwil 2000: 95) So, what are we to make of this and other exchanges like it? First, Wendt is clearly expressing – and, indeed, expressing clearly – the concerns of the mainstream. From such a perspective the problem with postmodernism is, as Osterud puts it, its ‘retreat from [the] basic norms of science and professional scholarship’. As he continues, ‘if these norms are disregarded, professional scholarship and research are out. If the text and the discourse is all, then the Earth is flat if you say so’ (1996: 389). But, as Doty’s and Kratochwil’s responses both indicate, the postmodernism to which they subscribe is not the naïve idealism Wendt assumes it to be. But it is a form of idealism nonetheless. Thus, as suggested elsewhere, while ‘it would be a travesty to label . . . [the postmodernist position] simple, [its] stance on the relationship between the material and the ideational is far from complex, even if [its] proponents’ motivations for holding it are not’ (Hay 2002: 205). Or, put slightly differently, by restricting its analysis to a description and elucidation of the internal workings of discursive formations and practices, postmodernism reduces, perhaps inadvertently, a two-way relationship between the material and the ideational to a one-way street (see also Joseph 2007: 353). It is not difficult to see how. Thus, if we return to their exchange with Wendt, Doty’s and Kratochwil’s terms of engagement are set in such a way that they focus exclusively on the social properties assigned to ‘cats’ and ‘dogs’ while giving absolutely no consideration whatsoever to the extent to which the latter’s materiality might set limits on the social properties assigned to them. To be clear, it is not that postmodernists are incapable of acknowledging that such limits might exist (this is where Wendt gets it wrong), but that their analytical commitments seem to accord them no significance and largely prevent them from becoming the subject of analysis. The result is an immaterial form of analysis – an analytical idealism, if you like – but one that need not (and, as in the case of both Doty and Kratochvil, does not) rest on a purely idealist ontology. Thus most postmodernists would surely concede that, by virtue of its (for want of a better term) species being, we are unlikely to assign the status ‘pet’ to an untamed lion. But this is more of a concession than it might seem. For if one rejects a purely idealist ontology, then prior to the question of discursive

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articulation there is the question of ‘what is it about the physical or material properties of something that allows it to lend itself to a particular form of social construction?’ (Joseph 2007: 353). The propensity of humans to drown in large volumes of water most certainly lends credibility to the ‘construction’ of gravity as, indeed, it might countless other constructions. And, of course, it matters whether we attribute drowning to gravity, bad luck, the incapacity of humans to breathe underwater, a vengeful God, or some combination of these constructions. But so, too, does the drowning such constructions narrate. Thus, Wendt is surely right to suggest that, in its almost exclusive emphasis on social meaning, postmodernism tends to fail to consider (even where it is prepared to acknowledge) ‘the resistance of the world to certain representations’ (Wendt 1999: 58). Yet, by the same token, the repertoire and range of representations on which we draw in narrating our experiences is also limited by pre-existing discursive formations. And if Doty and Kratochwil have little to say about the former, Wendt is just as silent on the latter. Both processes of mediation and conditioning might be seen as forms of discursive selectivity (Hay 2002: 212). In the former, material factors select for, but by no means entirely determine, the meanings we assign to our experiences. In the latter, pre-existing discursive formations select for, but again by no means determine, the ways in which we attribute meaning to social events, processes and behaviours. Thus, as Joseph suggests, ‘not just anything can be articulated as a nuclear weapon; it has to have certain material properties. . . . [because] the physical properties of something, far from being meaningless outside articulation, are the very things that make social construction possible’ (2007: 353, emphasis added). Yet, similarly, whether a nuclear arsenal is constructed as a means of security or as a potential terrorist threat will depend on (among other things) the constraints that prevailing national and international discourses impose. As this suggests, if we are to respect analytically, let alone operationalise methodologically, an ontology that privileges neither the material nor the ideational, we cannot but reject the analytical idealism of postmodernism and its disavowal of causal logics. But, if this is so, might a thinner form of constructivism provide that still elusive via media? ‘Thin’ constructivism: all things to all people? Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999) has, rightly or wrongly, become the central reference point for all debate in international relations theory, at least on the merits and demerits of constructivism. And, whatever else one might say about it, it would be churlish not to recognise that Wendt’s intervention is a major one (indeed, if there is any kind of a problem here it is not with Wendt himself, but with the industry his work has spawned). What is perhaps most significant of all about his intervention is that it has served to (re)position social theory as an indispensable element of

Varieties of ideational explanation 35 international relations theorising and, in so doing, to break a long-standing tradition of disciplinary insularity that has tended to insulate the field from wider developments in the social sciences. But it is with his defence of a constructivism of a particular kind that we are here principally concerned. Stripped to its ontological core, Wendt’s position is – and is explicitly presented as – a form of ‘rump materialism’, in which the distribution of capabilities (principally, geographical and resource constraints) and the composition of capabilities (which he sees as largely technologically determined) are understood as material phenomena (1999: 109–13). This he does to remind us, as he puts it, that ‘constructivism should not proceed as if nature did not matter’ (ibid.: 111). Thus, although ideas and culture give impetus and direction to the ongoing human effort to transcend material constraints, ‘whether we like it or not, the distribution and composition of material capabilities at any given moment help define the possibilities of our action’ (ibid.: 113). Wendt’s ‘rump materialism’ thus aims to strike a balance – or, as he prefers, to provide ‘a philosophically principled middle way’ (1999: 2) – between a vulgar materialism, according to which ideas are epiphenomenal and have no impact on politics, and a radical constructivism that denies any causal efficacy to materiality. As he puts it, ‘material forces are not constituted solely by social meanings, and social meanings are not immune to material effects’ (ibid.: 111–12). As aphorisms go, it is difficult to imagine a clearer statement of a dialectical understanding of the relationship between the material and the ideational. Yet Wendt’s ability to deliver a genuinely dialectical approach to the relationship between the ideational and material is, we suggest, ultimately compromised by the two central features of the ‘via media’ that he offers: namely, (i) his proposed reconciliation and synthesis of scientific realism and constructivism; and (ii) the rigid and dualistic treatment of the distinction between the causal and constitutive effects of ideas. Ontologically, we argue, he provides a failed marriage of inconsistent premises rather than a ‘philosophically principled middle way’. Moreover, despite the appeal of his attempt to develop an ‘epistemological Westphalia’, he introduces an artificial and unnecessarily polarising dichotomy between the causal and constitutive effects of ideas which, instead of transcending current disciplinary divisions between causal and non-causal forms of theorising, actually serves to reproduce them. We consider each in turn. The marriage of critical realism and constructivism As already noted, if we are fully to understand the at times somewhat quirky character of Wendt’s hybrid constructivism, it is important to acknowledge from the start the task he sets himself. As much as anything else that task is not to upset mainstream international relations theorists by convincing them, as best he can, that they have little or nothing to fear from embracing the kind

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of thin constructivism he offers. Thus, from the outset, he declares his commitment to a science of politics and international relations, emphasising in terms comfortingly familiar to his mainstream audience the scientific realist character of his constructivism.4 And judged simply in terms of the welcome afforded him in mainstream IR, his strategy has undoubtedly succeeded. Stephen Krasner, for instance, suggests that Wendt’s ‘discussion of scientific realism ought to be required reading for any student of international relations, or political science for that matter’ (2000: 131). Similarly, and perhaps more significantly still, Robert Keohane declares that Wendt ‘has shown convincingly that one does not have to swallow the contaminated epistemological water of postmodernism in order to enjoy the heady ontological wine of constructivism’ (2000: 129). But is this right? Can ideas be incorporated so seamlessly, and without any epistemological and/or ontological fallout, within an otherwise untainted international relations scientific orthodoxy? This we contest. To see why, it is necessary to explore Wendt’s argument in a little more detail. The first problem we detect in Wendt’s hybrid constructivism is, quite simply, the incommensurability of the ontological and epistemological commitments from which it ostensibly builds. To claim to reconcile critical (or scientific) realism and positivism might seem like a tall order; but to claim to reconcile positivism, post-positivism and critical realism simultaneously stretches credulity. But Wendt could not be clearer on the subject. Thus, in summarising his position he states, ‘epistemologically I have sided with positivists . . . On ontology – which is to my mind the more important issue – I will side . . . with post-positivists’, before going on to suggest that ‘scientific realism plays an essential role in finding [the] . . . via media between positivist epistemology and post-positivist ontology’ (Wendt 1999: 90, 91). The problems with such a formulation are principally threefold. First, Wendt here seems to imply that ontological choices are epistemologically neutral and vice versa. This is patently not the case – as, indeed, scientific realists such as Bhaskar (1989: 67ff.) have spelled out very clearly (uncharacteristically clearly, as it happens). If ontology concerns the nature of social and political reality itself, then clearly it sets limits on what one can hope to know about that reality. Thus, as elsewhere argued, if we are happy to conceive of ourselves as disinterested and dispassionate observers of an external (political) reality existing independently of our conceptions of it [an ontological position] then we are likely to be rather more confident epistemologically than if we are prepared to concede that: (i) we are, at best, partisan participant observers; (ii) that there is no neutral vantage-point from which the political can be viewed objectively; and (iii) the ideas we fashion of the political context we inhabit influence our behaviour and hence the unfolding dynamic of that political context. (Hay 2002: 63–4)

Varieties of ideational explanation 37 Ontology, as this suggests, exerts a ‘direction dependence’ on epistemology (see also Hay 2007). Thus, to adopt a positivist epistemology is to commit oneself to a view of social and political reality (a social ontology) that is consistent with, at minimum, the law of induction and an unqualified naturalism (such as might permit a unity of method and epistemological standards between the social and natural sciences). No post-positivist ontology of which we are aware is consistent with either. Indeed, Bhaskar himself demonstrates at some length how a critical (or scientific) realist reflection on the ‘limits of naturalism’ must logically entail a rejection of positivism (see, for instance, Bhaskar [1979] 1998, 1989; see also Collier 1994: 237ff.; Hay 2002: 85–6). A logical corollary of this is Colin Wight’s suggestion that ‘one cannot be both a scientific realist and a positivist’ (2002: 36; see also Smith 2000: 153). But, if that is the case, then it is difficult to see how the former might provide any via media between positivist epistemology and post-positivist ontology. Second, as already hinted, it is somewhat confusing to refer to positivism and post-positivism as ontological commitments – such that one might refer to one’s ontology as positivist or post-positivist. Positivism and post-positivism are epistemologies – compatible, like other epistemologies, with a range (albeit a limited range) of social ontologies. And, although it is fair to suggest that positivism perhaps imposes greater limits on one’s ontological latitude than any other epistemological stance, this does not make it an ontological stance in itself. Indeed, the ontology with which it is invariably associated is naturalism. By the same token, post-positivism is consistent with a potentially breathtaking range of ontological stances – from Bhaskar’s qualified naturalism to a radical perspectivism. It makes little or no sense, then, to speak of a post-positivist ontology. Third, and relatedly, one does not need a via media, in Wendt’s terms, to connect up one’s ontological and epistemological premises – for they do not come (or, at least, they should not come) separately packaged and in need of bolting together. Yes, a given ontology is likely to be consistent with a range of epistemological commitments; the relationship is one of directional dependence, but that dependence is by no means fully determinant. But the point is that one’s ontological and epistemological choices are interdependent. Thus, when it comes to a consideration of the role of ideas in social and political dynamics, the analyst faces a series of ontological choices about the extent to which, and the ways in which, ideas matter. These, in turn, have epistemological implications which one cannot simply choose to ignore in preference, say, for a continued commitment to a positivist epistemology. No via media, scientifically realist or not, is capable of delivering simultaneously the epistemological self-confidence of positivism (which is sustained, as much as by anything else, by a disavowal of any causal role for ideas) and the (ontological) view that ‘social life is ‘ideas all the way down’ (or almost, anyway)’ (Wendt 1999: 90). This is to insist on both having one’s cake and eating it. In each of these respects Wendt’s hybrid constructivism is internally

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inconsistent. Yet it is important to be clear about the precise implications of the preceding discussion. Though we fail to see how a constructivist ontology that accords an independent role to ideas in the constitution of social and political reality can be reconciled with naturalism (and hence with a positivist epistemology), we see no such logical incommensurability between constructivism and critical realism. Indeed, and as already suggested, we see critical realism as a potentially potent vehicle for further exploring the constituted nature of social and political reality and the causally constitutive role of ideas in political processes. Finally, it is important to see how this hybrid of contradictory premises leads Wendt’s constructivism into a starkly dualistic (indeed, unapologetically Cartesian) distinction between the ideational and the material. Here it is necessary to consider a second reason for Wendt’s turn to scientific realism – namely, his need to justify philosophically the study of unobservables, such as the state, the state system and, of course, ideas. In anticipation of the familiar empiricist objection, he invokes the critical realist claim that we can establish the reality of unobservables by means of their observable effects. This, we suggest, is a valid and helpful move, but the way in which Wendt develops it draws him into an unnecessarily dualistic distinction between the material and the ideational realms. According to Wendt, ‘if we are to be scientific realists about social life’, we have to recognise that material forces and ideas are ‘constituted as different kinds of independently existing stuff’. And, as he goes on to acknowledge, ‘this formulation of the materialism–idealism problem is ultimately Cartesian insofar as it separates the world into two kinds of phenomena – in effect, mind and body’ (1999: 112). Yet this, we contend, is based on a further misrepresentation of critical realism. For even if ideas (or culture) are accorded an ‘objectified’ status, such that might be seen to possess, in realist terms, structural emergent properties, this need not entail a rigid ontological dualism. Wendt, it seems, assumes that to accord ideas and materiality sui generis properties is to adopt a rigid Cartesian dualism. Yet, once we take account of the realist notions of emergence and conditioning, this need not be so – the dualism is dissolved. Thus, according to the principle of emergence, structures (whether material or ideational), although irreducible to agency, are activity-dependent. Consequently, they are not analogous to biological systems, possessing no self-reproducing powers of their own. Similarly, according to the principle of conditioning, such power as they might be seen to possess is always mediated in and through human agency. As this suggests, critical realism, contra Wendt, maintains a degree of independence among the realms of the material and ideational without introducing a rigid distinction between the two. On causal and constitutive logics Wendt’s constructivism, as we have seen, entails an ultimately dualistic ontological distinction between the material and the ideational. Yet this is by no

Varieties of ideational explanation 39 means the only dualism on which it is built. Indeed, certainly no less significant is the epistemological dualism he introduces between logics of causation and logics of constitution. This distinction is central to his theoretical enterprise, and the analytical utility he sees it as providing is offered as an index of the value-added of thin constructivism. Causal theories, Wendt suggests, ask the ‘why?’ questions, while constitutive theories pose the ‘how?’ questions. According to such a logic, to say that ideas constitute social situations by providing meaning to material forces and factors is not to make a causal claim (Wendt 1999: 78). This is undoubtedly neat. Moreover, in serving effectively to bracket off – as non-causal – much (if perhaps not all) of the role Wendt assigns to ideas, it is decidedly non-threatening to a mainstream thus far reluctant to embrace enthusiastically constitutive logics. And, if for no other reason than this, it has proved extremely influential. Yet the underlying rationale, we contend, is misleading. A number of points might usefully be made here. First, and at the risk of stating the obvious, most causal theories in the natural sciences when engaging in what they regard to be explanatory exercises invariably provide answers to ‘how’ rather than to ‘why’ questions. In fact, that is not quite strictly true. For what they actually do is to provide ‘how’ answers to ‘why’ questions. Thus, when asked to explain why a particle dropped from a tower falls to the ground, most scientists (and, indeed, non-scientists) will undoubtedly invoke the law of gravity. But in so doing they offer, as an explanation, a redescription of the exhibited behaviour of the particle in the context of a more general theory. In short, they answer not a ‘why’ question but the question ‘How can we best describe the behaviour of the particle?’ or ‘What is the appropriate theory to describe the exhibited behaviour – under which governing law does it fall?’ At best this merely defers the ‘why’ question, though, unless one has small children, it will usually suffice. As this suggests, much (if perhaps not all) explanation in the natural sciences involves the redescription of an observation or occurrence in terms of a more general governing law; as such, most ostensibly explanatory natural science is noncausal. This, of course, does not invalidate Wendt’s distinction between the causal and the constitutive in the social sciences, but it does serve to contextualise it rather differently. More significant is that Wendt’s rigid distinction rests, and is indeed logically entailed by, a prior (if undeclared) commitment to a narrow, Humean conception of causality. If this is a conscious choice on his part (and, given the powerful hold that such an understanding of causality now has in international relations theory, it may well not be), it is a puzzling move for someone so exercised by the philosophy of science. For it sits awkwardly, at best, with his declared commitment to scientific realism. Thus, whether he chooses to ignore it or not, it is difficult to imagine that Wendt is unaware that critical realism adopts a much more open view of causation. As Milja Kurki’s excellent and exhaustive survey of the topic shows, for critical realists causation is understood ‘rather loosely as all those things that bring

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about, produce, direct or contribute to states of affairs or changes in the world’ (Kurki 2006: 202). Such a conception is, in fact, far closer to the lay understanding of the term and is entirely consistent with the causal significance of constitutive logics. Thus, for instance, the narration of a set of (perceived) policy failures as constitutive of a crisis may serve to shape decisively the pace, and indeed the content, of subsequent policy change (Blyth 2002; Hay 1996). In this respect, the constitution of crisis is of considerable causal significance. As this example suggests, causal and constitutive logics are at loggerheads only as long as causality is understood in Humean terms of constant conjunctions. Indeed, within a consistently critically realist view of the social world in which we cannot presuppose the existence of constant conjunctions, Kurki is surely right to argue that ‘we would be better placed to deal with the social world . . . if we saw constitutive theorising as an indispensable part of causal theorising’ (2006: 212; see also Hay 2004c; Hay and Rosamond 2002).

Critical realism and cultural conditioning: the morphogenetic approach The attempt to construct a critical realist via media capable of negotiating a path between positivist epistemological and post-positivist ontological commitments was almost bound to fail – simply by virtue of the impossibility of the task. And the above analysis confirms, in our view, that failure. Yet this does not, of course, exhaust the potential of critical realism to develop a genuinely dialectical understanding of the material–ideational relationship and to illuminate the way in which ideas may be causally constitutive of social processes. But, to assess that potential, we must turn to authors, such as Margaret Archer, who have built their approach to such matters from ontological premises that are both more consistent and more consistently critical realist.5 Although Archer’s approach to the question of structure and agency has become increasingly influential in international relations and political science, her approach to culture and agency has yet to receive sustained reflection in the ideas debate (for a partial exception, see McAnulla 2002). This is unfortunate. For although it is not without its problems, it offers perhaps the most theoretically sophisticated and ontologically consistent attempt to date to develop an approach to the ideational–material relationship which privileges neither moment. The analytical starting point for the morphogenetic approach is the attempt to overcome what Archer terms the ‘fallacy of conflation’. By this she refers to any conceptualisation of the relationship between the material (‘structure’) and the ideational (‘culture’) which, by blurring the distinction between them, precludes an examination of their interplay.6 Conflation, she suggests, is problematic, since it either treats ‘structure and culture as partners in a zero-sum relationship’ or sees their partnership ‘as one of such tight

Varieties of ideational explanation 41 mutual constitution that neither has any degree of autonomy from the other’ (Archer [1988] 1996: 274). The former reminds us of the ideas versus material interests dichotomy imposed by the rationalist reading of ideas, while the latter is close to some versions of postmodernism that deny any degree of autonomy to material factors. Thus, for Archer, the first challenge in conceptualising culture, structure and agency is to overcome the conflation of structure and culture and that of culture and agency so as to provide an approach that is capable of linking structure and culture to agency without sinking their differences ([1988] 1996: xiv). Any failure to do so can only result in an elision of ‘the material and ideational aspects of social life’ such that they become ‘clamped together in a conceptual vice’ (ibid.: xi). Archer’s solution is to propose that we conceptualise the relationship between the material and the ideational in terms of an analytical dualism. This emphasis on the need for a clear analytical separation of the material and ideational is distinctive to her approach. It provides, she suggests, the methodological springboard to an examination of the interplay, rather than the interpenetration, of the material and the ideational over time. Yet this analytical dualism, as Archer is keen to emphasise, does not entail the adoption of a Cartesian (ontological) dualism, as Wendt suggests. Thus, contra authors such as Wendt, Archer insists that proposing an analytical dualism is ‘emphatically . . . not the same thing as’ proposing a philosophical (i.e. ontological) dualism, ‘for there is no suggestion that we are dealing with separate entities, only analytically separable ones and ones which it is theoretically useful to treat separately’ ([1988] 1996: xvi, emphasis added). Archer clearly sees this as a very important clarification, for it is repeated at several key points in her account. Analytical dualism, she emphasises, is a heuristic devise and ‘an artifice of convenience’ (ibid.: 143). But, as this suggests, and as is so often the case in such matters, the proof of this particular pudding lies in the eating. Thus, as Archer continues, ‘it is one thing to accept the advantages of drawing such distinctions in principle’; it is quite another to operationalise the distinction in such a way as genuinely to enhance our analytical purchase on the ideational–material relationship ([1988] 1996: xviii, emphasis added). Her focus throughout is on the additional purchase as practical social scientists that we gain from such abstract analytical considerations. If it is to offer genuine value-added, she suggests, her proposed analytical dualism has to be followed through to the identification of the different and distinct properties and dynamics of the terms comprising the dualism. Moreover, these properties must be ascribed in such a way that the analytical dualism is respected and retained – the (potential) additional analytical purchase offered by an analytical dualism is lost if, in operationalising the distinction, dualism gives way to duality (ibid.: 105). Two principles guide Archer in this task. The first is that she must guard against what she terms the ‘the myth of cultural integration’. This, she suggests, ‘perpetuates an image of culture as a coherent pattern, a uniform

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ethos or a symbolically consistent universe’ ([1988] 1996: xvii). The danger of this is that it forecloses the possibility of contradictions within the ideational/ cultural realm, with the result that we may tend to emphasise path-dependent processes of ideational/cultural reproduction at the expense of path-shaping processes of ideational/cultural transformation. For Archer the cultural/ ideational system acquires an existence of its own; it is real and objective. Its components (theories, beliefs, and so on) have emergent relational properties that condition (in a causally constitutive way) specific courses of action. Moreover, each such system is characterised by an internal logical consistency which gives a unity to the parts out of which it is constituted. Second, and in line with the principle of analytical dualism, Archer seeks to keep analytically separate the cultural and the agential. This she does by ensuring that the nature of the relations between the components of a culture are distinguished clearly from those pertaining to the actors. The former relations are captured by the notion of causal consensus, defined as ‘the degree of social uniformity produced by the imposition of culture . . . by one set of people on another’ ([1988] 1996: 4). By contrast, the relations between groups and individuals are, for Archer, ultimately ‘rooted in . . . material interests’ (ibid.: xxii). We have now established the core principles, both ontological and analytical, from which Archer develops her distinctive approach to the interaction between culture and agency. This is outlined schematically in Figure 2.4 and takes the form of the ‘morphogentic cycle’, as Archer rather grandly puts it. This cycle is, in fact, comprised of three overlapping but temporally distinct processes. These Archer terms cultural conditioning, socio-cultural interaction and cultural elaboration; they mirror equivalent processes in her treatment of the structure–agency relationship (1995: 193, 309; for a critique of which, see Hay 2002: 122–6). We consider each in turn. 1 Cultural conditioning. Given that, for Archer, the cultural system predates the socio-cultural action which ultimately reproduces or transforms it, the morphogenetic cycle inevitably takes off from cultural conditioning. This Cultural conditioning T1 Socio-cultural interaction T2

T3 Cultural elaboration T4

Figure 2.4 The morphogenesis of culture. Source: Archer (1995: 193).

Varieties of ideational explanation 43 refers to the process by which the cultural context (itself an outcome of contextualised agency in previous cycles) serves to impose situational logics upon behaviour. For Archer such cultural effects are determined largely by the degree of logical consistency exhibited by the culture in question. In this formulation, culture is perceived as a dispositional register that conditions agents by providing them with specific situational logics. If the degree of cultural logical consistency is low, then a condition of constraining contradictions emerges. The appropriate situational logic in such a context is one which demands that actors attempt to resolve or repair these contradictions. Yet, if the degree of internal consistency is high, then a condition of concomitant complementarities emerges. Here the appropriate situational logic is one in which actors are concerned mainly to ensure the continuation of a condition of cultural consistency. 2 Socio-cultural integration. Were the analysis to stop at this point, a form of cultural determinism would be implied. This Archer eschews by incorporating the role of the reflexive actor in a second phase of the cycle. Situational logics, though conditioning, are never fully determinant of a reflexive actor’s conduct. Recognition of this serves, then, ‘to bring the people back in, not merely as static upholders of this or that idea, but as active makers and re-makers of their culture’ ([1988] 1996: 184). But recall here that Archer conceives of the relationship between actors as of a qualitatively different character to that between elements of the prevailing cultural system. Indeed, as we have seen, for Archer the orderly or conflictual nature of the relations between actors at this level reflects ‘structural antagonisms based on material interests’ (ibid.: 187). As this suggests, social conflict may be rife even in situations characterised by high levels of cultural consistency. Similarly, cultural contradictions may arise in situations characterised by high levels of social order and the absence of social conflict. This directs Archer to the importance of the ‘discrepancies between the degree of integration at the two levels’ (ibid.: 186) and to the effect of such discrepancies on the third phase in the cycle, the process of cultural elaboration. 3 Cultural elaboration. It is the outcome of the process of cultural elaboration that determines whether the overall cycle is ‘morphogenetic’ (i.e. transformatory) or ‘morphostatic’ (i.e. reproductive) of the prevailing cultural system. As this makes clear, there is no inbuilt prejudice towards change in the model. Indeed, whether the outcome of the cycle will be cultural transformation or cultural reproduction is determined, for Archer, by the distribution of contradictions and complementaries between the two systems. In general, and at the risk of some simplification, if the degree of integration at both levels is high, then nothing points towards change; similarly, if the degree of integration at both levels is low, then the converse is likely to apply. In either case, the outcome of the process of cultural elaboration completes the morphogenetic/static cycle and marks the beginning of a new cycle. As the above paragraphs hopefully serve to indicate, Archer pursues her

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project with an unusually high degree of conceptual rigour and theoretical consistency. Yet, above all, her approach is distinguished by a refreshing desire to ensure that philosophical commitments and analytical strategies are followed through to deliver practical social scientific insights. As she emphasises repeatedly, ontological exertions, important as they are, cannot suffice. ‘The practical analyst of society needs to know not only what social reality is, but also how to begin to explain it’ (Archer 1995: 5, original emphasis). There is much in this from which contemporary political science and international relations can learn. Yet it is with the specific contribution that the morphogenetic approach makes, or might make, to ideational analysis that we are here principally concerned. Again, there is much to commend Archer’s perspective. First, she is undoubtedly right to point to the tendency – just as prevalent in international relations as in sociology – for the question of structure and agency to overshadow the relationship between the material and the ideational. She is also surely right to see the two issues as intimately interlinked (see also Hay 2002). This we see as the first key insight to be gained from Archer’s analysis. A second, and no less significant, insight is the need to guard against the myth of cultural integration – the tendency to conceive of culture as a seamlessly integrated and hermetic intersubjective consensus. Such a tendency, we would again contend, is no less prevalent in international relations and political science than it is in sociology – and it is certainly no less problematic. Indeed, there is a second dimension to this. This is overlooked by Archer, but it is perfectly consistent with her approach. This is the degree of correspondence between ideas at different levels of generality within the same culture or discourse. As Craig Parsons puts it, albeit in a slightly different context, ‘actors who share one idea as the “master frame” for their action do not necessarily agree on more detailed actions therein’ (Parsons 2003: 8). This brings us to a third insight of Archer’s account, namely its emphasis on the emergent properties of ideas. Archer argues that the myth of cultural integration is problematic because it forecloses the possibility of contradictions between ideas as components of a culture. Indeed, as she maintains, ideas develop relational emergent properties of logical consistency or inconsistency which, in turn, condition the cultural context within which action takes place. In the process she comes to ascribe to ideas causal powers. Such insights are undoubtedly important, but they shouldn’t lead us to overlook the problems with Archer’s perspective. For, ultimately, we contend, it fails to deliver the full potential of the critical realism to which it is clearly wedded to advance a truly dialectical perspective on the ideational– material relationship. Archer sets out to examine the interplay between culture and agency but also that between culture and structure. Indeed, she notes that the key issue animating her approach ‘is how to disentangle the interplay of interests, power and ideas’ ([1988] 1996: 188). Yet this remains, in our view, at best an unrealised aspiration, as her theoretical efforts tend to privilege the relation-

Varieties of ideational explanation 45 ship between culture and agency at the expense of that between culture and structure. Moreover, in contrast to more sympathetic critics, we detect a more fundamental problem here. For we do not see this, like McAnulla (2002), as an underdeveloped aspect of her work. Rather we view it as evidence of a residual philosophical dualism between the material (structure) and the ideational (culture) that violates her ostensible commitment to analytical dualism and that is in marked contrast to her more effective treatment of the relationship between culture and agency. This, as we shall see, can ultimately be traced to the unfortunate conflation of the material and the structure. McAnulla’s view is that the morphogenetic approach is ambiguous about the relationship between the cultural and the structural over time and that, ‘although Archer has offered some useful, if brief, reflection on the nature of this relationship, it is not something made clear’ (2002: 290). This is overly generous. Indeed, the only element of McAnulla’s assessment with which we agree is that Archer’s treatment of the relationship between culture and structure is brief. For it is, we suggest, unambiguous – and unhelpful. McAnulla can find no developed account of the relationship between culture and structure over time because, quite simply, there is none. And this is so not because Archer’s work is theoretically underdeveloped on this point or, indeed, because of some ambiguity in the text, but because Archer explicitly denies such a diachronic interplay between the two. In fact, she is crystal clear on the subject: ‘When both structure and culture are conceptualised from the morphogenetic perspective . . . the two intersect [only] in the middle element of the basic cycle’ (Archer [1988] 1996: 282). So what is so problematic about this? By restricting the interplay of culture and structure to something that occurs only in the second ‘socio-cultural interaction’ phase of the morphogenetic cycle, Archer downgrades its significance. Moreover, and more problematically still, since she conceives of actors in the process of socio-cultural integration as animated ultimately by their material interests, she leaves entirely unchallenged an ultimately rationalist conception of the human subject. Thus, despite all her efforts to develop a dynamic and avowedly dialectical understanding of the material–ideational relationship, she falls back on precisely the same rationalist foundations with which we began our consideration of the ideational turn. Thus, first and last, the picture she paints is of rational actors pursuing their materially given selfinterests. And, as already argued, to conceive of interests as materially determined in this way is in direct violation of the commitment to a dialectical understanding of the relationship between the material and the ideational. It is also to turn an analytical dualism into precisely the ontological dualism Archer sought to overcome. Yet the problem here is not just Archer’s perhaps surprising commitment to a purely materialist conception of interests. Equally problematic, from a perspective seeking to explore the relationship between the ideational and the material without privileging either moment, is that actors are seen to be

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empowered by their position in the social hierarchy – where the latter is, again, understood in purely material terms. Thus, despite setting out to explore the ‘interplay of interests, power and ideas’, both interests and power are understood in purely material terms – there being no recognition, for instance, that actors may be powerful not (purely) by virtue of their material capabilities but also by virtue of a widespread system of meanings that accords them status, legitimacy and/or authority. The source of all of these problems is common: the separation of culture and structure in the morphogenetic approach. For it is this that prevents them from intersecting at any point other than in the second phase of the morphogenetic cycle – and arguably then only in a rather circumscribed way. It is precisely for this reason that, as noted earlier, we prefer to talk of a social structure with interrelated, if nonetheless analytically separable, ideational and material elements. Ultimately, then, it is Archer’s conflation of the material and the structural that is the source of her failure to respect the principles of analytical dualism and yet ontological duality she espouses. Indeed, one might go further here. The problem, for us, with Archer’s approach is, in the end, her commitment to analytical dualism. This, we suggest, is ultimately unnecessary. For, while it is indeed important to avoid the conflation of the ideational and the material, the agential and the structural, and thus to retain the analytical separability of the terms comprising such pairings, we do not accept that this can be achieved only by imposing an artificial analytical dualism. Moreover, there are associated dangers with such a strategy – namely that, by assuming that all emergent properties of social and cultural systems are internal to them, we fail adequately to consider the interplay between them. In this way an analytical dualism all too frequently gives way to an ontological dualism. A second – and closely related – problem with the morphogenetic perspective is its restrictive treatment of actors’ reflexivity. Archer insists that every form of determinism which might be seen to be implied by her conception of cultural conditioning should be avoided, since it denies the ‘quintessential reflexive ability of human beings to fight back against their conditioning’ (Archer [1988] 1996: xxvi). Few contemporary theorists would disagree with such a statement. Yet, as operationalised by Archer, agents are able to ‘fight back against’ their cultural conditioning only insofar as it clashes with their material interests and only insofar as their material position gives them the power resources to do so. There is nothing very reflexive about this, certainly by any conventional understanding of the term. Reflexivity certainly doesn’t extend to any capacity of the actor to interpret or to reinterpret his or her material interests. In this respect Archer’s position is eerily reminiscent of Goldstein and Keohane’s argument that ideas ‘become important solely because of the interests and power of their progenitor’ (1993: 13). Archer’s restrictive conception of reflexivity is further revealed in her account of the way in which specific situational logics are imparted to actors according to the degree of logical integrity and coherence of a given cultural

Varieties of ideational explanation 47 system. This is unduly mechanistic and, again, belies any notion of actors’ reflexivity. If contradictions and complementarities are to motivate behaviour, they have to be perceived as such. It is what actors – not analysts – make of them that matters here. Whether accurate or otherwise, it is the contradictions we perceive that motivate us to seek an alternative. By the same token, the absence of logical contradictions does not preclude the possibility that we will taken action against the contradictions we perceive to exist.

Conclusions: towards a critical realist constructivism We have travelled a considerable distance in the preceding pages and yet we have still come up short – in the sense that a consistent approach to the relationship between the ideational and the material that fails to privilege one or other moment and is capable of recognising the causally constitutive role of ideas remains frustratingly elusive. Yet we are rather better placed now to take stock of the failings of existing approaches – and perhaps to go one better – than we were at the outset. Those are the twin goals we set ourselves in this final concluding section. If we consider first the limitations of existing perspectives, a number of common themes emerge from our analysis. Four in particular stand out. 1 A failure to acknowledge the ontological and epistemological implications of ‘taking ideas seriously’. Mainstream political science and international relations theory is undoubtedly more enthusiastic today than it has been for several decades to accord a genuinely explanatory (and hence causal) role to ideas and ideational variables. Indeed, since the mid-1990s a veritable academic industry has developed as analysts have increasingly turned (or, perhaps more accurately, returned) to ideas. Yet, to date at any rate, this literature has been decidedly less enthusiastic to explore fully or adequately the ontological and epistemological implications of according to ideas an explanatory role. Far too frequently, ideas have simply been grafted on to pre-existing theories whose ontological and epistemological premises grant no role to ideas. They have, as a consequence, been accorded a rather limited status as auxiliary, residual or supplementary variables – incorporated only at precisely the point at which pre-existing theories run into explanatory difficulties. Though convenient, this is deeply problematic. For, perhaps more so than any other category of variable, to accord ideas an explanatory or, indeed, a constitutive role (where previously such a role was denied to them) is to revise fundamentally one’s ontological commitments – with major epistemological consequences. In particular, as we have been at pains to suggest throughout, to posit ideas as causes or to see ideas as (partly) constitutive of the social is to reject naturalism and, with it, the positivist epistemological self-confidence it has sustained. As this suggests, ideas cannot be incorporated within existing mainstream perspectives without ontological and epistemological residue.

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2 The problem of invoking uncertainty as a necessary condition of a causal role for ideas. It is perhaps not entirely fair to suggest that all mainstream attempts to accord to ideas a greater role fail to acknowledge the epistemological implications, in particular, of so doing. But those that do have invariably sought to limit such epistemological implications by specifying the boundary conditions of a causal role for ideas. In almost all such cases ideas are held to become causally significant only under conditions of uncertainty. This is undoubtedly neat. Moreover, it would certainly appear to allow us to grant to ideas a causal role while, at least for the most part, retaining our former materialist ontological commitments and the epistemological selfconfidence they in turn facilitate. Yet this, we contend, is illusory – or, at least, it is in the absence of a theory specifying the conditions under which uncertainty arises and the conditions under which it is resolved. For, in the absence of such a theory, whether we are prepared to accord to ideas an explanatory role or not is essentially arbitrary – and to invoke uncertainty as the proximate justification for so doing is tautological. In effect, whenever we find that materialist explanations will not suffice, we invoke uncertainty and seek an ideational solution; whenever they will suffice, we assume the absence of uncertainty and refuse to concede the causal significance of ideas. This is clearly inadequate. Moreover, rather than seeing uncertainty as the exception to the rule, is it not more credible to see it as a universal and timeless human condition? Yet, if we do so, then we should expect ideas to matter all the time – an ontological commitment with precisely the epistemological implications that the uncertainty clause was designed to protect us from! 3 The limits to the Humean conception of causality. Time and again our analysis has revealed the limitations of the Humean conception of causality which, we contend, continues to plague almost all of the literature that strives to accord an explanatory and/or constitutive role to ideas. The Humean notion of causality relies on the principle of constant conjunction – such that, if A causes B, then ‘all instances of A must be followed by the appearance of B’ (Parsons 2003: 105). This, we have argued, is fundamentally incompatible with the non-naturalist ontology that results from according to ideas (any) explanatory significance. For, quite simply, if actors’ behaviour is shaped to any extent at all by the ideas they hold, and such ideas are not simply reducible to the context in which they arise, then there are no constant conjunctions to which a Humean conception of causality might appeal. As this suggests, to grant an explanatory or constitutive role to ideas is to disavow naturalism; and to disavow naturalism renders a Humean conception of causation redundant. Yet, tempting at this point though it might be to follow many postmodernists in rejecting causal in favour of purely constitutive logics, this too we reject. For there is another option here: to reject the narrowly Humean conception of causation that continues to dominate the existing literature and to prefer, instead, a broader critical realist conception of causality (see, for instance, Collier 1994: 122–30). This drops the constant conjunction requirement, replacing it with a conception of ‘generative mech-

Varieties of ideational explanation 49 anisms’. The key point in the present context is that this allows a recognition of the causal significance of constitutive processes. 4 The limits of a material conception of interests. A further and yet seemingly constant stumbling block to the attempt to accord to ideas a more significant explanatory role is the notion of interests as materially given. Yet it is important to be clear here. For, in the end, whether interests are seen to be materially given or, as we prefer, as constructions which orient an actor to his or her context is largely a semantic choice – though one loaded with ontological significance. As such it cannot easily be judged right or wrong; and it is not our argument that such a choice is, in itself, misguided. But – and this is our point – to conceive of interests as materially given is anathema to the attempt to accord to ideas a causal significance. The appeal of the material conception of interest is that, in combination with assumptions about rationality and complete information, it serves to render actors’ behaviour predictable given the context in which they find themselves. If actors are rational, have a clear and materially given self-interest, and can be assumed to be accurate in their assessment of both the context in which they find themselves and that interest, then they will behave predictably – their behaviour is, in effect, determined by their surroundings. Such a conception is conceptually neat, theoretically elegant and analytically parsimonious. More importantly still, it holds open the prospect of a predictive science of politics – and it also enables the elucidation of causes in the Humean sense of the term. Yet, as the turn to ideas among rational choice theorists itself serves to indicate, its ontological premises are increasingly seen to lack credibility, chosen as they are largely for analytical convenience. More credible, it seems, to many (if not perhaps all) rational choice theorists today is that, because of the intervening or mediating role of ideas, behaviour is not predictable given context. Yet rather than see interests themselves as irredeemably ideational, most analysts to date (rationalists or otherwise) still cling to a material conception of interests. In so doing they argue that actors do indeed have materially given interests, but that it is their perceived interests rather than their true interests that ultimately motivate their behaviour. This, we suggest, is an unnecessary and unfortunate formulation which betrays its rationalist legacy and which can – and should – now be dispensed with. For it implies that, given complete information, identically located actors would reach identical assessments of their material interests; their perceived and true interests would be one and the same. This is yet another convenient fiction. Moreover, if one accepts that it is actors’ perceived interests that motivate their behaviour, it is a convenient fiction which no longer does any analytical work – for actors’ true interests are largely irrelevant to their behaviour. What this suggests to us is the value of a radical reassessment of the concept of self-interest itself. It is such a reassessment that we would place at the heart of a critical realist constructivism in contemporary political science

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– both because it most clearly signals its principal point of departure from current attempts to take ideas seriously and because it shows how ideas can be seen as causally constitutive.7 Within such a formulation, interests do not exist, but constructions of interest do. Such constructions are, in turn, predicated on irreducibly normative conceptions of self-good – of what it would advantage the individual (or collectivity) to do or to have done either on her behalf or inadvertently by others. They are idealized extrapolations of subjective (or, if shared, intersubjective) preferences and, as such, are different from immediate and/or particular desires. We may, after all, desire that which we acknowledge not to be in our perception of our own best interest. Conceptions of self-interest provide a cognitive filter through which the actor orients herself towards her environment, providing one (of several) means by which an actor evaluates the relative merits of contending potential courses of action. But such conceptions, though they arise out of an ongoing interaction with that context, are neither given or determined by it, nor given or determined by the actor’s knowledge of it. They have an autonomy from it. They reflect an actor’s subjective preferences as to the things she values and the relative values she assigns to the desires she can imagine. Thus, however conventional the actor’s conception of her own self-interest may be, it is ultimately hers alone. It is, crucially, about what she values and the relative value, in the abstract, that she assigns to the different conditions and possibilities that she can envisage at any given point in time. How might such a conception of interests inform differently the understanding of political processes offered by those keen to accord to ideas a causal role? Consider the rise of monetarism in the advanced liberal democracies out of the ‘crises’ of the late 1970s. This topic has, perhaps unremarkably, attracted considerable attention from ideational scholarship. For it sees a profound and rapid change in the ideas informing economic policy in these democracies which more conventional approaches have generally failed to explain – save other than by appeal to exogenous shocks (which, themselves, remain unexplained). The key question in this literature is why business in particular came to back monetarism, acting both as an ideational entrepreneur and as a financial backer for it. And the standard answer, insofar as one can be found, is that it did so because monetarism served the interests of business. Yet this proposition is itself never really defended, it presumably being assumed that it is largely self-evident. For what it is worth, we think it is to concede far too much to monetarism to assume that it has led, for instance, to higher rates of profit than would otherwise have been the case. Yet the point is that, in order to explain its origins and ascendancy, we simply do not need to know whether monetarism was an expression of the ‘real’ interests of capital or not. A number of points might be made here. First, the notion that monetarism was promoted by business because it served the interests of business to do so is simply wrong. It is wrong not because monetarism was not in (what are

Varieties of ideational explanation 51 taken to be the) interests of business (that is almost impossible to adjudicate and, as we hope to show, an irrelevance here). It is wrong since monetarism was promoted by business not because it did serve business interests to do so, but because it was perceived to serve business interests to do so. That may seem like a very trivial and largely semantic distinction, but it is in fact crucial. And it is crucial because it changes the nature of the question we must now answer to explain the rise of monetarism. For us, to explain monetarism is not to explain how and why monetarism was a reflection of the material interest of business (and/or its other backers), but to explain how and why business leaders (and others) came to perceive of their interests in such terms. That is, in fact, not a very difficult question to answer. But it is a question that remains largely unanswered within the existing literature. That business leaders backed monetarism, believing it to be in their interests to do so, was, we contend, in large part because they had for a long time been accustomed to conceiving of their interests in a manner that gave a high value to the things monetarism prioritised (such as price stability) and a low value to those previous constraints on policy it tended to discount (consensus, employment, universal welfare free at the point of access, and so forth). Monetarism, then, resonated not directly with a given set of extant material interests, but with a particular conception of such interests – a conception which, to be sure, it partly came to reconfigure. This, of course, is a far from complete or adequate answer to the question of how and why business leaders came to conceive of monetarism as a set of economic policies the promotion of which would benefit them. But it does hint at the way in which a more consistently constructivist approach, such as that we have sought to ground in critical realism, might provide answers to some of the thorniest puzzles in political analysis – notably those concerning the determinants of rapid institutional and ideational change which existing approaches tend to exogenise. It suggests that, rather than seeing interests as the materially given causes of the ideas whose influence we all now seem keen to concede, we might benefit from seeing the process of narration, constitution and reconstitutions of actors’ interests as itself causally constitutive of such dynamics. If this is correct, then the determinants of seismic institutional and political change are not to be found in the appeal to materialist conceptions of self-interest. Rather they are to be found in the identification of the processes in and through which actors come to a different understanding – a different construction – of their interests. Indeed, part of the appeal of the more consistently constructivist approach that we have sought to develop and defend is that it does not need to deal with the question of adjudicating the real or genuine interests of the actors whose behaviour it studies. For, within such a framework, it matters very little what we – as analysts – think of the ‘real’ interests of actors; what matters is what those actors make of their own interests and how, either individually or collectively, they act on the basis of such understandings. This has important implications for the kind of political analysis we might

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conduct. In particular, it is suggestive of a rather different research agenda for the development of the literature on ideas as potentially causal variables in political science and international relations. Such a research agenda would focus far more explicitly than we have to date on the social and political processes in and through which interests are identified, constructed and rendered, in Mark Blyth’s terms, ‘actionable’. The focus of such scholarship would be upon the kind of ethnographic work necessary to map and chart the development and redevelopment of interest perceptions rather than on the abstract and deductive derivation from stylised assumptions of the ‘real’ interests of institutionally embedded actors. In this respect, the ideational turn perhaps suggests the need for a parallel turn – more accurately a return – to the rather forgotten tradition of political anthropology.

Notes 1 The conventional view of Humean metaphysics (certainly within political science and international relations) is that Hume’s account of causation is nomothetic – each effect must always have the same cause. Under this ‘successionist’ or ‘billiard-ball’ model, the demonstration of causal laws consists of the recording of empirical regularities. Yet recent philosophical scholarship has served to challenge such a reading. For a review of the literature pointing to a ‘New Hume’, see, inter alia, Read and Richman (2000). 2 As developed in the final section of this chapter. 3 On the distinction between path-dependent and path-shaping logics, see Hay (2007). 4 In such a context, one can only surmise that the term ‘scientific realism’ to which Wendt refers is likely to give off further signals of the right kind than the more familiar ‘critical realism’. 5 Though Archer’s approach is undoubtedly critical realist in its inspiration and consistent in its critical realism, it is by no means the only consistently critical realist perspective – nor, as will become clear presently, is it how we would choose to develop a critical realist perspective on the material–ideational relationship. We focus on it here since it provides the most systematic and clearly stated critical realist treatment of ideas and culture. 6 Rather unfortunately, to our way of thinking, Archer insists on referring to the relationship between the ideational and the material as that between culture and structure. This formulation we resist in our own work, since we prefer to see social structure as comprising both material and ideational elements. Consequently, wherever possible in what follows (i.e. except where making reference to direct citations), we will substitute the ‘ideational–material’ pairing for Archer’s ‘culture– structure’ pairing. 7 The argument could, however, be made just as clearly with respect to crises – socially constituted and yet profoundly significant causally (see, for instance, Widmaier et al. 2007; cf. Hay 1996).

References Adler, E. (1997) ‘Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 3(3): 319–63. Archer, M. S. (1995) Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Varieties of ideational explanation 53 —— ([1988] 1996) Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Rev. ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berger, P. L., and T. Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. London: Allen Lane. Berman, S. (2001) ‘Review Article: Ideas, Norms, and Culture in Political Analysis’, Comparative Politics, 33(2): 231–50. Bernstein, S. (2000) ‘Ideas, Social Structure and the Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism’, European Journal of International Relations, 6(4): 464–512. Bhaskar, R. (1989) Reclaiming Reality. London: Verso. —— ([1979] 1998) The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. 3rd edn, London: Routledge. Blyth, M. (1997) ‘“Any More Bright Ideas?” The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy’, Comparative Politics, 29(2): 229–50. —— (2002) Great Transformations: The Rise and Decline of Embedded Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, J. L. (2000) ‘Convincing the Sceptics: Six Questions for Ideational Analysis’, paper presented at the conference on ‘Ideational Institutionalism: Perspectives on European Politics’, University of Birmingham. Collier, A. (1994) Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy. London: Verso. Doty, R. L. (2000) ‘Desire All the Way Down’, Review of International Studies, 26(1): 137–9. Finnemore, M. (1996) National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fligstein, N., and I. Mara-Drita (1996) ‘How to Make a Market: Reflections on the Attempt to Create a Single Market in the European Union’, American Journal of Sociology, 102(1): 1–33. Gofas, A. (2001) Ideas and Interests in the Construction of EMU: Beyond the Rationalist Bias of the New Ideational Orthodoxy. Warwick: ESRC Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, Working Paper Series, no. 76. —— (2003) ‘Ideational Analysis and the Discursive Construction of Uncertainty: Some Conceptual Considerations’, paper presented at the BISA 28th Annual Conference, University of Birmingham. Goldstein, J. (1993) Ideas, Interests and American Trade Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Goldstein, J., and R. O. Keohane (1993) ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework’, in J. Goldstein and R. O. Keohane (eds) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hacking, I. (1999) The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hay, C. (1996) ‘Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the “Winter of Discontent”’, Sociology, 30(2): 253–77. —— (2002) Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. —— (2004a) ‘Theory, Stylised Heuristic or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? The Status of Rational Choice Theory in Public Administration’, Public Administration, 82(1): 39–62. —— (2004b) ‘Ideas, Interests and Institutions in the Comparative Political Economy of Great Transformations’, Review of International Political Economy, 11(1): 204–26.

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—— (2004c) ‘Taking Ideas Seriously in Explanatory Political Analysis’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6(2). —— (2005) ‘Making Hay . . . or Clutching at Ontological Straws? Notes on Realism, ‘As-if-Realism’ and Actualism’, Politics, 25(1): 39–45. —— (2007) ‘Constructivist Institutionalism’, in R. A. W. Rhodes, S. Binder and B. Rockman (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hay, C., and B. Rosamond (2002) ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2): 147–67. Hollis, M., and S. Smith (1990) Explaining and Understanding International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jacobsen, J. K. (2003) ‘Duelling Constructivisms: A Post-Mortem on the Ideas Debate in Mainstream IR/IPE’, Review of International Studies, 29(1): 39–60. Jarvis, D. S. L. (1998) ‘Postmodernism: A Critical Typology’, Politics & Society, 26(1): 95–142. Joseph, J. (2007) ‘Philosophy in International Relations: A Scientific Realist Approach’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 35(2): 345–59. Kegley, C. W., Jr. (2002) ‘Bridge Building in the Study of International Relations: How “Kuhn” We Do Better?’, in D. J. Puchala (ed.) Visions of International Relations: Assessing an Academic Field. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Keohane, R. (2000) ‘Ideas Part-Way Down’, Review of International Studies, 26(1): 125–30. Krasner, S. D. (2000) ‘Wars, Hotel Fires, and Plane Crashes’, Review of International Studies, 26(1): 131–6. Kratochwil, F. (2000) ‘Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt’s “Social Theory of International Politics” and the Constructivist Challenge’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29(1): 73–101. Kukla, A. (2000) Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. London: Routledge. Kurki, M. (2006) ‘Causes of a Divided Discipline: Rethinking the Concept of Cause in IR’, Review of International Studies, 32(2): 189–216. McAnulla, S. (2002) ‘Structure and Agency’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science. 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Onuf, N. (2002) ‘Worlds of our Making: The Strange Career of Constructivism in International Relations’, in D. Puchala (ed.) Visions of International Relations: Assessing an Academic Field. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Osterud, O. (1996) ‘Antinomies of Postmodernism in International Studies’, Journal of Peace Research, 33(4): 385–90. Parsons, C. (2003) A Certain Idea of Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. —— (2007) How to Map Arguments in Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read, R., and K. Richman (eds) (2000) The New Hume Debate. London: Routledge. Ruggie, J. G. (1998) Constructing the World Polity: Essays in International Institutionalisation. London: Routledge. Schmidt, V. (2008) ‘Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 303–26. Smith, S. (2000) ‘Wendt’s World’, Review of International Studies, 26(1): 151–63.

Varieties of ideational explanation 55 Suganami, H. (2002) ‘On Wendt’s Philosophy: A Critique’, Review of International Studies, 28(1): 23–37. Wendt, A. (1998) ‘On Constitution and Causation in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 24(5): 101–17. —— (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widmaier, W., M. Blyth and L. Seabrooke (2007) ‘Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises’, International Studies Quarterly, 51(4): 747–59. Wight, C. (2002) ‘The Philosophy of Social Science and International Relations’, in W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse and B. Simmons (eds) Handbook of International Relations. London: Sage. —— (2007) Agents, Structures and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yee, A. S. (1996) ‘The Causal Effects of Ideas on Policies’, International Organisation, 50(1): 69–108. —— (1997) ‘Thick Rationality and the Missing “Brute Fact”: The Limits of Rationalist Incorporations of Norms and Ideas’, Journal of Politics, 59(4): 1001–39.

3

Ideational analysis, political change and immanent causality Lars Tønder

Introduction1 After a decade of attempts to establish ideational analysis as a legitimate idiom, it appears that much of its success hinges on the question of causality. Do ideas have the power to cause changes in policy or do they rely on a much stronger causal power, one that lies within the world of material interests? Critics of ideational analysis continue to insist that the latter is the case. They criticize ideational analysis for being too fussy in its explanation of how ideas are able to cause change as well as for being unable to eliminate interestbased approaches to the study of political change. Albert Yee is one of the scholars who makes both points. He maintains that, as the first generation of ideational analysis attempts to explain the effects of ideations, the argument seems to be that ideas “shape,” “constrain,” “orient” and “guide” the policy preferences of decision-makers. However, while these depictions are useful, “they do not reveal how ideas and beliefs possess and exercise the capacity to perform all these tasks. How do ideas and beliefs prescribe, shape, constrain, guide, etc. courses of action?” (Yee 1996: 94; see also Blyth 1997; Hansen and King 2001; Lieberman 2002; Parsons 2002). This chapter addresses these questions from a perspective that is sympathetic to the overall project of ideational analysis. My contention is that, while scholars such as Yee are right to identify weaknesses in the first generation of ideational analysis, these weaknesses do not warrant a general argument against the causality of ideas. Instead, I propose that we see the initial criticism of ideational analysis as an invitation to examine the roots of causality in the history of political science. This approach is valuable because it unearths concepts of causality that challenge the current hegemony of efficient causality. One of these alternatives is the concept of immanent causality, which draws its inspiration from thinkers such as Baruch de Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze. Moreover, it holds that the ideational and the material are equal in an ontological sense, but that ideas have unique causal powers because of their ability to turn the circumstances from which they arise into more or less refined expressions. These expressions can then cause changes either in the material part of the world or in the wider chain of ideas

Ideational analysis, change and causality 57 to which the expressions belong. In any case, a powerful idea is one that enables policy-makers both to comprehend and to influence the conditions that define the political change. As we shall see, there are three reasons why the concept of immanent causality underpinning this insight is valuable to future generations of ideational analysis. First, it enables ideational analysis to appreciate the full spectrum of ideas, as it ranges from programmatic beliefs and road maps to political ideologies and religious worldviews. Second, it helps ideational analysis to make better sense of the often discussed relationship between the material and the ideational. Third, it provides ideational analysis with a framework of explanation that focuses on the way in which political change evolves along nonlinear patterns – patterns that invoke feedback loops of various sorts.2 I devote the main part of this chapter to a substantiation of this argument. But before I do so it is necessary to clarify two issues. The first one concerns the meaning of causality. As a general rule, we might say that causality is a way of analyzing how political change evolves along pathways that are neither arbitrary nor occasional (Bunge 1979: 3–30). However, while this means that most concepts of causality belong to the more encompassing doctrine of determinism, it does not mean that there is no room for agency when it comes to the way in which we determine the connection between cause and effect. Indeed, from the perspective of causality the agent is the cause, as when we say that someone or something is the cause of this or that. The advantage of studying political change in terms of causality is thus that it allows us to focus our attention on the kind of agentive capacities that motivate a singular event – capacities that are irreducible to individuals or structures but may include middle-range phenomena such as ideas. The disadvantage is that there is no consensus in ideational analysis about how to define the way in which ideas can be the cause of an event. It is one of this chapter’s main goals to arrive at a better understanding of the way in which ideas operate as causes of political change. The second issue I want to clarify concerns the strategy of the chapter. As already indicated, this chapter is not based on a case study of sorts, one that utilizes the tools of ideational analysis in the pursuit of an explanation of a particular policy process. Instead, it seeks to disclose the causal bond between ideas and political change from a conceptually informed perspective. The intention behind this strategy is to show how tight a connection there is between the kind of concept of causality we deploy in the explanation of policy and the more or less tacit assumptions we hold with regard to the ontological and epistemological status of ideas. Moreover, while the chapter focuses on the relationship between causality and political change, this does not mean that ideas have no role in maintaining the continuity of policy. In fact, change and continuity are two sides of the same coin, with the coin being that of causality. Thus, if the chapter pays more attention to change than to continuity, it is because the aim is to make the strongest possible case for the causality of ideas. This, I believe, entails a focus on how ideas are able to

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inspire or incite political change, disrupting the existing patterns of policymaking. These clarifications define the remaining part of the chapter. I start by identifying the way in which the first generation of ideational analysis has answered the question of causality, an answer that retains important shortcomings when it comes to the criticism advanced by Yee and others. I then proceed to outline key aspects of immanent causality, as inspired by Spinoza and Deleuze. I conclude with reflections on the way in which the concept of immanent causality might influence research by future generations of ideational analysis.

Concepts of causality in ideational analysis Without oversimplifying, we might say that the first generation of ideational analysis is organized around three paradigms: rational institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and social constructivism (Campbell 1998, 2002). The three paradigms differ on how to define and conceptualize the effect that ideas have on political change. But they agree that the basic choice is between (1) defining the framework of ideational analysis in such a way that it adheres to the concept of efficient causality or (2) refuting the concept of causality as inadequate for understanding political change. Table 3.1 outlines the terms of this choice. It would be wrong to assume that the three paradigms of ideational analysis make no contributions to the study of how ideas are able to cause political change. Even so, in light of the criticism advanced by Yee and other scholars, it might be that they overlook important aspects of how we should approach the question of causality. The following two subsections substantiate this proposition by arguing that, while the benefit of restricting ideational analysis to a matter of efficient causality is too low, the cost of rejecting the category of causality is too high. In other words, the point is to undermine the terms of the choice set by the first generation of ideational analysis, paving the way for a new concept of causality based on the philosophy of immanence.3 I make this point through a close reading of two exemplary approaches to ideational analysis, the first of which is Sheri Berman’s, one that follows the main tenets of the paradigm of historical institutionalism.4 Historical institutionalism and efficient causality In her book The Social Democratic Moment (1998), Berman relies on a historical institutional approach to ideational analysis, analyzing the policies that the German and Swedish Social Democrat parties pursued during the interwar years. The promise of Berman’s analysis is that it is possible to overcome two of the most important objections to ideational analysis: that ideas are too fuzzy to study and that they are too epiphenomenal to be the center of

Ideational analysis, change and causality 59 Table 3.1 Ideational analysis, causality and political change Rational institutionalism

Historical institutionalism

Definition of ideas Instrumental beliefs Cognitive entities held by individuals that become institutionalized over time

Social constructivism Discursive practices within the social realm

Status of ideas within the explanatory framework

A residual variable

A privileged variable on the condition that it can be defined coherently and independently

A privileged variable

Standpoint on the question of causality

Efficient causation can be inferred if an observable change in the dependent variable (policy) fails to be explained by other models of explanation

Efficient causation can be inferred if it can be shown that a specific idea held at time T, which cannot be reduced to another variable, had an effect at time T+1

The category of causality is inadequate to the understanding of political change

The effect of ideas Ideas effect on political change political change by:

Ideas effect political change by:

Ideas effect political change by:

• serving as

• defining interests

• constructing social

roadmaps • contributing to outcomes in the absence of unique equilibrium • specifying policy in the absence of innovation

endogenously • filtering the choices that decision-makers confront • shaping actors’ perception of reality

meaning

• determining the distribution of social capital • providing symbolic technologies

our attention (Berman 1998: 16–25). In the following, my interest is to assess the assumptions that allow Berman to deliver on this promise. The first assumption that Berman invokes entails an exclusive focus on what she calls programmatic beliefs. Programmatic beliefs are modes of ideation that operate in the space between general worldviews and specific policy positions. Berman encourages ideational analysis to focus on these beliefs because “they provide a relatively clear and distinctive connection between theory and praxis” (1998: 21). In addition, she argues that programmatic beliefs are advantageous because they allow ideational analysis to define ideas as independent variables. This makes it possible to explain the way in which ideas are able to cause changes in policy. Indeed, in Berman’s framework, we infer a causal relationship by showing how the independent

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variable stands out in comparison with other variables. This involves two points: first, establishing a connection between the proposed independent and dependent variables, and, second, explaining why this connection exists . . . If these standards are met – if it can be shown that a specific idea held at time T cannot be reduced to any other variable in the contemporary system and had an effect at time T+1, then the criteria for suggesting causality would seem to be met. (Ibid.: 18, original emphasis) The second assumption that Berman relies on involves an attempt to tie the study of programmatic beliefs to the concept of efficient causality. The latter is a concept that reaches back to the philosophies of David Hume and John Stuart Mill, who agree that the conditions of politics are so complex that it is impossible to make perfect generalizations about the nature of policymaking. Even so, they argue that it is possible to predict the trajectory of political change through approximate generalizations.5 These generalizations rely on a separation of cause and effect that invokes an ontologically motivated hierarchy between the independent and the dependent variables. Moreover, approximate generalizations rely on the primacy of a temporal order, in which the cause precedes the effect, preventing the dependent variable from working back on the independent variable. Thus, Hume formulates the kernel of efficient causality by arguing that the cause is “an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are placed in a like relation of priority and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the latter” (Hume 1978: Book 1, part 3, section 14). Berman stipulates a similar condition when she argues that ideas must be separate from the contemporary context in which they arise. Without such separation, she maintains, it is not possible to define the causality of ideas (Berman 1998: 18). The question is now whether the marriage of programmatic beliefs and efficient causality is a successful one. A compelling reason why it is less than successful comes from the camp of hermeneutics and post-analytic philosophy (see Taylor 1985b; Winch 1990). While the camp of hermeneutics and post-analytic philosophy does not dispense with causality tout court, it insists that we can say little about the influence of ideas on policy based on the concept of efficient causality. The reason for this follows from an analysis of the relationship between ideas, language and political change. Thus, we learn from Peter Winch that political change is rule governed in the same way that language is rule governed. In other words, to engage in political change is to engage in a language game in which the rules of the game define the possibility of change (Winch 1990: 52). This puts ideas in a privileged position because they operate as expressive entities that project new possibilities based on existing rules. An example of

Ideational analysis, change and causality 61 this expressiveness would be the way in which the idea of parliamentarism was a means for German and Swedish Social Democrat parties to achieve universal suffrage during the interwar years (see Berman 1998: 54–8).6 But the concept of causality that follows from this example is different from the one of efficient causality. This is because the idea of parliamentarism participates on both sides of the change. It is part of the cause because it outlines a course for future action; it is part of the effect because it gives meaning to the results of this course of action. In other words, the conclusion is that the idea of parliamentarism breaks with the requirement of a neat separation of cause and effect based on a linear conception of time. The conclusion is also that the difficulties ideational analysis has in explaining political change might stem from its commitment to the concept of efficient causality – and not, as Berman contends, from its failure to focus exclusively on programmatic beliefs. Berman is not unaware of this objection. But she counters that we can overcome the deficiencies of efficient causality by situating it within the interpretative framework of Max Weber. This is a framework in which a “causal interpretation of a concrete course of action is arrived at when the overt action and the motives have both been correctly apprehended and at the same time their relation has become meaningfully comprehensible” (Weber, quoted in Berman 1998: 18). However, it is not clear why Weber would be in agreement with the requirements that Berman sets up as part of a causal explanation. To begin with, Weber does not demand that we follow a particular temporal order. Instead, he asks us to establish the validity of a claim to causality by identifying the totality of observations that makes it possible to obtain a rational understanding of a particular change.7 This means that causality is a matter of analyzing policy retroactively, allowing for a nonlinear notion of time in which the interpretation of past events depends on the needs and interests that define our present situation. What is more, Weber does not demand that we reduce ideational analysis to a study of programmatic beliefs. Indeed, while he might say that programmatic beliefs are important in the analysis of political change, he does not suggest that these beliefs exhaust all the factors that lead to changes in policy, insisting that a satisfying explanation is one that considers the full range of ideas. Weber exemplifies the importance of this more comprehensive approach in his own study of the role that Protestantism played in the evolution of capitalism during the early stages of modernity (Weber 1976; Hollis 1994: 147–51). These arguments help us to disclose the limited value of an ideational analysis that ties a focus on programmatic beliefs to the concept of efficient causality in order to follow the tenets defining the paradigm of historical institutionalism. The point I wish to make is twofold: first, ideas in general do not operate according to a neat separation of cause and effect; second, a focus on programmatic beliefs may be too narrow when it comes to the explanation of political change. But, if this is the case, it might be that the paradigm of social constructivism is a better choice for practitioners of ideational

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analysis who are interesting in analyzing political change. The following subsection throws this belief into question. Social constructivism and theories of constitution The paradigm of social constructivism approaches the study of political change from the perspective of discourse. This perspective assigns a privileged role to ideas, arguing that they make political changes possible through the resignification of binary codes such as inside/outside, us/them, and good/ evil. Alexander Wendt makes this point when he argues that to say that a structure is “social” is to say . . . that actors take each other “into account” in choosing their actions. This process is based on actors’ ideas about the nature and roles of Self and Other, and as such social structures are “distributions of ideas” or “stocks of knowledge.” (Wendt 1999: 249) In other words, it is because of the way in which ideas define policy-makers’ discursive perception of the world that social constructivism privileges them in the analysis of political change. Before I move to a discussion of this proposition we should note that, while critics have been eager to criticize social constructivism for turning empirical research into a less than legitimate endeavor, this is in fact far from the case. Indeed, over the past decade or so, political scientists committed to the paradigm of social constructivism have been instrumental in making a number of contributions to the fields of comparative politics and international relations. These contributions include the cultural idea of civil society in American political history (Alexander and Smith 1993), the narration of crisis in the British imagination during the winter of 1978–9 (Hay 1996), and the complexities of identity arising from ideas about humanity in Black Consciousness ideology during the 1960s and 1970s (Howarth 1997). But the costs of these contributions may have been too high when it comes to the question of causality. We can see how this is the case once we uncover the way in which social constructivism conceptualizes the logic that makes political change possible at the level of discourse. Thus we learn from Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes that the power of ideas eludes us if we treat them as programmatic beliefs that express themselves within a cognitive framework of causal beliefs and mental events. Instead, we must address modes of ideation as distinct ontological phenomena that belong to the social structure of the world. Two demands follow from this conceptualization. First, we need to approach ideas as intersubjective systems of representationproducing practices. Second, we must locate ideas in symbolic technologies such as the drafting of memos, the deployment of accounting practices, and the diffusion of theoretical frameworks within networks of intellectuals and bureaucratic policy-makers (Laffey and Weldes 1997: 209, 216). Both of

Ideational analysis, change and causality 63 these demands lend themselves to a new logic of change, one that explains the power of ideas “generatively and relationally, as something that exists in the world rather than only logically or in theory” (ibid.: 204). My suspicion is that this generative logic puts an ideational analysis inspired by the paradigm of social constructivism on the verge of making the question of causality irrelevant. If this is indeed the case, the result might be an inability to explain the way in which ideas cause changes in policy over longer periods of time. The following discussion probes this issue. The first reason why I suspect that Laffey and Weldes are unable to explain the effect of ideas on policy follows from their way of explicating what they mean by a generative logic. They make this explication in terms of what they call “causal powers.” Causal powers seek to counter a mechanistic mode of explanation that insists on understanding political change in nonintentional terms, in terms that are not subject to human agency.8 Moreover, Laffey and Weldes define causal powers as powers that operate in the gap between social structures and singular events. This turns causal powers into liabilities that are conferred on to social agents “by the social structures and relations that constitute them” (Laffey and Weldes 1997: 204; see also Sayer 2000: 15–17). A contemporary example of a causal power would thus be the Bush administration’s invocation of a so-called axis of evil. This invocation relies on a discursive dichotomy between friend and enemy – the terms used are “coalition of the willing” and “terrorists” or “rogue states” – and it provides policy-makers with a framework through which they are able to perceive images of self, other and world. Indeed, it is because of this framework that the idea of an axis of evil gains its causal power. Even so, it is not clear why Laffey and Weldes’s notion of ideas as causal powers would advance knowledge of the way in which policy changes over time. For example, how would they explain the way in which the idea of an axis of evil came into being in the first place? The question is not a rhetorical one, but arises because of an intrinsic circularity defining the paradigm of social constructivism. Thus, while Laffey and Weldes argue that ideas work on social structures through their liability to cause change, they also contend that this liability is the product of the structures that ideas seek to change. So what exactly is the cause of change in this process? What is the relationship between ideas, the social construction of the world, and actual changes in policy? Laffey and Weldes might point out that these questions presuppose the separation of cause and effect that the previous subsection of this chapter sought to refute. There is some truth to this counter-argument. But at stake in the above-mentioned questions is not only the separation of cause and effect, but how we approach the relationship between the ideational and the material.9 This issue arises because of the need to show how the ideational is able to cause change not only between a set of ideas but between one idea and the material circumstances in which it is situated (see also Tannenwald 2005). The latter is critical if we want to analyze the evolution of ideas from their

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inception below the threshold of consciousness to their inclusion within the system of policy-makers. But the irony is that Laffey and Weldes do not address the relationship between the ideational and the material. That is, their strategy is to turn the latter’s role in the conditions of political change into a matter of discourse. They embark on this strategy with their metaphor of “ideas as capital” – a metaphor that seeks to reiterate the social and contingent character of ideas. It does this by defining itself in opposition to the metaphor of “ideas as commodities.” Moreover, in line with the overall paradigm of social constructivism, Laffey and Weldes try to shield their definition of ideas as capital from influences that are not discursively determined.10 They do so by arguing that, in contrast to the “ideas as commodities” metaphor, which implies that “ideas” are objects, the “ideas as capital” metaphor invites us to think “ideas” rather differently. For example, it implies that “ideas” are not objects at all but are in fact objectified human labor. (Laffey and Weldes 1997: 213) This objectification is one that takes places through language (ibid.: 214). Thus it is with this kind of argument that Laffey and Weldes risk overlooking the connection between modes of ideation and their material counterparts. Now one might argue that there is more to an ideational analysis based on social constructivism than what we learn from Laffey and Weldes. But, while this is true, it is still possible to find the tendency (1) to deem the question of causality irrelevant and (2) to overlook the relationship between the ideational and the material in other versions of the paradigm of social constructivism. For example, Wendt argues that, while most political scientists are committed to what he calls “theories of causation,” the paradigm of social constructivism is committed to so-called theories of constitution (Wendt 1998). The difference between these two theories is not one of explanation versus understanding.11 Rather, the difference between them follows from the mode of explanation that the theories of causation and constitution use when analyzing the conditions of political change. Thus, whereas causal theories pose the question of explanation in terms of “why?,” constitutive theories pose the same question in terms of “how-possible?” or “what?” (ibid.: 104–6). Wendt argues that the significance of this difference is twofold with regard to constitutive theories such as social constructivism. First, it enables them to draw inferences conceptually – that is, to make explanations with reference to the properties that are embedded in the phenomena on which it focuses (and not with reference to the effects that one phenomenon has on another phenomenon).12 Second, it enables them to privilege a static explanation over a dynamic explanation. Wendt makes this point when he argues that constitutive theories take “snapshots” in an effort to explain how systems are constituted:

Ideational analysis, change and causality 65 [Constitutive] theories have a different objective, which is to account for the properties of things by reference to the structures in virtue of which they exist. Cummings calls such theories “property” theories. Unlike transition theories, which explain events through time, property theories are static. Their goal is to show how the properties of a system are constituted. The systems whose properties they explain may be dynamic, and indeed all systems, natural and social, are always in process, continually being reproduced through time even if they do not change. But constitutive theories abstract away from these processes and take “snapshots” instead, in an effort to explain how systems are constituted. (Wendt 1998: 105) In other words, the purpose of Wendt’s version of social constructivism is not to explain how ideas influence policy over time. This conclusion confirms the difficulties that we encountered earlier in our discussion of Laffey and Weldes. Moreover, it confirms the suspicion that an ideational analysis inspired by the paradigm of social constructivism is less than successful in explaining political change. We are now in a position to see how the question of causality brings ideational analysis to an impasse. The impasse arises because the first generation of ideational analysis asks us to choose between (1) defining the framework of ideational analysis in such a way that it adheres to the concept of efficient causality or (2) refuting the concept of causality as inadequate for understanding political change. Neither of these options is satisfying. In fact, they seem to substantiate the view that there are other, more persuasive ways of explaining policy-making, ways that would relegate the study of ideas to the periphery of political science. But this conclusion is the foregone result of a shared assumption that we find across the first generation of ideational analysis. The assumption holds that the concept of efficient causality is the only concept of causality available to political scientists. What would happen if we challenged this assumption? That is, what would happen if we overturned the current hegemony of efficient causality? The previous discussion has shown us that this is the single most important question in ideational analysis. Thus, the remaining part of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of how we might move beyond efficient causality, a move upon which the future success of ideational analysis hinges.13 I begin by outlining the requirements that would make such a success more likely.

Immanent causality: an alternative solution The first thing we should note about the need to move beyond the concept of efficient causality is that it relies on our ability to formulate a conceptual framework that differs from the first generation of ideational analysis. The previous subsections have already outlined the contours of this framework. Indeed, if we listen carefully to the critique of historical institutionalism and

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social constructivism, we realize that this critique has unearthed at least four requirements that future generations of ideational analysis need to incorporate into their explanation of how ideas are able to cause political change. It is through this incorporation that ideational analysis will find a way out of its impasse. In brief, the four requirements are: 1 2 3 4

an account of how the full spectrum of ideas is able to cause changes in policy; a mode of explanation that recognizes the way in which ideas break with a neat separation of cause and effect; a concept of time open to feedback loops and nonlinear patters of political change; a perspective on the ideational and the material that shows how these two aspects of the world interact without collapsing into each other.

My wager is that the philosophy of immanence defining the work of Spinoza and Deleuze has the kind of conceptual resources that make it possible to meet these four requirements.14 I admit that the wager may seem surprising given the fact that Spinoza and Deleuze do not participate in the current discussion of ideational analysis. Even so, I believe that it makes sense once we realize how Spinoza and Deleuze challenge the presuppositions of efficient causality while affirming the relevance of some concept of causality as the proper focus for the analysis of political change. It is in the tension between this challenge and this affirmation that the concept of immanent causality emerges, a concept that allows us to appreciate the way in which the “effect remains in its cause no less than the cause remains in itself” (Deleuze 1992: 172). The tension is also what enables us to see how ideas have the power to cause changes in policy because of their agentive capacities to express in more or less adequate ways the circumstances from which they arise. The purpose of the next two subsections is to clarify how future generations of ideational analysis are able to benefit from both of these insights. The first thing we must do is to define the groundwork upon which the concept of immanent causality relies. Spinoza, Deleuze and the groundwork of immanent causality The concept of immanent causality follows from the proposition that the ideational and the material are equal in an ontological sense, but that ideas have an expressive quality, one that enables them to cause changes either in the material world or in the broader chain of ideas to which they belong (Spinoza 1992: Book 2, Proposition 7).15 To uncover the reasons for this proposition is to uncover a path that allows us to move beyond the current impasse in ideational analysis.16 It is not difficult to see why it is so tempting to think that the ideational and the material are ontologically different. Indeed, in light of paradigms

Ideational analysis, change and causality 67 such as historical institutionalism and social constructivism, it seems that the ideational and the material operate according to their own laws (the former according to the laws of the mind; the latter according to the laws of physics). Even so, the closer we look, the more evident it becomes that the ideational and the material are related to each other in ways that make it possible to identify their different modalities without denying that they are equally important from an ontological perspective (Spinoza 1992: Book 2, Definition 3, Propositions 11, 13).17 Spinoza and Deleuze substantiate this claim by arguing that, although modes of the ideational have their own autonomy, the ideational itself is an idea of “something.” That “something” is the material because the material empowers the ideational. Indeed, the material provides policy-makers with “food for thought,” making it possible for these agents to have ideas that, in turn, refine themselves as they become more and more sophisticated. It is because of this refinement that the ideational and the material appear as different modalities that share the same world. The refinement is also why it is wrong to reduce a particular explanation of politics to the level of either the ideational or the material. To the contrary, we should see the material and the ideational as two aspects of the same explanation, aspects that operate in a parallel fashion, leading the way to what the literature on Spinoza and Deleuze refers to as the doctrine of parallelism (see Connolly 2006: 2; Deleuze 1988: 86–91; Hampshire 1971: 212–13; Hampshire 1996: x–xi; Wolfson 1948: 22–3). The doctrine of parallelism is important because it sheds new light on the often discussed relationship between the material and the ideational. Thus, it provides future generations of ideational analysis with a set of concrete tools that makes it possible to move beyond the impasse identified earlier in the chapter. An example of this possibility is the discussion of the Bush administration’s invocation of an axis of evil in international relations. In this case, the doctrine of parallelism suggests that the idea of an axis of evil came into being because of changes in the material ranging from geopolitical interests in the Middle East to affective responses to events such as 9/11. These changes signify the preconditions of the idea. But the doctrine of parallelism does not conclude from this signification that ideas have no ability to cause changes in policy. Instead, once an idea such as the axis of evil has begun resonating with the public, it, too, has the ability to change the circumstances in which it is situated, reinforcing the discursive perception of geopolitical interests as well as augmenting affective states of fear and insecurity. Ideas have this ability because of their expressive quality (Deleuze 1992: 16; Macherey 1996: 142–9).18 On the one hand, ideas are expressive because of their involvement with both the material and the ideational world. This involvement has the potential of issuing a policy change through the meaning it gives to the flows of this world. We might even say that the involvement of an idea with the world locks the latter into a particular “worldview,” one that makes a particular policy option look more desirable or more feasible than all the others. On the other hand, ideas are also expressive because of their ability to

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explicate the world with which it is involved. This explication is not a neutral endeavor. Instead, it entails a reorganization that enables the idea to reconfigure the existing world. As such, we might say that the expressive quality of an idea projects the contours of a world that is real but not actual, allowing us to see yet another way in which ideas are able to cause changes in policy. An idea is a repository of future action. The next subsection of the chapter shows how this double-sided expressiveness of ideas applies to the policies of the Bush administration. But first we need to say more about the kind of ideas that incite or inspire political change. Do all ideas have the same power to cause changes in policy?19 The brief answer to this question is no. But the reason for this answer is not the one that we learn from the first generation of ideational analysis. That is, the reason is not that one mode of ideation – say, programmatic beliefs or political ideologies – is easier to identify or more important than all the other modes. Rather, Spinoza and Deleuze suggest that we locate the causal power of ideas within the very structure of the ideational.20 We have just seen how ideas have the power to cause changes in policy because of their expressive quality. From Spinoza and Deleuze we learn that the power of this quality depends on the adequacy of the idea, an adequacy that follows from the idea’s ability to express its own cause.21 To some, this may sound as if ideas have a predetermined goal, a telos. But the cause of an idea is in part the circumstances from which it arises and in part the broader chain of ideas to which it belongs. This means that the introduction of adequacy into our discussion is simply another way of saying that the expressive power of an idea depends on how it engages the world. More specifically, it is a way of saying that an idea is adequate – and, hence, powerful – as long as it shows how its expression of the world is able to persist (Spinoza 1992: Book 7, Proposition 7; see also Negri 1991: 146–51). Thus, an adequate idea of fear is one that expresses knowledge of how this fear is able to persist through circuits of affective being. Likewise, an adequate idea of a geopolitical interest is one that expresses knowledge of how this interest is able to define the discursive relationship between two or more states. In both cases, it is the adequacy of the idea that determines its power to cause changes in policy – changes that disclose the agentive capacities of the ideational. The agency of ideas lies in their contribution to the way in which policy-makers comprehend and influence the conditions of political change. These comments on the relationship between the ideational and the material help us to see how ideas are able to cause change in ways that do not assume a neat separation of the cause and the effect. Before I say more about this in terms of immanent causality, we should note how Spinoza and Deleuze prepare the ground for a framework that answers the requirements set forth in the previous subsection. They do so by establishing three insights: (1) the doctrine of parallelism, which shows how the ideational and the material are modally different yet ontologically equal; (2) the expressive quality of ideas, which shows how ideas possess agentive capacities that allow them to

Ideational analysis, change and causality 69 cause change in policy through their involvement with and explication of the circumstances from which they arise; and (3) the notion of adequacy, which shows how the power of any idea depends on its ability to engage the world in ways that are persistent. So how do these insights translate into a concept of immanent causality? How do Spinoza and Deleuze envision a mode of explanation that recognizes a close relationship between cause and effect? How does this mode of explanation take us beyond the impasse that defines the first generations of ideational analysis? These are the questions to which we now turn. Immanent causality in action The basic claim of immanent causality is that the cause and the effect are so closely related to each other that it is impossible to assume a strict separation between them.22 We have already encountered parts of this claim with regard to the expressive quality of ideas in which the involvement with and explication of the circumstances in which they are situated allow them to refine themselves through a doubling of the ideational. It is now time to explicate this feedback loop in greater detail, outlining the final definition of immanent causality. The first way in which Spinoza and Deleuze contribute to an analysis of the relationship between the cause and the effect in ideational analysis follows from the doctrine of parallelism. An important consequence of this doctrine is that the ideational maintains its status as a distinct causal power even when it is involved with and seeks to explicate the various circumstances from which it arises. But, if this is the case, it is also the case that an idea can be the effect of its own cause. That is, as the idea engages the world, causing it to follow this or that policy path, the ideational itself becomes that which gives meaning to the outcome of this path. The idea does so either by reformulating its own principles in light of the changes it provokes or by leading the way to another constellation of ideas. In any case, the idea ends up on both sides of the cause and effect divide, allowing us to see how the latter is immanent in the cause rather than deriving from it (Deleuze 1992: 172). This is one version of the feedback loop that puts the causality of ideas into circulation. Another way in which Spinoza and Deleuze analyze the relationship between the cause and the effect follows from the adequacy of an idea. We have already seen how the adequacy of an idea allows it to engage its surrounding world in such a way that the latter’s persistence comes to hinge on that idea. However, if that is the case, we might say that an idea is able to establish its own indispensability for future policy decisions because it is the anticipation of that policy. This opens up a second version of the feedback loop, allowing the idea to be both the cause and the effect of political change. The emphasis on feedback loops puts the concept of immanent causality in league with geological, thermodynamic and neuroscientific studies of nonlinear patters of change.23 But we can also see how the concept of immanent

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causality applies to the study of politics by returning to our previous discussion of the Bush administration’s policy in the so-called war on terror.24 Thus we learn from Brian Massumi that the “causality” of this policy is “bidirectional, operating immediately on both poles, in a kind of time-slip through which a futurity is made . . . present in an effective expression that brings into the present without it ceasing to be a futurity” (Massumi 2005: 36). In other words, the policy of the war on terror is akin to the reversible relationship between the cause and the effect that defines the concept of immanent causality. We can see how this relationship works out by following Massumi’s own analysis of the policies circumscribing the war on terror. Massumi develops his analysis of the war on terror with reference to the color-coded alert system that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security uses to communicate to the public what it perceives to be the appropriate level of threat coming from terrorists and rogue states (green indicates a “low” level of threat; red indicates a “severe” level of threat).25 To begin with, it seems that the actions that this system prompts stem from an adversity to specific security threats. However, since the objects of these threats are not actually present, but only latent, lurking somewhere in the future where no one can predict a point at which they might strike, this can not be the case. Instead, the threats are able to influence the course of the nation because of their own futurity, one in which the anticipation of what might happen tomorrow becomes a reason for acting today. Indeed, the color-coded alert system works because the futurity of the threats allows the system to be part of a feedback loop in which there is no sharp distinction between cause and effect. The cause of the Bush administration’s policy in the so-called war on terror lay in the future, but its effects were made present in today’s laws that either curtail civil liberties at home or engage in nation-building abroad. Moreover, as these policies exhaust themselves, the fearfulness that expresses the threats takes on its own life. It does so because, although no one in the Bush administration was able to objectify the threats, the alert system nonetheless managed to instill a basic mood in the public, a mood in which the worst threat was the unknown itself. The result is yet another feedback loop – what Massumi describes as a “snowball” effect – one in which the cause and the effect keeps reverting each other. As Massumi argues, fear “has revirtualized. Its emergence as an end has threateningly looped back to the beginning as its cause. This marks another turning point” (2005: 41). My point in using this analysis of the so-called war on terror is that it shows how the concept of immanent causality allows us to appreciate the way in which feedback loops of various sorts break with a linear notion of time. Such appreciation is critical if we want to disclose the multiple layers of political change. However, while Massumi adds insight to the study of political change, he is still too simple in his analysis of the Bush administration’s policies. This is the case because of the way in which he overlooks the ideational component of the alert system. Thus he contends that the “alerts [present] no form, ideological or ideational and, remaining vague as to the source, nature,

Ideational analysis, change and causality 71 and location of the threat, [bare] precious little content” (2005: 32). Likewise, he maintains that the alert system itself enables the government to “bypass the discursive mediations on which it traditionally depends” (ibid.: 34). Both of these arguments fail to acknowledge the way in which ideas participate in the war on terror. These are ideas that draw on the influence of Leo Strauss’s political philosophy on the cabal leading up to the Iraq war, on the notion of righteousness and divine providence as conceived by the Christian Evangelic movement in the United States, and on the role that masculinity plays in defining the American presidency. Based on our discussion of the expressive quality of ideas, we might say that there are two ways in which these ideas participate in and intermesh with the affective components of the colorcoded alert system identified by Massumi. On the one hand, the ideas involve themselves with the affective components in order to give meaning to the fear and insecurity invoked by the alert system. The involvement is what allows the system to become part of the political consciousness, one that helps frame future policy options. On the other hand, the ideas also help to explicate the affective components that are involved in the alert system. They do so by interpreting both the fear and insecurity as a result of a threat from abroad and the solution to this threat as one of a defense of uniquely “American” values (freedom, justice, democracy, and so on). In both cases, it is explications such as these that help to uphold the alert system as legitimate, contributing to its persistency. It is through an appreciation of the way in which ideas intersect with affects and other modes of the material that the concept of immanent causality can become a real contribution to ideational analysis. The point is neither to eliminate the material world from the purview of ideational analysis nor to diminish the distinctive causal powers of ideas; rather, it is to show how the material and the ideational are part of the same explanation, one in which the study of causality is a matter of disclosing the many layers along which political change is evolving. The following conclusion outlines the way in which this concept of immanent causality might inspire research by future generations of ideational analysis. The first thing we must do is to summarize the basic propositions of immanent causality.

Concluding remarks The best way to summarize the concept of immanent causality is to think of it as a mode of explanation that recognizes the way in which the agentive capacities of the ideational challenge a neat separation of cause and effect. The previous section showed us how this challenge makes it possible to move beyond the shortcomings of the first generation of ideational analysis. The shortcomings arise because this generation of ideational analysis insists that the choice is between (1) defining the framework of ideational analysis in such a way that it adheres to the concept of efficient causality or (2) refuting the concept of causality as inadequate for understanding political change. We

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now know that this choice is too simple; that, in fact, it is possible to replace the concept of efficient causality with one of immanent causality – a concept that allows us to appreciate the full spectrum of ideas, as it ranges from road maps and programmatic beliefs to political ideologies and religious worldviews. As such, the concept of immanent causality can be of inspiration to future generations of ideational analysis. The first kind of inspiration that future generations of ideational analysis might take from the concept of immanent causality concerns the relationship between the material and the ideational. While this chapter has outlined the conceptual resources that would enable us to study this relationship from the perspective of immanent causality, it is clear that we need to implement these resources in an empirically informed manner. In this regard, it is likely that future generations of ideational analysis can benefit from joining forces with neuroscientific studies of how more refined states of the mind hinge on processes that lie below the threshold of consciousness (see, for example, Damasio 2003). The reason for this is not only that the latter studies go beyond a neat separation of cause and effect, but that they pay close attention to the relationship between the material and the ideational. Moreover, as neuroscientific studies tend to focus on the conversion of the material into the ideational, it might be that ideational analysis can become a valuable supplement, reversing the focus of study into one of how the ideational becomes material. Both foci would surely enhance our understanding of the conditions that structure political change. They would add insight to the study of how the effect is immanent in the cause. Another way in which the concept of immanent causality has the potential of being an inspiration to future generations of ideational analysis concerns the question of agency. This chapter has shown how ideas operate as causes of political change because of their agentive capacities – capacities that contribute to the way in which policy-makers are able both to comprehend and to influence the circumstances in which they operate. If nothing else, this should be reason enough to pay close attention to the role ideas play in politics. But we should be careful to note that implicit in the attribution of agentive capacities to ideas lies a new understanding of agency, one that differs from the one that political scientists normally follow. Most importantly, on this account, agency is not the privilege of individuals who define their own circumstances through the acts of free will. Instead, from the perspective of immanent causality, agency is the layered result of processes that flow through these individuals, defining what it means to be an agent of change. This view of agency can be an inspiration to future generations of ideational analysis because it allows them to approach ideas as more than strategic weapons to which politicians and other policy-makers turn whenever it is convenient. It opens the constitutive nature of ideas while maintaining a perspective that sees this constitution as being multi-layered. The latter can be a valuable signpost when it comes to the study of political change. In sum, we might say that the concept of immanent causality opens new

Ideational analysis, change and causality 73 avenues of research, avenues that may enhance the standing of ideational analysis as a legitimate idiom in political science broadly understood. The enhancement hinges on how efficient causality gives way to an appreciation of nonlinear patterns of change that evolve along feedback loops of various sorts. As the ideational and material continue to engage each other in parallel ways, there is much to suggest that it is in these feedback loops that we find the secret of political change.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Mark Blyth, William Connolly, Jodie Dean, Iva Deutchman, Andreas Gofas, Paula Duarte Lopez, two anonymous reviewers, and everyone who participated in the workshop on “The Ideational Turn in International and European Studies” at the University of Warwick in June 2002 for their comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this chapter. 2 DeLanda (1997a) pioneers this understanding of political change. 3 The fact that the following two subsections do not focus on rational institutionalism does not mean that this paradigm is insignificant when studying how ideas cause political change (Goldstein and Keohane 1993; Knight and North 1997; Weingast 1995). But I prioritize historical institutionalism over rational institutionalism because I want to show that the concept of efficient causality is inadequate to ideational analysis even if we privilege ideas. If this is the case, it is fair to assume that the concept of efficient causality is equally inadequate to other camps of ideational analysis. 4 Mark Blyth (2001, 2002) and Peter A. Hall (1993) are equally prominent practitioners of ideational analysis based on the paradigm of historical institutionalism. But Hall and Blyth depart from the core of historical institutionalism, and may in some regards be closer to the paradigm of social constructivism. Likewise, it is important to note that not all branches of historical institutionalism admit that ideas provoke political change. This is especially the case with regard to the study of American political development (Skocpol 1992; Skowronek 1982; and Sheingate 2000). 5 Mill’s notion of social science as “ethology” is the most explicit example (Nagel 1950: 317–24). 6 Berman uses parliamentarism as the ideational equivalent to a programmatic belief in democracy. 7 Ekström (1992: 112) makes this point, arguing that the “core of the method that Weber advocates for arriving at causal explanations of social actions is rational interpretation, which in brief is a matter of reconstructing a context of meaning for the purpose of understanding why persons act as they do” (my emphasis; see also Hekman 1979). 8 Taylor (1985a) provides a useful discussion of mechanistic modes of explanation in the human and social sciences. 9 While the material is an open-ended concept (hence the many kinds of materialism), it seems fair to say that the material in general includes the social world under the natural world, and that it deals with both in terms of structures and processes such as affective states, emotional experiences and bodily movements. See Callari and Ruccio (1996) for a discussion of some of the many kinds of materialism, including the ones that follow from the works of Lucretius, Hobbes, Spinoza and Marx. 10 Key to this point is the post-Marxism of Laclau and Mouffe (1985). 11 Hollis and Smith (1990) coined the distinction between explanation and under-

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Lars Tønder standing in the social sciences in general and in international relations theory in particular. This kind of causal inference takes its most important clue from the pragmatism of Davidson (1963). This suggestion is indebted to the recent work of William Connolly (2002, 2004), a political theorist who works at the intersection of political theory, neuroscience and cultural studies. I should note that my interpretation of especially Spinoza is different from a more conventional one that sees him as a philosopher of rationalism and strict monism. For these other interpretations, see Bennett (1984) and Scruton (1986). See Yovel (1989: 10–12) for a succinct characterization of Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence. In what follows, my strategy is to rework the language of Spinoza and Deleuze so that it becomes applicable to issues in ideational analysis. This means that I will limit my use of quotations. I compensate for this by referring extensively to the texts in which Spinoza and Deleuze make similar points. Because the philosophy of immanence assumes the oneness of the world, it is not possible to say that the ideational and the material are ontologically distinct. Rather, the difference between the ideational and the material is a modal one, a differentiation that allows us to appreciate the unique properties of both without forcing us to commit to a dualism of sorts (see Negri 1991: 53–9). Deleuze bases his reading of expressionism on Spinoza’s discussion of this concept in the Ethics (Spinoza 1992: Book 1, Proposition 8, scholium 2, Proposition 19, proof, Proposition 20, proof, and Book 2, Proposition 46, proof). This question resonates with some discussions in the first generation of ideational analysis (Risse-Kappen 1994; Sanyal 1994). According to Spinoza (1992: Book 2, Proposition 3), we should not limit the study of ideas to one particular level, but must instead open this study to the full spectrum of ideas, including the idea of the idea – what Spinoza calls idea idearum (see also Rice 1990). According to Spinoza (1992: Book 2, Definition 4, Proposition 11, corollary), an adequate idea is “an idea which, insofar as it is considered in itself without relation to others, has all the properties – that is, intrinsic characteristics – of a true idea” (see also Deleuze 1992: 133–5). Some (see, for example, Mason 1986; Watt 1972) interpret Spinoza’s conception of causality in light of the propositions that God is the efficient cause of all things and that finite things always are the causes of other finite things. While this interpretation has some support in the work of Spinoza, it is at odds with the general claim in Spinoza which suggests that the philosophy of immanence is one of infinite connections across numerous modes of being. Does this mean that Spinoza’s philosophy has a self-contradictory view of causality? I do not think so. As Deleuze points out, the doctrine of parallelism helps us to see how the emergence of new material forms is immanent to modes of the ideational. This view, I think, is the most appropriate one when it comes to the interpretation of the philosophy of immanence. Deleuze (1992: 109) substantiates this view when he argues that parallelism “is to be understood neither from the viewpoint of occasional causes, nor from the viewpoint of ideal causality, but only from the viewpoint of an immanent God and immanent causality.” A good example of this is an autocatalytic loop, which occurs in a closed system of chemical processes in which a series of mutually stimulating pairs of substances link up to form a structure that reproduces as a whole. This reproduction is selfsustaining because the product of one chemical reaction serves as a catalyst for another reaction, which produces another product that then catalyzes the first one (see DeLanda 1997b; LeDoux 1996: ch. 3; Massumi 2002: ch. 9).

Ideational analysis, change and causality 75 24 By the “so-called war on terror” I mean to suggest that the Bush administration used the name of terror to pursue policies that were not directly related to the fight against terrorism. However, it was successful in making the connection between terrorism and these other policy areas in such a way that the majority of the American public was willing to sacrifice economic growth and social security. This sacrifice is in itself a testimony to the power of ideas. 25 The full spectrum is: green, “low”; blue, “guarded”; yellow, “elevated”; orange, “high”; red, “severe.” Judged from the past years of use of the color-alert system, the most common level of threat is orange, “high.”

References Alexander, Jeffrey C., and Philip Smith (1993) “The Discourse of American Civil Society: A New Proposal for Cultural Studies,” Theory and Society, 22: 151–207. Bennett, Jonathan (1984) A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett. Berman, Sheri (1998) The Social Democratic Moment: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Blyth, Mark (1997) “‘Any More Bright Ideas?’ The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy,” Comparative Politics, 29(2): 229–50. —— (2001) “The Transformation of the Swedish Model: Economic Ideas, Distributional Conflict, and Institutional Change,” World Politics, 54(1): 1–27. —— (2002) Great Transformations: The Rise and Decline of Embedded Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bunge, Mario (1979) Causality and Modern Science. 3rd edn, New York: Dover. Callari, Antonio, and David F. Ruccio (1996) “Introduction,” in Antonio Callari and David F. Ruccio (eds) Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition. London: Wesleyan University Press. Campbell, John L. (1998) “Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy,” Theory and Society, 27(3): 377–409. —— (2002) “Ideas, Politics and Public Policy,” Annual Review of Sociology, 28: 21–38. Connolly, William E. (2002) Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— (2004) “Method, Problem, Faith,” in Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith and Tarek E. Mosoud (eds) Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (2006) “Experience and Experiment,” Dædalus, 135(3): 1–9. Damasio, Antonio (2003) Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando, FL: Harcourt. Davidson, Donald (1963) “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” Journal of Philosophy, 60(23): 685–700. DeLanda, Manuel (1997a) A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York: Zone Books. —— (1997b) “Immanence and Transcendence in the Genesis of Form,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 96(3): 505–7. Deleuze, Gilles (1988) Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books. —— (1992) Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Books.

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Ekström, Mats (1992) “Causal Explanation of Social Action: The Contribution of Max Weber and of Critical Realism to a Generative View of Causal Explanation in Social Science,” Acta Sociologica: Journal of the Scandinavian Sociological Association, 35(2): 107–22. Goldstein, Judith, and Robert O. Keohane (eds) (1993) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hall, Peter A. (1993) “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain,” Comparative Politics, 25(3): 275–96. Hampshire, Stuart (1971) Freedom of the Mind, and Other Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (1996) “Introduction,” in Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics. London: Penguin. Hansen, Randall, and Desmond King (2001) “Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests, and Policy Variance: Immigration and Sterilization Policy in Britain and in the U.S.,” World Politics, 53(2): 237–63. Hay, Colin (1996) “Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the ‘Winter of Discontent’,” Sociology, 30(2): 253–77. Hekman, Susan J. (1979) “Weber’s Concept of Causality and the Modern Critique,” Sociological Inquiry, 49(4): 67–76. Hollis, Martin (1994) The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollis, Martin, and Steven Smith (1990) Explaining and Understanding International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howarth, David (1997) “Complexities of Identity/Difference: Black Consciousness Ideology in South Africa,” Journal of Political Ideologies, 2(1): 51–78. Hume, David (1978) A Treatise of Human Nature. 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knight, Jack, and Douglass North (1997) “Explaining Economic Change: The Interplay between Cognition and Institutions,” Legal Theory, 3(2): 211–26. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe (1985) Hegemony & Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Laffey, Mark, and Jutta Weldes (1997) “Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations, 3(2): 193–238. LeDoux, Joseph (1996) The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Touchstone. Lieberman, Robert C. (2002) “Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order,” American Political Science Review, 96(3): 697–712. Macherey, Pierre (1996) “The Encounter with Spinoza,” in Paul Patton (ed.) Deleuze: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Mason, Richard V. (1986) “Spinoza on the Causality of Individuals,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 24(2): 197–210. Massumi, Brian (2002) Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —— (2005) “Fear (the Spectrum Said),” Positions, 13(1): 31–48. Nagel, Ernest (ed.) (1950) John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of Scientific Methods. New York: Hafner Press. Negri, Antonio (1991) The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics, trans. Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ideational analysis, change and causality 77 Parsons, Craig (2002) “Showing Ideas as Causes: The Origins of the European Union,” International Organizations, 56(1): 47–84. Rice, Lee C. (1990) “Reflexive Ideas in Spinoza,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 28(2): 201–11. Risse-Kappen, Thomas (1994) “Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War,” International Organization, 48(2): 185–214. Sanyal, Bishwapriya (1994) “Ideas and Institutions: Why the Alternative Development Paradigm Withered Away,” Regional Development Dialogue, 15(1): 23–35. Sayer, Andrew (2000) Realism and Social Science. London: Sage. Scruton, Roger (1986) Spinoza. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sheingate, Adam D. (2000) The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State: Institutions and Interest Groups Power in the United States, France, and Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Skocpol, Theda (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Skowronek, Stephen (1982) Building a New American State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spinoza, Baruch de (1992) Ethics, trans. Samuel Shirley. Indianapolis: Hackett. Tannenwald, Nina (2005) “Ideas and Explanation: Advancing the Theoretical Agenda,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 7(2): 13–42. Taylor, Charles (1985a) “How is Mechanism Conceivable?,” in Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1985b) “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watt, A. J. (1972) “The Causality of God in Spinoza’s Philosophy,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2(2): 171–89. Weber, Max (1976) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Allen & Unwin. Weingast, Barry R. (1995) “A Rational Choice Perspective on the Role of Ideas: Shared Belief Systems and State Sovereignty in International Cooperation,” Politics & Society, 23(4): 449–64. Wendt, Alexander (1998) “On Constitution and Causation in International Relations,” Review of International Studies, 24(5): 101–17. —— (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winch, Peter (1990) The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. 2nd edn, London: Routledge. Wolfson, Harry A. (1948) The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of his Reasoning, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Yee, Albert (1996) “The Causal Effects of Ideas on Policies,” International Organization, 50(1): 69–108. Yovel, Yirmiyahu (1989) Spinoza and Other Heretics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

4

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change Leonard Seabrooke

The ideational turn in institutional theory has primarily been about the status of elites. This trend is particularly prominent in the subfields of comparative and international political economy, where distributional outcomes for the masses are typically considered to be a result of ideational and material fights among elites and their coalitions. This chapter delves into the three major approaches where political economy and institutional theory intersect (rationalist institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and constructivism) to examine what credence is given to legitimacy as an intersubjective social phenomenon. In particular, I provide a treatment of how aspects of this literature obscure how the ‘masses’ may provide impulses for institutional change to traditional powerholders (for the full treatise, see Seabrooke 2006: ch. 2). Following this critique I then examine how a conception of ‘intentional rationality’ and social mechanisms, once infused with ‘everyday politics’, can enlighten how legitimacy is a broad intersubjective phenomenon (see also Seabrooke 2007a). A conception of legitimacy and everyday politics provides a challenge to understandings of the ideational turn in institutional theory, and invites us to examine the social sources of political and economic change. It does so for the following three reasons. 1 2

3

Legitimacy encourages us to focus on contestation between the state and social groups rather than view the state as a functional space. Legitimacy encourages us to understand how economic social norms can be shaped by non-elites and how non-elites can provide impulses for institutional change to elites. Legitimacy encourages a historicist approach to institutional and social change that emphasises contingent mechanisms of change rather than applying vulgar evolutionary or punctuated equilibrium models.

Treating the concept of legitimacy seriously requires us to seek how actors, often non-elite actors, generate the social sources of change rather than waiting for elites to tell them what to do. It also asks us to depart from applying ‘plug and play’ models of change and instead endeavours to understand the context in which the actor is making choices. Let us begin with

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 79 the rationalists before turning to historical institutionalism and economic constructivism.

Rationalist institutionalism: norms as error terms Rationalists draw from micro-economic theories to argue that changes in institutional structures alter incentives for individuals, who are interested in maximising their own welfare (North and Thomas 1973; Williamson 1985). The role of culture, norms and legitimacy in informing these incentive structures is not particularly prominent, even if key rationalists argue that culture must be included (North 1990: 140). I argue that culture and norms are typically handled as residual and that, despite their efforts to incorporate economic social norms into explanations of institutional change, they fundamentally view norms as error terms. This then undermines the amount of analytical purchase they are willing to attribute not only to culture and norms, but also to the concept of legitimacy. As rationalist institutionalists typically argue that institutional structures provide incentives to rational individuals, the stress in their explanations of what creates institutional change is in seeking to identify where actors have achieved an institutional equilibrium, where no individual would unilaterally alter his or her behaviour given the available alternatives. Variations in institutional configurations provide information on how individuals and states as individuals can cooperate, or why they have grown faster or more productively than others (North 1990). In this sense culture and norms help reinforce path dependencies that are occasionally shaken by an exogenous shock. Indeed, for rationalists change is created through an exogenous shock, where an institutional equilibrium is punctured and a period of uncertainty ensues in which the battle between self-interested individuals, with different resource capabilities, will then determine the next equilibrium (Levi 1997a: 23–8). The typical criticism of rationalist institutionalism is that it mistakenly views individuals as having a stable set of preferences according to an a priori utility function. At the same time, it is criticised for paying too much attention to the institutional structures that provide incentives – so that individuals become passive receptors to the incentive structures placed in front of them. As such, institutional change is not a matter of individual choice, but of identifying the moments when a society changed tracks, so to speak, in the trajectory of its economic development. As such, rationalists have been criticised for ‘data-mining’, for selecting empirical material that confirms their preferred story of economic and institutional development in order to boost the rigour and predictability of their own models (Elster 2000). Rationalist scholars have also been criticised for having no real understanding of how individuals interpret incentives structures derived from institutional forms, since ‘structures do not come with an instruction sheet’ (Blyth 2002: 7, 19). A good example of rationalist institutionalist literature can be found in the works of Avner Greif and Margaret Levi, both associated with the ‘analytic

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narratives’ school of thought (Bates et al. 1999), which seeks to provide rationalist explanations to long-term historical change, as well as to understand differences in contemporary political and economic institutional configurations according to the micro-economic logic described above. Greif’s work (2006) on business organisation in the late medieval period provides a particularly important example. He compares the behavior of Genoese and Maghribi traders with the overall aim of discovering why some societies were more successful in generating organisational and institutional forms that led to modern capitalism. Greif finds that the Genoese were able to create institutions based around the role of the individuals that fostered impersonal trust, generated contracts and lowered their costs of trade. By contrast, the Maghribi stressed collective behaviour and retained a system of highly personalised trust, requiring individuals connected to the core groups to accompany trade missions, and therefore increasing the costs of trade. For Greif, such culturally derived differences are self-reinforcing and demonstrate how ‘individuals attempt to find moral justifications for their behavior through cognitive dissonance’ (Greif 1994: 916–17). In other words, individuals display ‘rational ignorance’ in not choosing what would be the optimal institutional solution given perfect information (North 1990: 21). Ideas carried by individuals may be important ‘focal points’ for institutional change, but only within conditions made permissible by material realities (Garrett and Weingast 1993: 176). Given this approach to ideas and culture, it is not surprising that the rationalist institutionalist approach to legitimacy is to focus on formal rationality and procedural regularity. Margaret Levi, for example, ‘eschews the word legitimate, at least until the term acquires a consensual meaning’ and instead prefers ‘quasi-voluntary compliance’ between citizens and rulers to stress how it is the ‘perception of the bargain rather than ideas about what a good or fair contract is’ (Levi 1988: 1, n. 1, 54). Similarly, where Levi has explicitly discussed legitimacy (in her work on conscription), she argues that it is concerned primarily with how citizens perceive a process of decision-making (1997b: 23). As such, legitimacy is procedural; it is the perception of institutional forms that informs how individuals respond rationally to incentives. While stress is placed on a shared perception of an appropriate procedure, intersubjective understandings of what is fair and appropriate as societal values are not really discussed. So in the end we know what institutions are deemed legitimate by the ones to which people conform. As such, we learn little about the politics of legitimacy, where ideas and norms are contested prior to and during the creation of the institutions. Rationalists therefore have a particularly hard time in explaining how norms change over time, including conceptions of legitimacy that cannot be read off institutional forms. Moreover, since rationalist institutionalists typically posit elites or coalitions against each other across a range of states, economies and time periods, they tend to fix certain labels to a fixed perception of interests. For example, it is common to discuss the interests of ‘owners’, ‘managers’ and

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 81 ‘workers’ (Gourevitch and Shinn 2005), when how these categories are interpreted by elites and non-elites in different countries and different periods of time is entirely up for grabs. Even categories such as ‘capital’, ‘labour’ and ‘working class’ can signify radically different relationships, attitudes, aspirations, values and norms for different people (Seabrooke 2007a). As such, rationalists have a very weak conception of legitimacy because actors are viewed as ‘self-propelling’ entities following their utility maximisation (Tilly 1995: 1595), rather than operating in an environment in which their individual choices are saturated by their normative environments, including the realm of what is legitimate social action.

Historical institutionalism: national trajectories of development Historical institutionalists provide a more sensitive understanding, not surprisingly, of historical change than do rationalist institutionalists. Much of the work within this literature has been particularly concerned with comparative analyses of how different types of states created economic systems that influenced the world economy, and how such influence reflected domestic wrangling over political parties, economic groups, and national ideologies (Katzenstein 1978, 1985; Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1985). More sociological work in this field also sought to delineate the development of the state’s institutional autonomy and relationship with social groups (Mann 1986, 1993). As such, this literature deals with how institutions were the site for conflicts over ideas and interests that established historical paths and national frameworks (Steinmo, Thelen and Longstreth 1992; Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003). The role of culture, ideas, norms and legitimacy in this literature is mixed. For many ideas are important as long as they have the right institutional ‘fit’ (Hall 1989). In general, institutions are viewed as providing a logic of appropriateness, as well as a logic of consequences, for how actors behave (March and Olsen 1989). Given this mixed bag, I concentrate here on the literature in historical institutionalism associated with ‘comparative capitalisms’, namely that on ‘state capacity’ and ‘varieties of capitalism’. The work on ‘state capacity’ (now often folded into that on ‘varieties of capitalism’) explicitly sought to identify how states and social actors formed different constellations in different national systems, and to what extent that constellation permitted the state the capacity to regenerate itself in the international political economy. State capacity was strongly associated with states that can ‘actually penetrate civil society’ to maximize national economic and/ or military competitiveness (Mann 1988: 5). Initially, ‘strong’ states – states that were isolated from social forces – were identified as those most likely to achieve this aim. This work explicitly rejected legitimacy as a meaningful concept on the grounds that a failure of legitimacy does not necessarily lead to a loss of organisational capacities (Skocpol 1979: 31–2). A second wave of scholarship challenged the strong state notion and argued that, rather than

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isolated autonomy, states required ‘embedded autonomy’ to fuse ‘Weberian bureaucratic insulation with intense connection to the surrounding social structure’, particularly with capitalists (Evans 1995: 17, 50, 248). Such ‘embedded autonomy’ or ‘governed interdependence’ would allow the state and key capitalist groups to foster economic development, as long as the latter did not become too dominant and bury the former (Evans 1995; cf. Weiss 1998). As the stress within the literature was on comparing systems and how they compete in the international political economy, specifying relationships between the state and capitalists relied heavily on the presence of institutions that had proven to be (or so it was thought) a source of competitiveness. As such, much of this literature focused on the role of ‘pilot economic agencies’ that were integral to late development strategies in East Asia (Weiss 1998). The presence of these institutions in some states (such as Japan, Taiwan and Korea) and not others (such as in Southeast Asia) forced some state capacity scholars to rely on ‘the pre-existing constellation of ideas and institutions regarding the state–market relationship’ to explain the variation (Weiss 1999: 324–5, 328–9, 331). As such, this literature provided a conception of culture as path-dependent, with a weak understanding of how norms and culture may change to enable different types of institutions that can foster international competitiveness. Given this static view of social change, this literature has typically had a weak understanding of legitimacy, with the concept being viewed as important for state capacity but essentially as a resource that rulers can employ to try and get social forces onside (Evans 1998: 82). Following the need to provide a more sociological understanding of how states relate to social groups in creating ‘state capacity’, a third wave of literature has discussed the state’s need for ‘social embeddedness’ (Hobson 1997; Seabrooke 2001; Migdal 2002). An important break from the earlier literature was made here, because the stress was on how the state related to social groups in general, rather than its insulation from them or its ability to cooperate and coordinate with capitalist groups. John M. Hobson’s work, for example, highlighted how choices made over free trade or protectionism in early twentieth-century Britain, Germany and Russia were informed by how the state related to working-class groups and was able to ‘play off the dominant classes with the lower-middle and working classes’ (Hobson 1997: 236). The focus is still on the pay-off between different social groups over how they benefit materially, with little information provided on how nonelite groups changed norms that informed elites and political parties about what institutional changes were possible with broad social consent. In short, in this literature, ‘social embeddedness’ is used as an inadequate proxy for legitimacy. Issues of social consent are far removed from the work on ‘varieties of capitalism’, which seeks to account for institutional change by looking at studying actions of firms and sectors within a national system. As in ‘state capacity’ literature, the concept of embeddedness is vital, but is framed

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 83 primarily as a behavioural constraint – that actors will follow a logic of appropriateness given from an institution. Earlier work in this field by Robert Boyer, J. Rogers Hollingsworth and others asserted that domestic ‘social systems of production’ led to different types of capitalism, while there was also a process of ‘institutional nestedness’ occurring at national, regional and transnational levels (such as Hollingsworth and Boyer 1997; Berger and Dore 1996; Hollingsworth, Schmitter and Streeck 1994). Peter A. Hall and David Soskice’s (2001) work on ‘varieties of capitalism’ (arguably the most dominant lens in comparative political economy today) shifts the attention back onto discrete national systems of change. In principle, their concern is with identifying the evolution of institutional forms by paying attention to the role of firms, which choose complementary institutions within a national context. This literature follows a view from earlier literature, that capitalist varieties follow ‘national trajectories’ based on assumed cultural and institutional traits (Zysman 1994). As such, this framework tends to provide fixed conceptions of how national economic change, posing them, to use Mark Blyth’s (2003) clever use of the Talking Heads quip, ‘same as it never was’. The chief consequence here is that there is little room for discussing change in ideas and norms since the actors within the national system have been given more or less fixed identities and behavioural traits (as such, the capacity for this literature to discover institutions for economic competitiveness that do not conform to fixed ideas about a certain national system is low; see Seabrooke 2006; Culpepper 2003). Ideas are only powerful when the existing institution can accommodate them, because the institution establishes a ‘system of ideas and standards which is comprehensive’ (Hall 1993: 277). Such all-encompassing institutions can be punctured by an exogenous shock (such as an economic crisis) from which a period of uncertainty allows elites and coalitions to fight it out. At the same time, there is little understanding of how ideas and norms may be transformative for institutional change beyond obvious material incentives.

Economic constructivism: legitimacy as proclamation As this volume reflects, there has been much talk recently about how ideas and norms inform institutional change over time. Certainly a body of work is now identified or self-identifies as ‘economic constructivist’ or ‘constructivist political economy’. This work typically assesses how ideas and norms have influenced the way in which institutions have changed over time, seeking to specify why actors adopt behaviours according to prevailing institutions, and what ideational resources they can draw upon to transform institutions. Given these aims, economic constructivists have drawn from organisational institutionalism within sociology, particularly the notion that institutions create logics of appropriateness that condition actors’ behaviour (Finnemore 1996: 29; March and Olsen 1989; DiMaggio and Powell 1991). Earlier work that can be considered economic constructivist demonstrated that ideas assist

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the construction of identities and social norms, which then inform how actors can behave to shape change (Finnemore 1996; McNamara 1998; Sikkink 1991: 248–55). This scholarship was concerned with policy emulation among elite policy-makers within an international or transnational context. The creation of European Monetary Union was held to be particularly important in how elites build consensus around common ideas (McNamara 1998; cf. Rosamond 2002). Much of this earlier literature may be considered ‘systemic’ economic constructivism, in that the aim was to understand how ideas translated into policy practices that were diffused across a range of dissimilar actors (Finnemore 1996; cf. Hobson and Seabrooke 2007). Following this earlier systemic work, the new wave of economic constructivist literature sought to understand how norms were contested within domestic systems and what this then meant for how states engaged the international political economy. Here scholars followed Norbert Elias’s warning that norms must be treated as ‘double-edged’, in that they ‘bind people to each other and at the same time turn people so bound against others’ (Elias 1996: 160). Peter Katzenstein’s work (1996), for example, discussed how national domestic norms were split over issue areas and that the contestation of norms informed a state’s relationship with the international order. From this view, norms were particularly ‘contested and contingent’, and, as such, it was vital to understand how norms not only regulate behaviour through the provision of logics of appropriateness but also constitute the meaning of behaviour, with significant variation across different domestic contexts (Blyth 2002; Schmidt 2003). The key point here was that what societies want from the international political economy depends upon who they think they are (Abdelal 2001; Berman 1998). Accordingly, some scholars became interested in how transnational norms were translated into highly specific domestic contexts rather than homogeneously diffused (Kjær and Pedersen 2001; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse 2000). The important break from the earlier literature was an explicit focus on ideas as weapons in effecting institutional change during a period of constructed uncertainty (Blyth 2002; Parsons 2003). As such, actors carry ideas into battles for institutional change from a socially constructed rather than merely instrumental basis (Blyth 2002: 17–19; Parsons 2003: 10). For example, Blyth’s work points to how ideas can provide ‘causal stories’ that can cut across class and consumption boundaries to create new collectivities that are studied from struggles between the key representatives of ideas (2002: 37–8). For Blyth, the building of Swedish ‘embedded liberalism’ occurred when the Swedish Social Democratic Party shrugged off neoclassical economic ideas and, in a period of radical uncertainty (the Great Depression), developed new economic ideas on underconsumption and the need to protect individual citizens from the excesses of market forces, ‘regardless of his or her sectoral or class position’ (ibid.: 112). In ideational battles over institutional change with trade unionists, employer representatives and agriculturalists, the Social Democratic Party was able to build a

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 85 new economic consensus that was positively redistributive for trade unions while also pro-productivity, pro-investment and in favour of agricultural protection. Swedish embedded liberalism was, therefore, born from a battle over ideas and went on to spread through the broader population. In the US, by contrast, a new ideational consensus on underconsumption brought together the state and industrial labour but excluded agriculture (ibid.: chs 3 and 4). Economic constructivists’ emphasis on contestation is most welcome because it permits more room to discuss the politics of how ideas and economic social norms are used by actors to create institutional change. Ideally this same conception would foster a strong sense of legitimacy. This has not, unfortunately, occurred for two reasons. The first is a selection bias towards moments of radical uncertainty. The second is a view of legitimacy by proclamation as the result of an overwhelming focus on institutional and ideational entrepreneurs. To take this first problem: for economic constructivists, uncertainty generates ‘highly fluid conceptions of interest’, requiring actors to bring new ideas to the table to deal with new problems (McNamara 1998: 7, 57–61; Parsons 2003: 8–9). This is, in part, because uncertainty also produces intersubjective ambiguities over seemingly technical problems that permit actors to introduce normative concerns about how the economy should work, and for whom (Best 2005). Periods of particularly radical (or ‘Knightian’) uncertainty force actors to engage ‘repertoires of action that resonate with their core identities’ and transform their conceptions of self and others’ interest (Blyth 2002: 267). As such, there is consensus around a given set of political and economic ideas that is institutionally maintained until a seemingly unprecedented crisis generates radical uncertainty over what should happen next. At this point, ideational entrepreneurs use ideas as weapons to battle it out until a consensus is formed and a new institutional equilibrium is created. Given this, we end up with what could be interpreted as an ideational punctuated equilibrium model that flows like so: institutional and ideational equilibrium
radical uncertainty and battle over ideas
new institutional and ideational equilibrium. Furthermore, the focus on uncertainty also raises questions about selection bias, since we know from common sense that institutions, and the ideas that create them, are typically changed as much during periods of normality as during periods of uncertainty – if not more so. Second, while earlier constructivist work argued that institutions were insulated from the idiosyncratic preferences of particular individuals, more recent scholarship celebrates the power of the individual (Klotz 1995: 33–4). As pointed out by Colin Hay, economic constructivism requires a prominent figure to provide an ‘ideational focus for the reconstitution of the perceived selfinterests of the population at large’ (Hay 2004: 210). Economic constructivism

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therefore arguably has a tendency towards replicating the ‘Great Man (or Woman) of History’ view of political and economic change (Seabrooke 2007c). This creates obvious problems for how most scholars from this perspective have treated legitimacy. In essence, many economic constructivists have treated it as something that can be proclaimed by a victorious ideational entrepreneur, with little knowledge as to whether or not the proclamation was met with consent from the population at large (cf. Blyth 2007). For example, both McNamara and Parsons point to the crucial role in the 1970s and early 1980s of the French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in forging close links with the West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and in placing France on a path-dependent track that pushed forward the European Monetary System. Giscard’s unique foresight then permitted the leap from Keynesian to monetarist policies, a leap in which the influence of domestic electorates is seemingly absent or unimportant for European-wide reforms (McNamara 1998: 69, 123–6; Parsons 2003: 175–6; cf. Schmidt 2007). Great individuals therefore carry ‘master frames’ which inform an ‘institutional construction of interests’ that establishes a path-dependent logic of appropriateness (Parsons 2003: 19, 32, 178). As a consequence we are led to believe not only in the power of ideas held by particular individuals, but that those same ideas will be accepted by the majority of the population with little scrutiny (again, see Schmidt 2007 for a counter-example). Further prodding into economic constructivist literature supports this view. For example, Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink argue that ‘[d] omestic legitimacy is the belief that existing political institutions are better than other alternatives and therefore deserve obedience’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 903). Or, more recently, Michael Barnett and Finnemore claim that international organisations’ use of ‘intellectual technologies’ provides them with symbolic legitimacy and encourages conformity to the ‘values of the broader community’ that are externally given (Barnett and Finnemore 2004: 166–70; cf. Pauly 1997: 12–13). As pointed out by Ole Jacob Sending (2002), any approach that relies too heavily on a logic of appropriateness being passively accepted by those on the receiving end downplays agency. And agency from those providing or withholding consent is critical for a rigorous conception of legitimacy. Given all of this, the economic constructivist view of legitimacy by proclamation, rather than by contestation, comes from a curiously thin conception of society that is separate from ideational entrepreneurs and institutions. So, while ideational entrepreneurs can use ideas as weapons for their normative goals in periods of radical uncertainty, the masses are left as ‘institutional dopes blindly following the institutionalized scripts and cues around them’ (Campbell 1998: 383; Blyth 2007).

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change To provide a more substantive conception of legitimacy and how it relates to institutional change, I argue that we need to make a few important steps. The

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 87 first is that we need to stress a conception of society that is separate from the institutions of analysis. Conflict cannot be seen as only between discrete coalitions or ideational entrepreneurs, but must also include a range of non-elite ‘everyday’ actors (Hobson and Seabrooke 2007). Second, if we treat agency seriously, then we have to recognise the role of the individual in making choices within their own social and normative context. What we seek to reveal, then, is the intentions behind belief-driven actions – what is peculiar and particular to how individuals give meaning to their actions rather than seeing them as following universal or general laws. Third, an understanding of legitimacy requires that all claims must be temporally limited and socially dynamic. There is little point in discussing an object or subject as absolutely ‘legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate’. Instead, assessments of legitimacy must be relative and require historical specification (Weber 1988: 511). The notion that institutional and social change is path-dependent or follows a linear evolution must therefore be problematised, and grand theoretical ambitions should be tempered to understand what social mechanisms are at work in particular cases. Here I explore these last two points on ‘intentional rationality’ and social mechanisms in greater depth. For a substantive understanding of legitimacy it is important to dismiss the notion that the concept refers only to belief rather than to belief-driven actions (Grafstein 1981: 466; cf. Weber 1978: Vol. I, 32–3, 213–15). Instead of simply belief, processes of legitimation require ‘cumulative, individual acts of compliance or confidence’ from actors who are subordinate to the system of power (Bendix 1977: 21, 24; Beetham 1991: 11, 26). A stress on belief-driven actions is especially important since, while the design of institutions may change during a period of uncertainty, how they are used and managed day to day requires ongoing acts of legitimation from the broader population. In this sense, any logic of appropriateness can be shaped by those on the receiving end as they incrementally change their conventions along with their own perception of their life-chances and how economic, political and social life should work (Seabrooke 2007a). In principle, we should seek to identify the everyday ‘thinkability’ of institutional change (Hopf 2002: 15) in order to understand the intentions beyond individuals’ actions (as a starting point this position is ideally individualist, but idiographic rather than nomothetic; Seabrooke 2006: 44–7). While I have previously suggested that Weberian economic sociology offers a way into understanding ‘axiorational’ behaviour – belief-driven actions that are informed (not determined) by conventions and norms (Seabrooke 2006: 44–7; Boudon 2001: 93–110) – Jens Beckert’s work is also useful here. Beckert’s work (1996, 2003) on uncertainty and the moral embeddedness of markets provides some conceptual clarification on how we might think about rationalisation and rationality. The key element here is that Beckert proposes that we try to understand the intention of actions, rather than the actor’s access to information (1996: 819–22). This ‘intentional rationality’ provides a sharp contrast with ‘bounded’ rationality because it

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does not imply that taking the ‘blinkers off’ would provide a superior and ‘natural’ rationality. Rather, individuals’ choices are specified within a local system of meaning in which actors want to improve their welfare (Beckert 2003: 770–71, 773–5). As such, everyday politics is important for understanding actors’ intentions and how they are expressed. The work on everyday politics in political sociology and anthropology provides rich material on how we may understanding legitimacy as a ‘twoway street’ rather than something that is proclaimed or commanded by elites. Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet’s work on the Philippines and Vietnam illustrates how small incremental acts, such as cheating on rice stocks (placing pebbles in the rice sacks), or making jokes and performing rituals deemed to mock those in power, represent ‘everyday politics’ that can transform national policies (Kerkvliet 1990, 2005). While such acts would not commonly be seen as ‘political’, they are belief-driven actions through which actors attribute meaning and seek a form of empowerment. As such, for Kerkvliet such behaviour is central to political discourse over the proper use and distribution of resources and how people should treat each other. It is a way for the relatively powerless to venture claims and put some pressure on more powerful people to take them into account. (Kerkvliet 1990: 247) In a nutshell, through everyday politics non-elites are able to decide incrementally to participate or withdraw from institutions, providing either confirmation or challenges to elites who have designed and created institutions through material or ideational power games. By mapping out the intentions behind belief-driven actions it is possible to provide a story not only of how rulers maintain power but how they are constrained. And it is this notion of legitimacy as the contestation of power that is critical to understanding institutional and social change, particularly because it encourages us to see mechanisms of governance at work rather than conditions of rule. This leads us to social mechanisms, an approach within the social sciences that seeks to understand ‘small and medium-sized descriptions of ways in which things happen’ within a complex social environment (Elster 1989: 3). Social mechanisms are constructs of a social process that has a repeated but indeterminate outcome and helps us understand the context for actors’ beliefdriven actions and processes of institutional and social change. Work during the last decade in political and economic sociology has provided a wide range of social mechanisms, most of which fall into structural, ideational and social-relational categories (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001: 25–6; Hedström and Swedberg 1997: 21–3). The key notion behind the use of social mechanisms is that they can help to avoid functionalist traps, where institutional outcomes are explained by their consequences.

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 89 For example, in a recent publication I identify three social mechanisms involved in the ‘social sources of financial power’ in two Great Powers during the last two periods of financial globalisation (Seabrooke 2006). The emphasis here is on pinpointing mechanisms that can identify links between seemingly ordinary everyday politics and change in international financial orders. To do so, I stress struggles over taxation, credit and property regimes between people on below median income (but not ‘the poor’), the state, and ‘rentier’ interests who seek to concentrate financial wealth away from broader society (Seabrooke 2006, 2007b). These struggles are concerned not only with the distribution of material resources but also with the discursive environments in which politics is coordinated and communicated (cf. Schmidt 2003). In particular, I highlight three social mechanisms – contestation, redistribution and propagation – that were evident within England and Germany before the Great War and in the US and Japan in the last quartercentury. Each mechanism seeks to find a common type of behaviour among all the case studies, but behaviour that must be specified within its social and normative context (so, for example, the mass interpretation of ‘unemployment’ in England in the 1900s differs strongly from how it is interpreted in the US in the 1990s; see Seabrooke 2007a). From the mechanisms specified, I first suggest that contestation is evident in times when people on below median income call upon ideational resources to reject state policies and rentier behaviour. In such moments these groups call upon former discourses (such as transforming a ‘civil rights’ discourse into a ‘fair housing’ discourse) that reflect their expectations about how the economy should work and their intentions to transform it. I then suggest a second mechanism of redistribution, which involves the state’s shifting of assets and access to resources from one social group to another. This is then followed by a third mechanism of propagation, where the state makes claims to the legitimacy of its actions, providing ideational resources to the broader population to confer or to reject the claim and, in doing so, feeds back information for further contestation (Seabrooke 2006: 49–53). The aim here is that, by identifying smaller behavioural processes within what would commonly be considered a clunky independent variable (i.e. ‘state intervention’), it is possible to isolate information that is counter-intuitive and would not be discovered if we viewed culture, norms or identity as having fixed properties, if we saw states as following national trajectories, or if we relied on ideational entrepreneurs to shine a spotlight on what is important. For example, I argue that in the US financial power relies in part on regulation that enhances creditworthiness assessment for people on below median incomes – especially for the ‘lowermiddle classes’ – that demonstrates a positive form of state intervention (Seabrooke 2006: ch. 5). In short, the US is able to recycle capital from the ordinary Joe or Jane’s pocketbook out to the international financial order (and back) because of public and quasi-public institutions that do not conform to standard ideas of America as the home of neoliberalism.

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Conclusion This chapter has explored three main approaches to institutional change in political economy and assessed how they treat the concept of legitimacy. The assessments of rationalist institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and constructivism demonstrated how each approach has tendencies towards explaining institutional change that can obscure a more sociological understanding of legitimacy, culture and norms. In particular, I argued that rationalist institutionalists tend to view norms as error terms, that historical institutionalists give too much credence to national trajectories, and that economic constructivists tend to produce a view of legitimacy by proclamation. I suggest that these problems prevent seeing legitimacy as a relationship between those who seek to govern and those being governed. In particular, it denies or downplays the importance of everyday politics through a dependence on explanations that emphasise exogenous or endogenous shocks to institutional equilibria (Widmaier, Blyth and Seabrooke 2007). By contrast, the view put forward here is that periods of ‘normality’ are just as important as, if not more so than, periods of crisis and uncertainty. As such, I have outlined how everyday politics, alongside ‘intentional rationality’ and social mechanisms, is important for a conception of legitimacy that is a two-way rather than a one-way street. Such a conception encourages us to see how the state is a contested rather than a functional space and how non-elites can have power to shape social norms and provide impulses for institutional change to elites, and stresses the importance of specifying intersubjective contexts for how actors rationalise their actions. In sum, the view put forward here is that, without including such information about non-elites’ belief-driven actions, we are left trying to identify the strongest player in the game, when the real task is to find out how the game is being played.

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Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 91 Berger, Suzanne, and Ronald Dore (eds) (1996) National Diversity and Global Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Berman, Sheri (1998) The Social Democratic Movement: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Best, Jacqueline (2005) The Limits of Transparency: Ambiguity and the History of International Finance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Blyth, Mark (2002) Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (2003) ‘Same as it Never was? Typology and Temporality in the Varieties of Capitalism’, Comparative European Politics, 1(2): 215–25. —— (2007) ‘Powering, Puzzling, or Persuading? The Mechanisms of Building Institutional Orders’, International Studies Quarterly, 51(4): 761–77. Boudon, Raymond (2001) The Origin of Values: Sociology and Philosophy of Beliefs. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Campbell, John L. (1998) ‘Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy’, Theory and Society, 27(3): 377–409. Culpepper, Pepper D. (2003) Creating Cooperation: How States Develop Human Capital in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell (1991) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Elias, Norbert (1996) The Germans, New York: Columbia University Press Elster, Jon (1989) Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (2000) ‘Rational Choice History: A Case of Excessive Ambition’, American Political Science Review, 94(3): 685–95. Evans, Peter B. (1995) Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (1998) ‘Transferable Lessons? Re-examining the Institutional Prerequisites of East Asian Economic Policies’, Journal of Development Studies, 34(6): 66–86. Evans, Peter B., Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds) (1985) Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finnemore, Martha (1996) National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) ‘International Norms, Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization, 52(4): 887–917. Garrett, Geoffrey, and Barry R. Weingast (1993) ‘Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Constructing the European Community’s Internal Market’, in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (eds) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 173–206. Gourevitch, Peter, and James J. Shinn (2005) Political Power and Corporate Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Grafstein, Robert (1981) ‘The Failure of Weber’s Conception of Legitimacy: Its Causes and Implications’, Journal of Politics, 43(2): 456–72. Greif, Avner (1994) ‘Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies’, Journal of Political Economy, 102(5): 912–50. —— (2006) Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Hall, Peter A (ed.) (1989) The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hall, Peter A. (1993) ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State’, Comparative Politics, 25(3): 275–96. Hall, Peter A., and David Soskice (eds) (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hay, Colin (2004) ‘Ideas, Interests and Institutions in the Comparative Political Economy of Great Transformations’, Review of International Political Economy, 11(1): 204–26. Hedström, Peter, and Richard Swedberg (1997) ‘Social Mechanisms: An Introductory Essay’, in Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg (eds) Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–31. Hobson, John M (1997) The Wealth of States: A Comparative Sociology of International Economic and Political Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobson, John M., and Leonard Seabrooke (2007) ‘Everyday IPE: Revealing Everyday Forms of Change in the World Economy’, in John M. Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke (eds) Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–24. Hollingsworth, J. Rogers, and Robert Boyer (eds) (1997) Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollingsworth, J. Rogers, Philippe Schmitter and Wolfgang Streeck (eds) (1994) Governing Capitalist Economies: Performance and Control of Economic Sectors. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hopf, Ted (2002) Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Katzenstein, Peter J. (ed.) (1978) Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Katzenstein, Peter J. (1985) Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. —— (1996) Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kerkvliet, Benedict J. Tria (1990) Everyday Politics in the Philippines: Class and Status Relations in a Central Luzon Village. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (2005) The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kjær, Peter, and Ove K. Pedersen (2001) ‘Translating Liberalization: Neoliberalism in the Danish Negotiated Economy’, in John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen (eds) The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 219–48. Klotz, Audie (1995) Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Levi, Margaret (1988) Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1997a) ‘A Model, a Method, and a Map: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics’, in Mark I. Lichbach and Alan Zuckerman (eds) Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19–41.

Everyday legitimacy and institutional change 93 —— (1997b) Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mahoney, James, and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds) (2003) Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, Michael (1986) The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1988) States, War and Capitalism: Studies in Poltical Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1993) The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and NationStates, 1760–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly (2001) Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McNamara, Kathleen R. (1998) The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen (1989) Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics. New York: Free Press. Migdal, Joel S. (2002) State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. North, Douglass C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. North, Douglass C., and Robert P. Thomas (1973) The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parsons, Craig (2003) A Certain Idea of Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pauly, Louis W. (1997) Who Elected the Bankers? Surveillance and Control in the World Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Risse, Thomas (2000) ‘“Let’s Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics’, International Organization, 54(1): 1–39. Rosamond, Ben (2002) ‘Imagining the European Economy: Competitiveness and the Social Construction of “Europe” as an Economic Space’, New Political Economy, 7(2): 157–77. Schmidt, Vivien A. (2003) ‘How, Where, and When does Discourse Matter in Small States’ Welfare State Adjustment?’, New Political Economy, 8(1): 127–46. —— (2007) ‘Trapped by their Ideas: French Elites’ Discourses of European Integration and Globalization’, Journal of European Public Policy, 14(7): 992–1009. Seabrooke, Leonard (2001) US Power in International Finance: The Victory of Dividends. Basingstoke: Palgrave. —— (2006) The Social Sources of Financial Power: Domestic Legitimacy and International Financial Orders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. —— (2007a) ‘The Everyday Social Sources of Economic Crises: From “Great Frustrations” to “Great Revelations” in Interwar Britain’, International Studies Quarterly, 51(4): 795–810. —— (2007b) ‘Everyday Legitimacy and International Financial Orders: The Social Sources of Imperialism and Hegemony in Global Finance’, New Political Economy, 12(1): 1–18. —— (2007c) ‘Why Political Economy Needs Historical Sociology’, International Politics, 44(4): 390–413. Sending, Ole Jacob (2002) ‘Constitution, Choice and Change: Problems with the “Logic of Appropriateness” and its Use in Constructivist Theory’, European Journal of International Relations, 8(4): 443–70.

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Sikkink, Kathryn (1991) Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Skocpol, Theda (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steinmo, Sven, Kathleen Thelen and Frank Longstreth (eds) (1992) Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Charles (1995) ‘To Explain Political Processes’, American Journal of Sociology, 100(6): 1594–610. Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— 1986. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Vol. I. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). —— (1988) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr. Weiss, Linda (1998) The Myth of the Powerless State: Governing the Economy in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity. —— (1999) ‘State Power and the Asian Crisis’, New Political Economy, 4(3): 317–42. Widmaier, Wesley W., Mark Blyth and Leonard Seabrooke (2007) ‘Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises’, International Studies Quarterly, 51(4), 747–59. Williamson, Oliver E. (1985) The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zysman, John S. (1994) ‘How Institutions Create Historically Rooted Trajectories of Growth’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 3(1): 243–83.

Part II

Ideas, discourses and policy analysis

5

Narratives of neoliberalism The role of everyday media practices and the reproduction of dominant ideas David Hudson and Mary Martin

Introduction In our chapter we will make an argument about studying ideas through focusing on their (re)presentation in public discourses. We begin from the position that the media play an important political role as a broker and interpreter of ideas. We are also contributing to existing analyses of the media in international relations/international political economy. We have chosen an episode of when (and how) the media acted as a contributory mechanism in sustaining the dominant ‘neoliberal ideology’. The example we present is the collapse of the London-based Barings Bank in 1995, and we show the episode’s impact on the dominant neoliberal regulatory discourses. The role of crisis is important because it represents a moment when the limits of the liberal regulatory regime were exposed, but also one where the regime was subsequently secured and legitimated. Crucially, we argue, because the collapse was interpreted and narrated as the fault of a rogue individual rather than a consequence of more structural regulatory weaknesses, the existing regime was exonerated. The chapter looks at the mechanisms by which neoliberalism, as the dominant discourse, is reproduced through media accounts. Analyses of ‘neoliberalism’ from the ‘critical’ or ‘heterodox’ branch of IR/ IPE scholarship have focused on the role of ideas in securing elite interests and the status quo (Gill and Law 1988; Cox 1986; Murphy and Tooze 1991; Gill 1995). However, despite both the importance and the plausibility of the critical IR/IPE literature, it has suffered from a lack of precision and rigour (Baker 1999). There have been rather too many sweeping claims made in the name of ideas, ideology and hegemony, and rather too few examinations of the concrete mechanisms by which ideas become institutionalised. In both popular and academic debate, nowhere is the tendency to overgeneralise more in evidence than in discussions of ‘globalisation’, ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘financial hegemony’. The manner by which the ideas of neoliberalism are secured is underspecified. As Andrew Baker (ibid.: 81) neatly summarises:

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David Hudson and Mary Martin State transformation is therefore generated in a nébuleuse comprising unofficial elite fora such as the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Conferences, official institutions such as the IMF/World Bank, OECD and central state agencies, notably treasuries and central banks. This loose system of global governance facilitates a process of ideological osmosis among states and ultimately generates a dominant global discourse, designed to inform public policy making throughout the world.

We begin by agreeing with the broader claims of the neo-Gramscian position: that public policy-making is dominated by the interests of capital. However, we seek to get inside the mechanisms of how neoliberalism is reproduced. Our claim is that the reproduction of ideas and hegemonic narratives cannot be reduced solely to the interplay of interests, but should be seen as a much more mundane affair accomplished via everyday practices (Davies and Niemann 2002). In the Barings case we argue that it is everyday media practices that explain why the concept of the rogue trader became ingrained within the public and policy-making discourses and – crucially – served to legitimate ideology of the existing neoliberal regulatory regime. The Barings case shows the media’s centrality in interpreting events, as theorised in IR literature’s treatment of media power (Paletz and Entman 1981; Bennett 1990; Shaw 1996). But, more than this, we need to understand how media choices about possible competing interpretations are made, in order to reveal how certain ideas are sustained and others are marginalised. This chapter focuses on aspects of media practice and a ‘sociology of journalism’ behind media narratives to show the mechanisms behind the reproduction of a public discourse.

‘Rogue trader’ The narrative In 1995 a 28-year-old from Watford who was employed to trade financial securities in Singapore caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the world’s oldest merchant bank, with losses of £860 million. A sequence of disastrous commercial and financial decisions not only brought the London-based Barings to its knees but threatened the stability of the UK financial system. The story of Nick Leeson, his rise to highly paid trading star and his spectacular fall from grace, became a morality tale devoured by the media across three continents. As it spread from the financial pages to the front pages, the Barings crisis became condensed into a simple catchline: the tale of the ‘rogue trader’. The phrase became a familiar and convenient shorthand among bankers, regulators, journalists and the wider public for a complex tale of systemic fault, corporate governance failure, personal greed, misjudgement and hubris. Nick Leeson was like many young professionals who found that the overseas offices of a large international bank offered the combination of a glamorous lifestyle and the opportunity to earn a lot of money in the finan-

Narratives of neoliberalism 99 cial markets of the 1980s and 1990s. Leeson was recruited for his experience in the ‘back office’ (administration) as Barings sought to expand a profitable operation in arbitraging financial futures. His main job was to buy and sell the Nikkei futures contract, which was traded on two exchanges, Simex (Singapore) and Osaka. The idea was that, when price differentials appeared in the contract on the two exchanges, Leeson would trade in order to profit from the price difference. The unusual situation in which he was responsible for running both the front and the back office was important in allowing him to avoid day-to-day supervision of his dealing activities. Leeson’s actual trading has now been almost universally accepted as hopeless.1 At the heart of his operations and his local image as a ‘hot shot’ trader was the infamous 88888 ‘error’ account – 8 being a Chinese lucky number. Leeson used the 88888 account to hide losses he was accruing on trades, while simultaneously telling Barings, and those who would listen, that he was making what were increasingly impressive profits for the bank. The faked accounts showed that in 1993 Leeson was generating £8.8 million, which was a fifth of Barings’ entire profit for that year. In the following year this had increased to £20 million, again a fifth of the bank’s annual profits. Meanwhile the reality was that, by October 1992, early losses were already at £4.5 million (Kynaston 2001: 766). Leeson hoped to recoup the money through further trading, but by the end of the year he was hiding losses of £25 million. Finally, in order to cover and recoup his growing losses, Leeson decided to undertake a series of high-risk trades. His trading position would earn him money as long as markets remained stable. Although extremely risky, the strategy was showing some success until 17 January 1995, when the Kobe earthquake, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale, flattened not only Kobe, but the Tokyo stock market too. Leeson lost £100 million as a result (Thomson 1998: 165). Incredibly, Barings continued to fund these losses; Leeson was obliged by the rules of the market to deposit funds equivalent to part of the value of the assets traded – termed ‘margin calls’. To meet these calls and to continue trading, Barings was transferring vast amounts of funds to Singapore; this was even when, at £538 million, it was an amount that proved to be both illegal and dangerously close to Barings’ total assets (The Independent, 4 March 1995). The London office’s mistake was that they believed they were covering trades made on behalf of clients, rather than parting with the bank’s own money. Leeson’s ever more frantic trading, combined with his ever escalating margin calls, meant that his position became increasingly unrescuable. Just before he decided enough was enough, Leeson controlled 80 per cent of the trading contract on the Nikkei 225 index and 50 per cent of government bond trading (Thomson 1998: 167). On his last day alone (23 February), he lost £143 million. Leeson and his wife Lisa fled Singapore and travelled to Kuala Lumpur – where, before disappearing, he informed the Barings office of the situation by fax. He later surfaced in Borneo, and then on 1 March flew to Frankfurt, where he was arrested.

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To focus on Leeson is, at best, only half of the story. While the furore surrounding him as an individual dominated contemporaneous accounts by the media, the Bank of England and Barings itself, other commentators subsequently highlighted the fact that the main actor in the drama was the bank rather than its ‘innocuous’ employee (Clark 1997: 233, n. 1). The deregulation of financial markets in the UK, more specifically the ‘Big Bang’ of 1986, had forced Barings, a quintessentially conservative British merchant bank, which counted the Queen among its customers, to adapt in order to compete. In 1984 it bought Henderson Crosthwaite, a firm that had successfully specialised in the Japanese warrants market, and created Barings Securities.2 Despite the success and importance of Barings’ Far East-based derivatives operations, there remained a cultural gap between the two sections of the bank which was as wide as the geographical gap. Barings Securities enjoyed effective operational independence from Barings Bank, as the latter suffered from a cultivated failure to understand its business in the Far East. Crucially, this divide resulted in Barings’ inadequate knowledge, and therefore supervision, of its securities operations, including Leeson’s activities. As Thomson (1998: 161) puts it: Leeson’s bosses didn’t really understand how he was making so much money but they fully expected his profits to decline when other banks found out and copied him. This is what frequently happens in banking, and so they wanted him to make hay while the sun still shone. Which is why they gave him such a free rein. Checks on Leeson were never followed through, and some were simply dodged by Leeson himself (Augar 2000: 221–2). For instance, he covered up a £50 million hole in the balance sheet by faxing a forged document to Barings’ external auditors from his home. The paper even contained the personal heading: ‘From Nick and Lisa’ (Gapper and Denton 1996: 305), but was not queried. The failings of Barings’ management matrix were a residual reflection of the clash of cultures between the two sections of the bank. What this shows is that much more was going on than the wild gambles of a desperate individual in bringing the saga to its disastrous climax. Significantly, there has also been little documenting the motives for Leeson to act in the manner that he did – beyond of course those implied with the label of rogue trader: greed and criminality.3 Ultimately the rogue trader discourse was unsustainable as an ‘accurate’ representation of reality. Baring all: the regulatory consequences of the Leeson saga So why is the story important? The downfall of Nick Leeson is interesting not least because it has been so well documented, but also because, in constituting him as the culpable individual subject of the Barings collapse, the

Narratives of neoliberalism 101 narration of the story serves to legitimate current forms of liberal regulation and reinforce the status quo. The social consequences of the Barings debacle, as David Kynaston (2001: 768) recounts, were that many of the real losers were those who had invested in the markets: ‘many of them elderly, living far from the city and investing their life savings’. Yet, far from challenging the liberal structure of economic organisation that produced such an outcome, public understandings and public policy responses actually reinforced the legitimacy of the liberal regulatory regime. Part of the explanation is that the realm of finance is perceived as highly specialised and beyond public understanding and thus debate (de Goede 2001). However, part of the answer, in this instance, lies in the way that the episode was understood as an unfortunate exception to the rest of the financial system. The blame lay with a culpable individual rather than with more generalised financial practices. We argue that the way the story was portrayed, and in particular the rogue trader trope, was the outcome of a set of media practices and professional routines which are embedded in contemporary journalism, and which buttress the more ideological aspects of discourse formation. While the devices and formats of news presentation have become routinely familiar, and largely accepted among audiences and scholars of mass communication (van Dijk 1988; Schudson 1995; Bennett 1996), the discursive impact these stylistic conventions have, and the reasons they arise, deserve closer examination given the extent to which they pervade not only news accounts but public discourse in general. This reveals the symbiosis between a dominant idea and its modes of representation. This relationship leads us to re-examine the power and role of ideas by asking why and how ideas are repeated and reinforced. Thus we aim to bring to the study of ideas an analysis of how they matter. This we do through an examination of what a media-based perspective can add to an understanding of ideational factors in IR and IPE and by revealing additional dynamics at work in the way ideas are disseminated. Where did the rogue trader discourse come from? However implausible it may have been as an explanation for the Barings collapse, it is necessary to identify why the term ‘rogue trader’ was used and why it proved to be so influential. The fact that alternative narratives existed makes it even more important to identify why the ‘rogue trader’ discourse became so influential. We argue that it is possible to identify two levels of motivation for deploying the discourse: strategic and structural. Three strategic interests seem key here: legal, commercial and regulatory. One key strategic reason for the identification of a rogue individual, solely culpable for the collapse, is legal and clearly to do with the ease of conviction. For the legal sphere there is a need to have a clearly defined guilty party. At the commercial level it is clear that the executives at Barings engaged in strategic scapegoating, and

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Leeson was set up as a fall guy. The initial hope must have been – though it quickly faded – that the good name and reputation of Barings might have been salvaged. Similarly – as will be expanded on below – the media had commercial interests in selling a sensational and human interest story. Finally, there are the regulatory interests of identifying financial irregularities. It was soon realised that, even if the bank was recapitalised, there was no way of stopping the ongoing losses from the still open positions. Leeson offered a tidy explanation, since the Bank of England had an interest in trying to secure the reputation of ‘the City’. But moreover, in the absence of economic stabilising through a rescue package, the discursive isolation of the source of the crisis becomes a useful regulatory device. However, this touches only the surface of the explanation. Ideas are also part of the structured environment in which actors find themselves. This context only makes sense to them through discursive representations. In such situations actors make use of their already existing knowledge about the world in order to interpret new events. The choice to employ a ‘rogue trader’ discourse rather than alternative methods of minimising commercial damage/ systemic risk or maximising newspaper sales is a reflection of pre-existing ideas that suggested this route. For instance, the discourse of hyper-individualism that is already present in the financial markets was especially acute in the Leeson case. The plausibility of a rogue trader discourse depends upon the prior construction of a sovereign individual. Thus, the image of a rogue trader is the other side of the coin to that of a star trader.4 Given that we can distinguish between strategic and structural reasons for the emergence of an idea, it is also logical to make a distinction between two levels of consequences. That is, in terms of the effects of the rogue trader discourse, we can talk about direct or intended consequences (which are those served by strategic interests) and residual consequences (which are somewhat independent of the actors’ articulation of the discourse). As Michel Foucault so eloquently put it, ‘People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does’ (Drefyus and Rabinow 1982: 187). By beginning to highlight these distinctions, we believe that a more nuanced and different account of the Barings collapse emerges. Crucially, this is one where Leeson’s centrality in the story is not a function of the narrative’s veracity – but nor is it a simple reflection of elite interests. As noted above, the creation of a sovereign individual onto whom the responsibility for financial failure can be offloaded evidently serves a number of interests. These are reasonably easily explained, yet more intriguing is then to see the consequences of what is initially a strategic discourse. That is, what happens when a discourse in effect becomes public property? This is not to say that ideas are simply ‘free floating’ – they are clearly imbued with sets of interests – but it is to say that they can ‘drift from their moorings’. They then serve to create and define this environment, so for instance, in the case of the rogue trader discourse, now that the idea has been articulated and sustained,

Narratives of neoliberalism 103 it is present for future articulations. And indeed, as David Kynaston (2001: 763) puts it: ‘The phrase would stick, as the image of the rogue trader who had brought down the mighty Barings became one of the most compelling of the era.’ The question we wish to answer here is why did it become so compelling? Here we argue that the role of the media is crucial,5 but we also need to understand why the media continued to forward the image of a ‘rogue trader’.

The role of media mechanisms and practices Among the strategic interests which can explain the dominance of the rogue trader discourse, the media’s interest was in discovering and exploiting a sensational story.6 With its arcane jargon of futures trading in an overseas subsidiary, the scandal at Barings might have appeared too remote and impenetrable to appeal to anything other than a limited professional audience. Yet, as the Barings losses ran out of control, and as it emerged that the source of the problem was a young British expatriate, with an attractive blonde wife, who epitomised the get-rich-quick culture of the financial markets, the story was transformed. The personalisation of the Barings scandal, juxtaposing the working-class lad with his employer – the establishment bank and its centuries-long pedigree – was irresistible to the mainstream news agenda of the media: the image of the rogue trader helped propel the story from the financial to the front pages. It was at this point that the role of professional practice and convention contributed to packaging and retelling the Leeson narrative, and ensured that the rogue trader discourse became so powerful that it crowded out alternative understandings. How ideas are represented is crucial to our understanding of which ideas dominate, and how, when and why certain discourses persist. Not only was the Leeson story highly mediatised – in a way not always so visible in issues of financial regulation – but the media’s role was crucial in that, at the moment of crisis, the fragility of the neoliberal discourse was exposed but not challenged. The possibilities for contestation were stifled. We will show later how and why this occurred, but first it is necessary to sketch the conceptual and more general case for the importance of the media in order to provide both an epistemological and a political context for our proposition. Within IR methodology, the media can be an important resource for developing constructivist accounts. This is because it is central to the process of reflexive self-understanding by which reality is defined and constantly reconstituted. It is both a channel for ideas, beliefs and discourses and a producer of accounts of social reality which make sense of and also force a perpetual reinterpretation of the outside world. The media are at the heart of a ‘mutually preoccupying web of relationships which is at the centre of the new political system’ (Blumler and Gurevitch 1995: 3). For Bourdieu, the media construct rather than merely represent an independent reality (Bourdieu 1991: 166). Der Derian’s theory of virtuality (Der Derian 2000)

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goes further, portraying the media as not just a chronicler or even a reflective device by which policies, identities and outcomes can be played back but as a form of psychiatric therapy where we can play out international politics by providing self-fulfilling prophecies in a virtual world. ‘By second-guessing and rehearsing arguments endlessly real policies never have to be implemented or tested, they can just be talked about.’ Both authors suggest ways in which media is part of politico-normative power in IR, and in order to access this interpretive power we turn to media discourse and journalistic content. In order to proceed with our argument, and to understand the contribution made by the media in the Leeson case as a mechanism in shaping public discourse, we need to examine two things: first, the nature of the power which allowed it to bend and subvert the narrative so effectively; and, second – in order to understand the nexus between the practice of journalism and the public representation of a given narrative – the particular sociology of the media at work. Our focus is on the basic function of news reporting, which constitutes the largest – in quantitative terms – element of media discourse, rather than on commentary or editorial opinion. The concept of media and information providers operating not only as channels for the political messages of social and governmental forces but also as social participants in their own right is an integral part of daily experience. Yet the interactivity of these two roles remains an elusive element in political communications studies (Axford and Huggins 2001: 3).7 Media power is also a contested concept, on the one hand, representing a fulcrum of ‘contending voices’ and, on the other, largely following a neo-Marxist perspective, subordinate to and reproducing the dominant ideology of an already powerful political and economic elite (Schlesinger and Tumber 1994: 15). Much IR literature focuses on the media’s ability to influence outcomes in public policy, particularly foreign policy (Cohen 1994; Shaw 1996; Livingston and Eachus 1996). However, in contrast, communication studies focus on the sociology of journalism and its organisational characteristics in order to understand the media’s capacity to shape the political in terms of the manufacture of content and journalistic style (Bennett 1996; Schlesinger and Tumber 1994; Gurevitch and Blumler 1990). Aspects of media power have been theorised in various ways. Agenda setting (Cohen 1976) is where the media select issues of public interest and contestation and force them into the realm of public debate through subjecting them to a searchlight process of attention (McCombs and Shaw 1972). The agenda-setting hypothesis, centred on the ‘the transmission of salience’, implies a power to structure and prioritise, include and exclude, issues, accounts and discourses. Framing is the power to shape the way events and facts are transmitted, ‘applying a central idea to the events reported’ (Paletz 1999: 60). It describes the process by which journalists ‘select some aspects of perceived reality . . . in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation’ (Entman 1991: 51). Frames provide ‘meaning to a series of unfolding events’ (Gamson and Modigliani

Narratives of neoliberalism 105 1989). Indexing, which asserts that journalists grant officials a ‘privileged voice’ (Bennett 1990: 103), describes the relationship between mediatised accounts and the sources of information – in other words, how journalists leverage and transmit the power of other voices in society onto a very public stage, and ultimately how they sustain sources of dominant discourse. Such theories synthesise the media’s role both as a broker in a marketplace of ideas and as the conscious interpreter of messages to public audiences. The underlying assumption is that the mass media do not form a neutral transmission channel between the sources of information and ideas and a wider public audience, but that they are a political actor (Patterson 1997), consciously interpreting the facts at their disposal, and that in the process of transmission different versions of reality may emerge (cf. Donsbach 2004). Thus media power represents the capacity to produce a picture of the ‘world outside’ which is accepted as true by public audiences. However, what we want to emphasise here is that the creation of such pictures is the result of a complex interweaving of social, institutional and political factors which underlie the processes of news production (Lippmann 1922; Schulz 1976). Objective ‘facts’ require interpretation even in news reports, and this allows considerable room for manoeuvre within the range of what is considered objective. In the Barings case, the arcane nature of the subject matter, and the need to explain a complex narrative of financial futures trading, allowed – indeed demanded – that the media played a heavily interpretive role in order to make the facts accessible to mass audiences. This gave journalists significant power to define the story, leading to efforts to frame the Leeson saga in a way which made it readable and relevant. By reducing abstruse operational and regulatory details to a human dimension, and in parlaying technical information from the banking authorities and from Barings executives, the media were in a strong position as a broker of the observable facts. In turn the media’s role grew because they were able to serve up a story which had both salience and resonance for public audiences (Schudson 1989: 159; Ettema 2005: 131). It was salient because it involved a potential threat to the financial system and went to the heart of how financial markets operated, and, more crucially for the professional and commercial interests of the media, it resonated among public audiences because of the human interest features in its narration. The portrayal of Nick Leeson as a rogue trader was an exercise in crafting mythic appeal and ritual value, which, once accomplished, ensured an extreme level of mediatisation of an otherwise obscure financial news story. In the Barings saga, the concept of framing is particularly helpful in illustrating how the media were able to achieve this and impose their own perspective on the public presentation of the story. Beyond the media, the rogue trader frame also had appeal for those providing them with information. Given the recent history of Barings as a bank with two faces, one in the traditional world of merchant banking and the other in the thrusting new universe of securities trading, there were plenty of insiders, conscious of the

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tension between these two aspects, who had an interest in portraying the bank as a victim of one man’s folly and incompetence, and who were ready to act as journalistic sources. At the same time, regulators seeking to minimise the impact of the Singapore losses on a globalised and highly interdependent financial system were also keen to use the media as the outlet for a narrative of epiphenomenal error rather than systemic failure. Yet this does not provide the whole picture because, in practice, journalists are faced with multiple possible frames – or story ‘angles’ – to pursue. How they choose between them and decide which to privilege and which to exclude is a matter of practical immediacy as much as theological choice. We therefore need to understand how those choices are made and to apply theories not only of media power but also of media practice to see how ideas are represented to mass audiences. A ‘sociology of journalism’ (Schlesinger 1990; McNair 2003) perspective shows how the tools of media power are deployed in daily practice and serves to make the built-in uncertainty behind the representation of facts and ideas more explicit. How journalists handle the processes of transmission from sources to public audience reveals much about the mechanics of defining issues, of filtering information and of fashioning narratives. The selection of ‘facts’ masks a bewildering array of independent variables on which the dependent variable of news decisions can be regressed (Donsbach 2004: 136). For example, framing of the story and the impact of the story underlines the subset of power relations within the journalistic hierarchy. Outcomes depend, at the lowest level, on the credibility and reputation of the journalist or journalists assigned to it, as well as on the status of the specialist area (the ‘desk’) within the reporting team and ultimately, at a higher level, on the political and commercial influence wielded by the media organisation as a whole. Moreover, the impact of a particular narrative is not only related to the quantitative and qualitative levels of readership and circles of decisionmakers reached by one media outlet, but is a function of other media in following its lead, or ‘copying’, a practice which is discussed below. The collapse of Barings Bank provided all the necessary ingredients of a classic morality tale, ensuring that the story received wider coverage across different media outlets and that it moved beyond the remit of the financial media. This was important in two regards: first the story became the province of journalists who featured higher up in the working hierarchy of individual newspapers, outranking city reporters, and second it became part of a different paradigm of news. The values and characteristics which made it important to front-page news editors and features editors were distinct from those which prevail on the financial pages. Clearly the notion of a rogue trader was perfect for headline writers. It was short and evocative and, as reporters at the time note, it was a convenience. Nick Bray, banking correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, remembers: ‘We did use it. It was a handy shorthand formula. I don’t remember where it came from.’8 The story was a classic ‘David and Goliath’ tale in which Leeson, the

Narratives of neoliberalism 107 working-class boy who made good and then went bad, was pitted against the establishment and class system, which he confounded through both his rise and his fall. His wife, Lisa, a photogenic blonde, became an important part of the fable. The wider implications of Leeson’s losses, in terms of the viability of the financial system and questioning the codes of practice which had enabled a 28-year-old to juggle billions of pounds of other people’s money, and lose it, while significant in the financial media’s coverage of the crisis, became consigned to the second division of the city pages, while the front section of newspapers privileged the human interest frame. The demands of the news cycle, a reiterative process of supply, demand and creation of news linked to the production capacities of media outlets, also influenced the character of the story. Technical capabilities had increased substantially so that, even in 1995, 24-hour, seven-days-a-week real-time television, online versions of newspapers, and internet news channels were a routine part of media output. The news cycle can be seen as a version of Bourdieu’s ‘conductorless orchestration of collective action’, creating generalised pressures on working practices which influence the nature of media discourses, but which frequently result from unintended, rather than strategic, teleological action.9 Ease of collection of stories became an overriding concern in the face of continuous deadlines (McQuail 2002: 167), which militated against the development of complex longer-term narratives or, more crucially, of storylines without immediate resolution; as Lippman (1922) observed: ‘there is a preference for the indisputable fact and the easy interest.’10 The pace of contemporary media output makes it significantly harder to resist that pressure for closed debates and to challenge core assumptions about reality. This is key since much of the analysis of the Barings saga, certainly on the front pages, was done and dusted before many of the more careful researched details came out. While most of the broadsheet newspapers devoted space to the Board of Banking Supervision’s report into the crash, for the front pages of other newspapers, and for the tabloid press in general, the story had by then moved on. In contrast to the rigid demands of the news cycle, the ‘extraordinary looseness’ of the process of mediatising information (Kingdon 1995: 204) produces a working atmosphere in which random chaos vies with systematic patterns of news selection.11 How events should be covered and how media discourses form are rarely the product of a single, purposeful individual or organisation. They develop through a form of osmosis, in which creative, commercial and professional stimuli combine and are intensified by the general and lethal potential of the information vacuum which must be filled by a constant stream of new news. The technical presentation of news is a typical creative stimulus in this regard. A trend towards the visual in all types of newspaper,12 which reflects more sophisticated production processes, on the one hand, and the influence of visual media, in particular television, on the other, has modified news values, creating more demand for stories with pictures or graphics and for

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stories which can be presented as thematic packages rather than traditional stand-alone news items (Paletz 1999). The visual imperative, which underlies newspaper as well as television production, dictated that such an important story be presented as ‘packages’ of individual aspects, thus mixing the discourse of individualism with systemic critiques. As an example, on 28 February 1995, the Financial Times, that least ‘tabloid’ of UK newspapers, carried no fewer than eight Nick Leeson/Barings stories on two special pages, among which were the following headlines: The Barings crisis: a low risk business until the fraud, says Barings chairman Barings chairman hints at conspiracy; trader may have meant to make money by wrecking bank Far East police in hunt for trader Lavish Leeson left Watford far behind At the same time, financial journalists and the broadsheet newspapers, not normally given to such personalised styles of reporting, began to mimic the tabloid treatment which news reporters adopted and imported the style into their own accounts. Thus, The Guardian on 4 March 1995 wrote a resume of the Barings crisis in the following terms: Nobody really knows what was racing through Nick Leeson’s mind as he hurriedly threw clothes into a couple of suitcases in his luxury Singapore condominium . . . outwardly he retained the coolness under pressure that separate the Masters of the Universe, as Tom Wolfe put it in The Bonfire of the Vanities, from the also-rans. And, perhaps more surprisingly, the economics correspondent wrote of the governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George: It was 10.30 on Friday evening when the taxis from Heathrow dropped the Governor of the Bank of England at his home in Dulwich, south-east London. Eddie George put down his bags, took off his coat and fixed himself a stiff drink. This approach typified the mix of familiar and new which is a staple combination within media discourses: the reference to Masters of the Universe created an instantly familiar mental picture of an all-powerful deus ex machina – of a boy from Watford who had filled the mould created by American Wall Street capitalism. The picture of the Bank of England governor sustained the personalisation of the narrative, where the good cop helps save the world from the deeds of the rogue trader. The rogue trader narrative was also fuelled by issues of proximity within

Narratives of neoliberalism 109 the journalistic community. Journalists work within specific subgroups, according to the issue area they write or broadcast about. These subgroups are often tightly knit, with political and industrial correspondents being examples of highly networked, interlinked professionals, while general news reporters have less tribal working practices because of the diversity of issues they cover. Within these groups, there is both copying and competition. The habit of benchmarking stories against the output of competing media organisations is a deeply ingrained daily (now hourly) working practice. Less common, but evident in tightly knit groups, is consultation between journalists about story angles, sources and even individual quotes. Journalists are described as ‘hunting in packs’ and may approach stories in a collegial as well as a competitive way (Crouse 1972: 15). Decisions made about ‘reality’ represent group dynamics and group norms (Donsbach 2004: 143), and these dynamics are part of the nature of media power. Frames applied by one newspaper will frequently be duplicated by another, within a context of intense rivalry and competition. The use of the rogue trader label reflected the impact of proximity on media discourses. Once adopted by some media organisations as part of their initiative to personalise the story, it was, often reluctantly, copied by rivals. Reporters on the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times claim to have resisted the characterisation as too lowbrow for their reporting culture, but found nonetheless that it crept into headlines written by sub-editors.13 Precedence also plays a significant role in setting, or reaffirming, the parameters within which a particular narrative is related. How a story has been told before creates a zone of comfort and familiarity which makes its retelling more acceptable. The effect of this copying/competition dynamic and the influence of proximity in the Barings saga was to standardise reporting and allow less room for the development of counter-narratives or alternative framing. The role of sources in news production has led to a rich vein of empirical work which sheds light on the susceptibility of media to existing discourses (van Dijk 1989; Dunwoody and Griffin 1993; Tumber 2000; Babe 2005) on issues from racism to environmentalism and crime. There is more going on than the bald assertion that the media are crucial to the persuasive reproduction of dominant ideologies (Klaehn 2005), or even that there is a privileged relationship between the media and sources of power (Hall et al. 1978; Bennett 1990). Occupational demands and norms such as the need for rapid and reiterative output increase media dependence on multiple sources of information, while such sources are frequently available in desktop form through electronic mediation such as e-mail or the worldwide web. The intensification of the personal has also led media discourses away from ideological debates into favouring ephemeral treatments of the new, which can be revived and refashioned on a daily (or more frequent) basis to satisfy an urge for something new without imposing change or innovation at more profound levels of reality. ‘The media play on the natural human

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tendency to understand complex processes through the actions of prominent personalities. Accordingly the news often exaggerates the role of leading figures at the expense of other and often more significant factors’ (Patterson 1997: 448). These developments have contributed to rather than diminished the random nature of news factors and the inbuilt chaos which pervades the treatment of news stories. To claim that journalistic practice produces media discourses which may be sharply at odds with other constructions of reality (activist accounts, for example) is itself nothing new. What merits further examination is how the operationalisation of media discourses is intrinsic to the ideational. Pragmatic considerations vie with ideological determinism to influence discursive outcomes. In a case such as Barings, these practices appear to militate against both discursive change and counter-hegemonic narratives. On the grounds that change and revolution are themselves ‘compelling narratives’ and the basis of good, dramatic stories, this would appear to be an unlikely hypothesis. Yet we take the above arguments to show that journalistic praxis, with all its chaotic self-contradictions, dominated the characterisation of Nick Leeson as a ‘rogue trader’, producing a discourse of individual aberration rather than of the Barings saga simply being a reflection of ideology and elite interests.

How we study ideas: the implications of the Barings case We conclude our argument here with a few reflections on how to study ideas – namely, how we should approach the study of ideas, which ideas should we study, and when we should be concerned with ideas and the importance of moments of ‘crisis’. One drawback of the meta-theoretical debates about the significance of ideas is the tendency it produces to prejudge (prejudice) what is essentially an empirical question as an ontological one (Hay 2002b). Unfortunately such ontological debates, such as the ideational–material and structure–agency, are not resolvable. There are not any right answers as such, but simply places to begin from, which sensitise us to the nature of social reality in different ways. The precise importance of ideas cannot be derived from ontological assertions, but rather have to be assessed in a case-by-case manner. The debate is often had at such a level of theoretical generalisation that it is difficult to see how the protagonists might think creatively about using/studying ideas. And here is the rub: it also detracts from other questions we might conceivably ask, one of which we address here. Which ideas should we study14 and how should we study them? The types of ideas that are studied are generally macro-level, collective ideas. We can think here of anarchy (Wendt 1992), world order (Cox 1986), human rights (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999), (national) foreign policy (Goldstein and Keohane 1993), security communities (Adler and Barnett 1998), macro-economic paradigms (Hall 1989) and national identity (Wendt

Narratives of neoliberalism 111 1994). The problem with such accounts is that they often assume a coherence that just is not there. Even if they remain sensitive to the differential reach and effects of such ideas, they cannot help but fall prey to their reification. This is because ideas are treated as having an essence or a presence that is given prior to the analysis. In this sense the analysis is often concerned with identifying the existence and significance of socially/discursively constructed ideas rather than with exploring their construction. Too often lost in these accounts is the politics.15 Our argument here is that this impedes our critical faculties. It becomes difficult to explain the existence of ideologies/ideas beyond structural suggestions of historical and cultural cumulation; they exist because they just are. Rather than seeing ideological conflict as a titanic or Manichean systemic/ anti-systemic struggle, a better analogy is one of multiple skirmishes,16 and a more helpful perspective is to shift from a top-down analysis of how structures shape our lives to a bottom-up analysis of how these structures are sustained. So the significant point here, in addition to the rather less contentious claim about the importance of politics, is that, to understand these ideas – such as neoliberalism – that are said to be politically significant, we must look at them at one step or at several steps removed. It is important to see how they are sustained by supporting practices and ideas that enable them to resonate. Analytically speaking, we need to be concerned less with the overall structure – as it appears in toto – than with individual elements, the props. It is in these props, these instances of worldviews, that an idea exists, where it is more material through existing and ongoing practices. One of the most important consequences of the ideational turn is that it sensitises us to the possibilities of change. How exactly do we see when ideas are working? In many ways this is much easier when we are analysing change, since the emergence of new and different ideas is much easier to identify (Hall 1989). Because the protean nature of the intellectual regime remains hidden from view for most of the time, crises are not necessarily important because they reveal the fragility of a regime or its imminent collapse (Hay 1996), but per contra they offer us an object lesson in the way that the regime reproduces and stabilises itself. It is at these points that the interpretations of the crises are policed, and thus the manner in which a dominant interpretation is constructed is very revealing. There is, moreover, something of a positive analytical externality, so to speak, of focusing in upon micro-ideas. For it is cases such as these where it is possible to minimise the tendency of ideas to remain vague and amorphous. The case of rogue trading is exactly such an example of a micro-idea being contested through a moment of crisis. We have no problem in referring to the overall regime (e.g. neoliberalism, financial regulatory regime) identifiable as an analytical shorthand. However, we do want to reject two tendencies that are commonly associated with such a move: first, that we can identify and trace a simple correspondence relationship between the knowledge and ideas that sustain the regime and those interests that it serves; and, second, that the regime can be treated as a

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monolithic and secure ideology that is singular in its effects. Instead, each moment is contested on its own terms and may draw upon an inconsistent variety of different discourses which are not necessarily logical. As Clark (1997: 223–4) suggests, ‘The British Government and the media have become obsessed with this kind of demonised character, finding him everywhere there is financial mismanagement.’ We have suggested that, in order to understand the successful reproduction of neoliberal norms, it is necessary to study moments of contestation such as the Barings crisis. But a tendency to focus upon macro-ideas, both intellectually (as social constructivism tends to do) and critically (as in the case of neoliberalism), means a poorer understanding of how ideas actually work to support the dominant regime. This is especially acute when trying to explain the continuity of a set of ideas, as is the case with neoliberalism. Hence, because of this, any resort to speaking of ‘neoliberalism’, and so on, must at all times remain explicitly self-conscious and nothing more than shorthand for what is a bundle of sometimes contradictory and usually disparate discourses and practices.

Conclusions On the one hand, this is a story about Barings Bank and Leeson, but, in another more important way, it is not about them at all. It is a story about ‘neoliberal financial hegemony’ and ‘the power of the media’, and how both are radically problematised in the telling of the story. The operation and interaction of these two structures, one ideological and the other pragmatic, worked to produce a dominant narrative of the collapse and to reify the ‘rogue trader’. Almost universally, the trope characterised and structured media reports of the story, and in turn fashioned public and policy discourses (Tickell 1996). This chapter set out to examine the contributory mechanisms which influenced how a complex set of events was portrayed in the public domain via repetition and reinforcement in the media – in short, how the hegemonic liberal policy position was sustained. We argue that it is important for studies of ideas to integrate the media as a significant order/genre of discourse which helps determine how ideas are presented and represented. The media’s influence over discursive formations is particularly acute at moments of potential rupture, when discourses are placed under very public examination and contestation and where the media’s power as both channel and political actor is implicated. Typically, however, this influence over discursive formation and the interaction of the empirical sociology of journalism and the power of ideas has been less investigated than the media’s role in influencing the ‘end game’ of political outcomes. Our contention is that the media’s ability to disrupt or perpetuate ideas should be seen as the result of professional practice as much as of ideological motivation. Thus we have argued that there is a cultural/discursive consequence somewhat separate from the initial and strategic use of the discourse, and that this second-order and representational aspect of

Narratives of neoliberalism 113 discourse needs to be taken into consideration when viewing the power and effect of ideas in politics. We began from the argument that the particular understanding of financial failure at Barings, and of rogue traders more generally, leads to and legitimises a particularly liberal form of regulatory regime. Crucially, for the themes of this volume, we argue that, in order to understand how and why such ideas maintain the status quo, we need to look at the more mundane level of everyday media practices rather than ‘Bilderbergian’ tendencies. Also, we have suggested that the importance of the intellectual and critical strategy of focusing on what might be seen as ‘secondary ideas’ and moments of contestation has merit. In order to comprehend the enduring strength of neoliberalism, secondary ideas and a media perspective are part of an approach of disaggregation, which demands the interrogation of the ‘moments of neoliberalism’. It is clear that both intellectually and critically the validation of this claim needs to be demonstrated in multiple cases, or multiple moments. As such it would seem to suggest a potentially fruitful research programme for the study of both the media in IR/IPE and ideas more generally.

Notes 1 As has been noted by a number of commentators, despite the nature of modern trading, especially in derivatives markets, Leeson had not even got his mathematics ‘O-Level’. 2 Warrants are simply an option attached to bonds issued by Japanese companies to buy the company’s shares at a particular price at a future date. With the Japanese stock market booming in the late 1980s, they effectively offered a very cheap way of purchasing shares, and, for those dealing in them, a very profitable venture. 3 For instance, in considering his predicament over the Christmas of 1993 Leeson was reluctant to return to Barings, but was persuaded by his wife of the sheer stupidity of passing up on his forthcoming £450,000 bonus. On the more general point, see Clark (1997: 224). 4 An extended examination of the different ways in which Leeson was constituted as a sovereign subject is contained in David Hudson, ‘Rogue Traders: The Discursive Construction of Financial Normality and Knowledge’, paper delivered at the workshop on ‘The Ideational Turn in International and European Studies’, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, 1 June 2002. 5 Adam Tickell (1996) does this very well. Our argument puts more emphasis upon the sociology of journalism than ideological commitments. 6 In some sense Leeson too had an interest in cultivating this image, post-event. This can be seen through his securing interviews, newspaper exclusives, a book and a film. ‘There is a market, apparently, in this kind of personalised imagery’ (Clark 1997: 233, n. 4). 7 See also Sassi (2001: 90). Sassi also refers to a rich literature, linked to the cultural turn, concerning the discursive paradigm of subjectivity and identity. 8 Interview with Nick Bray, banking correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, 20 April 2004.

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9 Or Foucault’s ‘strategies without a knowing strategist’; both quoted in Ashley (1988: 255); cf. Hay (2002a). 10 By their very nature, the wider implications of the Barings crisis – on the bank, on trading in Singapore and on the global financial system – took longer to play out and resolve than the more immediate storyline of Leeson’s personal predicament. It was simply more axiomatic in view of the demands of the news cycle to focus on Leeson’s whereabouts, the details of what he had done and moves to detain him, than to produce more profound judgements on the wider implications of his actions. 11 A colourful example was given by The Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger, in the Hetherington Memorial Lecture at the University of Stirling in 2001, when he cited The Sun’s decision to lead its front page with a story about the rubber duck in the Queen’s bath on a day when The Guardian was reporting suicide bombs in the Middle East. 12 The enduring exception in the English-speaking press has been the Wall Street Journal, which eschews pictures in favour of drawings. This tradition is under review, however. 13 Interviews with Nick Bray, 20 April 2004, and Glenn Whitney, 15 May 2004. 14 On the face of it there seem to be few less insipid and self-evidential questions to ask – surely ‘important ones’ being the obvious answer. Naturally we might disagree over what are the important ideas to study, but this disagreement often shares a common conviction that we should focus directly on the key paradigms, ideas and discourses that appear to produce the effects we see. A rather different debate might be about the significance of what we will refer to here as the relationship between primary ideas and secondary ideas, where primary ideas are politically significant (the usual fare of social analysis) and secondary ideas are those that, with care, can be shown to be diffusely constitutive but nevertheless central to the primary ideas. Of course the identification of different levels of ideas is not novel in itself (Hall 1989), but what we are asserting here is the analytical significance of looking at a particular level of ideas. Moreover, this is contrary to existing tendencies to understand ideas as significant at the macro-level. 15 The point here is that we as subjects use ideas; they are useful to us, they serve our interests, and thus they are produced, defended and reproduced. Useful ideas are not left to dissolve. This is why the ongoing politics of ideas is so central to the study of ideas. 16 The thinking here owes much to Foucault’s ‘analytics of power’ as outlined in his (1981) History of Sexuality.

References Adler, E., and M. Barnett (eds) (1998) Security Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ashley, R. (1988) ‘Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique’, Millennium, 17(2): 227–62. Augar, P. (2000) The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism: The Rise and Fall of London’s Investment Banks. London: Penguin. Axford, B., and R. Huggins (eds) (2001) New Media and Politics. London: Sage. Babe, R. (2005) ‘Newspaper Discourses on the Environment’, in J. Klaehn (ed.) Filtering the News: Essays on Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model. London: Black Rose Books. Baker, A. (1999) ‘Nebuleuse and the “internationalization of the state” in the UK? The case of HM Treasury and the Bank of England’, Review of International Political Economy, 6(1): 79–100.

Narratives of neoliberalism 115 Bennett,W. L. (1990) ‘Towards a Theory of Press–State Relations’, Journal of Communication, 40(2): 103–25. —— (1996) ‘An Introduction to Journalism Norms and Representations of Politics’, Political Communication, 13: 373–84. Blumler, J., and M. Gurevitch (1995) The Crisis of Public Communication. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity. Clark, G. L. (1997) ‘Rogues and Regulation in Global Finance: Maxwell, Leeson and the City of London’, Regional Studies, 31(3): 221–36. Cohen, B. C. (1976) The Public’s Impact on Foreign Policy. Lanham, MD: University of America Press. —— (1994) The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cox, R. (1986) ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, in R. O. Keohane (ed.) Neorealism and its Critics. New York: Columbia University Press. Crouse, T. (1972) The Boys on the Bus: Riding with the Campaign Press Corps. New York: Random House. Davies, M., and M. Niemann (2002) ‘The Everyday Spaces of Global Politics: Work, Leisure, and Family’, New Political Science, 24(4): 557–77. Der Derian, J. (2000) ‘Virtuous War/Virtual Theory’, International Affairs, 76(4): 771–88. Donsbach, W. (2004) ‘Psychology of News Decisions: Factors behind Journalists’ Professional Behavior’, Journalism, 5(2): 131–57. Dreyfus, H. L., and P. Rabinow (1982) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Brighton: Harvester. Dunwoody, S., and R. Griffin (1993) ‘Journalistic Strategies for Reporting LongTerm Environmental Issues’, in A. Hansen (ed.) The Mass Media and Environmental Issues. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Entman, R. M. (1991) ‘Framing U.S. Coverage of International News: Contrasts in Narratives of the KAL and Iran Air Incidents’, Journal of Communication, 41(4): 6–27. Ettema, J. (2005) ‘Crafting Cultural Resonance: Imaginative Power in Everyday Journalism’, Journalism, 6(2): 131–52. Foucault, M. (1981) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin. Gamson, W., and A. Modigliani (1989) ‘Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach’, American Journal of Sociology, 95(1): 1–37. Gapper, J., and Denton, N. (1996) All That Glitters: The Fall of Barings. London: Penguin. Gill, S. (1995) ‘Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 24(3): 399–423. Gill, S., and D. Law (1988) The Global Political Economy: Perspectives, Problems, and Policies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Goede, M. de (2001) ‘Discourses of Scientific Finance and the Failure of Long-Term Capital Management’, New Political Economy, 6(2): 149–70. Goldstein, J., and R. O. Keohane (eds) (1993) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Gurevitch, M., and J. Blumler (1990) ‘Political Communication Systems and Democratic Values’, in J. Lichtenberg (ed.) Democracy and the Mass Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, P. (ed.) (1989) The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hall, S., et al. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan. Hay, C. (1996) ‘Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the “Winter of Discontent”’, Sociology, 30(2): 253–77. —— (2002a) ‘Globalisation as a Problem of Political Analysis: Restoring Agents to a “Process without a Subject” and Politics to a Logic of Economic Compulsion’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 15(3): 379–92. —— (2002b) Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kingdon, J. (1995) Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. 2nd edn, New York: Longman. Klaehn, J. (ed.) (2005) Filtering the News: Essays on Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model. London: Black Rose Books. Kynaston, D. (2001) The City of London, Vol. 4: A Club No More, 1945–2000. London: Chatto & Windus. Lippmann, W. (1922) Public Opinion. New York: Free Press. Livingston, S., and T. Eachus (1996) ‘Indexing News after the Cold War’, Political Communication, 13: 423–36. McCombs, M. E., and D. L. Shaw (1972) ‘The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 36: 176–87. McNair, B. (2003) Introduction to Political Communication. London: Routledge. McQuail, D. (2002) Reader in Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage. Murphy, C. N., and R. Tooze (1991) The New International Political Economy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Paletz, D. (1999) The Media in American Politics. New York: Longman. Paletz, D., and R. Entman (1981) Media, Power, Politics. New York: Free Press. Patterson, T. (1997) ‘The News Media: An Effective Political Actor?’, Political Communication, 14: 445–55. Risse, T., S. C. Ropp and K. Sikkink (eds) (1999) The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sassi, S. (2001) ‘The Transformation of the Public Sphere’, in B. Axford and R. Huggins (eds) New Media and Politics. London: Sage. Schlesinger, P. (1990) ‘Rethinking the Sociology of Journalism’, in M. Ferguson (ed.) Public Communication: The New Imperatives. London: Sage. Schlesinger, P., and H. Tumber (1994) Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schudson, M. (1989) ‘How Culture Works: Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy of Symbols’, Theory and Society, 18: 153–80. —— (1995) The Power of News. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schulz, W. (1976) Die Konstruktion von Realität in Nachritchtenmedien. Freiburg and Munich: Karl Alber. Shaw, M. (1996) Civil Society and Media in Global Crises. London: Pinter. Thomson, R. (1998) Apocalypse Roulette: The Lethal World of Derivatives. London: Macmillan.

Narratives of neoliberalism 117 Tickell, A. (1996) ‘Making a Melodrama out of a Crisis: Reinterpreting the Collapse of Barings Bank’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14(1): 5–33. Tumber, H. (2000) Media Power, Professionals and Policies. London: Routledge. van Dijk, T. (1988) News as Discourse. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. —— (1989) ‘Mediating Racism’, in R. Wodak (ed.) Language, Power and Ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wendt, A. (1992) ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, 46(2): 391–425. —— (1994) ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State’, American Political Science Review, 88: 384–96.

6

Beyond the rationalist bias? On the ideational construction of risk Oliver Kessler

Introduction To examine the consequences of the ideational turn for an understanding of institutions, it is common to put institutions and uncertainty in diametrical opposition: the function of institutions or regimes is commonly conceived of as the reduction of uncertainty and associated inefficiencies. Even if there is an acknowledgement of the existence of ‘genuine’, ‘radical’ or ‘strong’ uncertainty for understanding institutions, many contributions to the literature on ideas focus predominantly either on how uncertainty can be ‘resolved’ or ‘reduced’ in order to allow for ‘rational’ action, or on how ‘strong uncertainty’ might be restricted to exceptional cases such as ‘crises’. Although it is certainly the case that ‘genuine uncertainty’ is crucial for understanding crises, less effort has so far been spent on understanding how and why uncertainty is maintained and reproduced. For example, by asking how new contingencies or ‘newness’ can emerge or how structural change is possible, one implicitly points to processes by which structures become decoupled and generate new uncertainty. The same point can be expressed in more temporal terms: if uncertainty is already reduced to manageable risks, and if we want to focus on social change or actions over time, then the question becomes relevant as to where this uncertainty comes from and how the (un)structuring of the future occurs. I expect that hardly anyone would suggest that regimes and institutions reduce uncertainty once and for all. Hence, by referring to change – and the role of institutions in structuring this change – one needs a framework that presupposes some relationship between the present and the future, how present decisions are relevant for the outlook of possible futures, and how ‘genuine’ uncertainty decouples, reconfigures and allows for a specific relationship between present and possible future events. Obviously, there are many possible ways and forms in which uncertainty is reproduced, and I definitely do not want to provide a complete list or a comprehensive set of those mechanisms. Nor is it my intention to criticise other constructivist approaches to ideas. Rather, this contribution is interested solely in showing that this ‘decoupling’, this reproduction of uncer-

Beyond the rationalist bias? 119 tainty, is relevant for understanding social systems in general and institutions in particular. This contribution approaches the notion of uncertainty by focusing on the structure-forming capacity of non-knowledge and considers what role the production of non-knowledge, ignorance and the unknown plays in examining the ‘ideational’ foundations of social institutions. It thus suggests that non-knowledge exists, that it has a history and that there are criteria by which we try to deal with it. Focusing on knowledge and non-knowledge allows us to see that genuine uncertainty is everyday practice and ultimately even a necessary requirement for the reproduction of institutions. Acknowledging non-knowledge might provide a different avenue for examining the importance of ideas: ideas do not produce only the things we know but also the things we do not know: it is not only what we know that is socially constructed but also what we do not know. For example, the rise of derivates in financial markets has created not only new knowledge about how to manage risks, but also new non-knowledge in the form of new systemic risks, unfamiliar contingencies, anomalies and unintended consequences. This example highlights a more general observation: it is not possible to produce knowledge without at the very same time producing new non-knowledge. The increase of knowledge leads not to a reduction but, in the face of new problems, anomalies, risks and unintended consequences, to an increase in non-knowledge: the more we know, the more we become aware of what we do not know. By considering how institutions structure the unknown, an ever reproducing circle becomes visible: new knowledge creates at the same time new ignorance and uncertainties, which then allow for the development of new techniques or instruments – i.e. new forms of knowledge – by which we attempt to control the unknown. This interplay results in an evolutionary process in which new risks, new non-knowledge and new regulations interact – where ‘strong uncertainty’ is to be treated as an everyday experience rather than being associated with the ‘exceptional’. This focus on non-knowledge may allow us to see institutions not simply as devices for ‘rational’ decisions and also to acknowledge the way in which they structure practices by determining what and how something is not known. Institutions both absorb uncertainty into manageable risk and produce new uncertainty; they provide certain mechanisms that determine what is known and exclude others. Central to this focus on ‘genuine uncertainty’ is the idea of social contingency: that the future, present and past are not simply ‘there’, that change does not simply ‘occur’, but that the way in which the present is structured constructs the horizon of future possibilities. To pursue this ‘thick’ constructivist approach to ideas, this chapter is structured as follows: the first section provides a short overview of recent contributions to the ideational turn. Here, it first identifies a ‘causal’ and a ‘constitutive’ approach to ideas.1 It shows how and why the biased focus on the reduction of uncertainty enters the debate and also the associated conceptual difficulties associated with mental causality that are rooted in the mind/

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matter distinction. The second section provides a more detailed discussion of uncertainty. It shows how various definitions of non-knowledge manifest themselves in the distinction of risk and uncertainty. Here, the chapter distinguishes an ontological as opposed to an epistemological concept of nonknowledge. The ontological concept starts from the assumption that the space of future possibilities can be characterised by probability theory – that is, a set of possible states of the world and security equivalents. The epistemological concept, on the other hand, focuses on possibilities and risks beyond the confines of standard probability theory in order to analyse the ways in which probability is constructed – how a possible future is formed. The third section further discusses how these two concepts of non-knowledge give rise to different definitions of systemic risks. The empirical relevance of these considerations will be the subject of the fourth section. By taking discussions on Basel II as an example, it inquires how such a change of perspective towards ‘non-knowledge’ changes our understanding of institutions and regimes. By interpreting the recent turn of credit-rating agencies from being an authority to being in authority as a means to provide a learning mechanism and thus an answer to the problem of non-knowledge, the chapter will show empirically both how governance regimes deal with non-knowledge2 and how they try to reduce it – and in this very act reproduce it.

The idea of ideas: assessing the new ideational orthodoxy The literature on ideas has grown rapidly in depth and scope over the past decade. Indeed, the revival of ideas emerged with the new institutionalism (Blyth 1997: 230). But while institutions were the dominant theme in the 1980s, ‘ideas’ replaced ‘institutions’ during the 1990s.3 Even within the current general debate between rationalists and constructivists, concerns about the matter and relevance of ideas have become of central importance. To prove the relevance of ideas is to prove the insufficiency of the materialism we find in the neorealism vs neoliberalism discourse. It might be fair to say that the ideational turn is irremediably linked to the third or potentially fourth debate which determines our contemporary disciplinary historiography and identity. This is not the place to rehearse the differences between rationalists and constructivists in their understanding of ideas (see Gofas and Hay in this volume). What this debate characterises, however, and what both approaches seem to share, is a strong conceptual link between ideas and knowledge: ideas determine what actors know about themselves, other actors and ‘the world’. These approaches seek to demonstrate the importance of ideas by showing how and what kind of knowledge mattered in some potentially ‘socially constructed’ context. Without wanting to criticise any of the widely recognised approaches, I simply suggest that it might be useful to look at the construction of non-knowledge – in particular, since such an avenue might shed a different light on the role of ideas in IR. To see why, let us for the time being use the contemporary standard and differentiate between

Beyond the rationalist bias? 121 a constitutive and a causal approach to ideas (Laffey and Weldes 1997; Wendt 1999). The positive or rational approach to ideas seeks to examine the ‘impact’ of ideas on principally rational behaviour (see Weingast 1995). In this approach, ideas enter to the extent that the framework of utility functions, instrumental rationality and pay-off matrices cannot account for observable variance of state behaviour.4 Building on their definition of ideas as ‘beliefs held by individuals’ (1993: 3), Goldstein and Keohane identify three kinds of ideas: worldviews, principled ideas and causal ideas. Worldviews are the most general and abstract form of ideas, structuring what we consider to be possible or impossible. Principled beliefs are on a more intermediate level and define what and how we differentiate right from wrong or just from unjust and build the normative basis of social order. We may believe that humans are born with inherent rights or that the state is to be kept separate from the church. Finally, ‘causal beliefs’ are beliefs about concrete means–end relationships – e.g. whether we believe an atomic bomb can bring about democracy. After Goldstein and Keohane have pushed ‘worldviews’ and thus ‘complex learning’ or ‘systemic change’ aside, ideas for them influence public policy (1) when the principled or causal beliefs they embody provide road maps that increase actors’ clarity of goals or ends–means relationships; (2) when they become focal points that define cooperative solutions or act as coalitional glue; and (3) when they become embedded in political institutions. As Gofas (2001) has described in more detail, Goldstein and Keohane (1993: 8) identify here two principled ‘causal’ approaches to ideas in relation to the material world. The first approach ‘derives from the need of individuals to determine their own preferences or to understand the causal relationship between their goals and alternative political strategies’ (ibid.: 12). It thus conceptualises the relationship between mind and matter by putting ideas before the formulation of material interests: ideas affect policy-making by serving as road maps. Ideas might be supported by ‘epistemic communities’, but ideas are taken to be pre-existing entities which may limit the range of available strategies or pursued goals. The second approach affects strategic interaction directly and enters when the game is already given its in final presence. Here, ideas ‘contribute to outcomes in the absence of a unique equilibrium’ (ibid., original emphasis). Thus, ideas may be important ‘precisely because unique predictions cannot be generated through an examination of interests and strategic interaction’and ‘the ideas held by players are often the key to a game’s outcome’ (ibid.: 17). In this context, ideas may serve as tipping point or focal point that determines which equilibrium strategy will be played and how collectively rational or irrational that result might be. Or, as Stephen Krasner summarised it: ‘Ideas have not made possible alternatives that did not previously exist; they legitimated political practices that were already a fact on the ground. Ideas have been one among several instruments that actors have invoked to promote their own mundane interests’ (Krasner 1993: 238).

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Starting from the distinction of ideas and interests, this approach makes two but interdependent assumptions: first, it treats ideas analogously to objects and ‘things’ where mental causality is understood in terms of ‘efficient causality’ (Tønder in this volume; Kessler 2007). By putting ideas in the context of a dualistic mind–body problematique, the causal approach is inherently biased towards material explanations, as their concept of ‘causation’ works analogously to cause–effect relations between objects. It is implicitly assumed that ideas have similar or even the same properties as material objects. Second, rational approaches assume that ideas can be located in the mind of pre-given individuals which confront their objectively given reality (Laffey and Weldes 1997: 203). Just as the unity of ‘beliefs’ and ‘interests’ is to be found in a pre-given subject which ‘has’ or ‘holds’ certain ideas or beliefs, so are ideas held or not held by states or private actors (see, for example, Ikkenberry 1993). As Mark Blyth (1997) and Laffey and Weldes (1997: 200) have already pointed out, this leads proponents of this approach to treat ideas functionally as inexpensive means to reach and foster consensus. The power of ideas and the very reason why they ‘have impact’ is based on a sponsorship argument quite analogous to the one we find in the common norms-entrepreneur literature. By assuming pre-existing actors, this framework inevitably leaves open questions concerning the ways in which ideas may influence the self-observation of states and thus the formulation of strategies, which again feeds back on the formulation, emergence or decay of ideas. The question why ideas had more impact than others is usually referred back to interests [sic] of elites and states. The question of how ideas induce change and how this change feeds back on ideas themselves cannot be analysed in the confines of action theory, in particular not in a version that still clings to a vocabulary of dependent/intervening/independent variable. This point becomes clearer when we note that the distinction between beliefs and interests is based on the Cartesian distinction of res extensa and res cogitans. Simply put, if mind and body are two different spheres, or even two substances, the vocabulary of movement, force, heartbeat and chemical reactions is different not only in degree but also in kind, as the vocabulary of experiencing or wishing. Yet even diehard reductionists had to concede that this dualism runs into inconsistencies between ‘upward determination’ and ‘downward causation’ (Bieri 1993; also Kessler 2007). That is: starting from the presumption that ideas and matter are two distinct substances, there is no coherent way of finding one explanation that can account for both an ‘emergence’ of ideas from its material base and its causal influence on the material world, as it is not clear how mental ‘entities’ can impact on a physically closed system – without at the same time running into inconsistencies on the question as to whether mental causality is to be understood in ‘mental’ or physical terms.5 In the end, within the framework of the causal-positive approach to ideas, either ideas or matter are ontologically primitive. What this approach cannot account for is the mutual constitution of ideas and the material world. Consequently, any attempt to bridge the emergence

Beyond the rationalist bias? 123 of ideas and ‘mental causality’ has to fall back on either an ontological physicalism where ideas are epiphenomenal – i.e. arguments on ‘elites’, ‘sponsors’, etc; or on a form of idealism, where only ideas exist (‘turtles all the way down’). Maybe on account of our training and personal interests in power, strategies and wars, many studies often pursue the first path. Hence, even though ideas are mentioned, it is institutions that do the explaining of state actions. And Yee confirms: ‘it is more accurate and less cumbersome to say that [. . .] institutions affect policies, rather than to argue that ideas affect policies by being encased in these institutions’ (Yee 1996: 89). This has profound consequences for an understanding of ‘institution’ itself. In this context, social institutions are understood as some sort of allocation devices between interests and pay-off functions. Marked as equilibria points, institutions are fully explainable and reducible to strategies of the players. Properties of institutions are derived from the structure and property of equilibria concepts. The result is in the end regulatory allocation of resources, described by an output function which translates optimal actions (signals, talk) to optimal allocations. Institutions are thus derived from rational, ruleutilitarian calculus. They are the allocation mechanism where the justification of their existence is a functional one: they leave everybody better off. Yet the question of institutions and their changes (i.e. social change), the question of praxis, is reduced to a technical problem of how incentives have to be structured. Unfortunately, we encounter similar conceptual difficulties concerning ‘mental causality’ in the writings of ‘middle ground’ constructivists who would, when asked, support a ‘constitutive’ approach to ideas. This is not to argue that there is an essence of constructivism that is rather troublesome, or that ‘all’ moderate constructivists necessarily engage in category mistakes. Rather, I would simply like to point to a conceptual problem rooted in the way in which ideas are conceptually separated from ‘matter’. For example, Kathryn Sikkink, in her Ideas and Institutions (1991), tries to bridge exactly this link between mind and body when she notes that ‘the separation of ideas and interests is fundamentally flawed. Political and ideological factors influence the very meaning and interpretation of economic and ideas and recommendations’ (1991: 5). But, lacking a conceptual apparatus that could treat mind and body coherently, she needs to retreat one page later to a materialinterest based ‘sponsorship’ argument (ibid.: 6).6 Or consider her following summary: ‘Ideas alone do not account for the different outcomes in Brazil and Argentina. Rather, the degree of ideological consensus on economic policies in the two countries is one of the primary variables explaining consolidation of an economic model’ (ibid.: 251). We encounter the same problem in Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999). As is well known, Wendt tries to establish a critical realist position of IR.7 But he runs into conflict when he seeks to maintain ‘causal explanations’ while acknowledging reflexivity of actors, which requires a transcendence of the very subject–object (i.e. mind–body)

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distinction as key characteristics of the social world (Wendt 1999: 76) that causal explanations presuppose. His difficulties with the mind–body problem, and thus the question of what role ideas play in constituting social reality, including methodological considerations, can be found in several instances. For example, consider his conception of social structures: First: Social structures are defined by shared understandings, expectations, or knowledge. These constitute the actors in a situation and the nature of their relationships whether cooperative what are you up to? or conflictual . . . Second: social structures include material resources like gold and tanks. . . . Third: social structures exist, not in actors’ heads nor in material capabilities but in practices. Social structures exist only in process. (Wendt 1995: 73–4) Yet it remains unclear, if we assume that ‘mental causality’ exists, how ‘shared understandings’ and material things such as ‘tanks’ can build a unity as a structure. Or the other way around: if we concede that these are different structures, how can we understand their relationship? In 1999 Wendt tried to circumvent this problem by proposing supervenience as a frame of the mind– matter relation, which he then denoted as collective and common knowledge. But supervenience is not able to transcend the ontological dualism and serves just as a placeholder for mental causality and those mechanisms in need of deeper elaboration. As Friedrich Kratochwil equally noted: ‘having postulated the primacy of ontology, having furthermore acknowledged the important difference between natural and social kinds, the surprising conclusion is that none of all this matters!’ (Kratochwil 2000: 88). In the end, as long as we stay within the confines of the mind–body problem and treat ideas and matter as two different ‘stuffs’, there is always the possibility of raising questions concerning the ‘materiality of ideas’ (i.e. sponsorship) and the ‘ideational foundation of matter’, with no hope of consistent answers. Equally, many of the constructivist contributions which reproduce the mind–body distinction and support a naturalistic conception of mental causality, even if they do not only try openly to save rationalism by building bridges, nevertheless show a rationalist bias in their treatment of ideas, as long as they are silent on how the mind–body distinction can be left behind.8 One avenue to lead away from ontological dualism without falling back on idealism can be found in the analysis of language and communication. Thick constructivist analyses of the discursive or communicative construction of institutions have pointed out that institutions not only regulate but constitute actors: institutions such as money, marriage and property, which structure expectations, inhabit cultural categories and imply shared conventions. Thus, to argue for a materialistic conception of institutions by pointing to ‘trees’ or ‘dogs’ is to engage in some crucial category mistakes. Physical descriptions fail to see the difference why some metal will count as money and

Beyond the rationalist bias? 125 not as jewellery. Money is not solely a matter of its physical property, but of its use. That is, the semantics of ‘money’ has no reality beyond its ‘use’, as Searle confirms: the very definition of the word ‘money’ is self-referential, because in order that a type of thing should satisfy the definition, in order that it should fall under the concept of money, it must be believed to be, or used as, or regarded as, etc., satisfying the definition. For these sorts of facts, it seems to be almost a logical truth that you cannot fool all the people at one time. If everybody always thinks that this sort of thing is money, and they use it as money and treat it as money, then it is money. (Searle 1995: 32) This self-referential basis of institutions implies that institutions don’t have any existence beyond communication: their objectivity or assumed objective reality results from the condensation of meaning expressed and reproduced in the use of language. Yet this implies that the existence of institutions needs to be presupposed before any inquiry as to their characteristics and structures is possible. Take, for example, property rights. The owner of a restaurant is the owner because there is an overall consensus about his property rights. If asked, he could produce a contract confirming his claims. But this overall consensus or ‘contract of contract’ itself cannot be defined independently of references to the institution of ‘property’. The same holds for money: definitions in terms of M1 to M3 describe only the classification of kinds of money, but not money itself. As David Bloor has summarised: content and the object of the agreement are defined in terms of one another, and so we are going round in circles. There is no way to rationalise or justify the pattern of behaviour without circularity. This logical circle derives from the fact that the whole discourse, the whole language game of calling something ‘property’, is a self-referring practice. In virtue of it being a self-referring practice it is also a self-creating practice. . . . A circle of talk about talk, where the reference of the talk is the practice of reference itself, creates an immediate puzzle about its origins. (Bloor 1997: 32) When ideas can show their presence only in communications, such a phenomenologically inspired analysis cannot just simply look at ‘ideas’ but needs to examine their semantic constitution. Here a variety of approaches, from discourse analysis and deconstruction to historical semantics, offer specific avenues. Instead of engaging now in a lengthy discussion as to how these approaches conceptualise the mind–body problem (see Kessler 2007), I will offer one such analysis that perceives this realm in terms of semantic distinctions. In the following section I want to provide an example based on the distinction of risk and uncertainty (for risk, see Beck 1986, 1999; Douglas

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1992; Ewald 1991; Tulloch and Lupton 2003; Luhmann 1991). This serves two purposes: on the one hand, it may allow us to see how ‘ideas’ are constituted by different conception of uncertainty; on the other, we can identify different conceptualisations of uncertainty.

Two concepts of knowledge The rationalist position on ideas has important repercussions on the treatment of ‘uncertainty’. Since Robert Keohane made use of transaction cost economics for understanding political processes, we repeatedly find references to uncertainty in a negative sense. Uncertainty needs to be reduced in order to allow rational decisions. Even Peter Haas (1992: 4) ascribed to actors the property of ‘uncertainty reducers’. McNamara concedes that ‘genuine uncertainty leads to inaction of actors’ (McNamara 1998: 57) and Goldstein and Keohane (1993) openly title the second part of their book ‘The reduction of uncertainty’. As interesting as these discussions of uncertainty are, if we pursue a constructivist interest in social change and how ‘we make the world we live in’, then we need a conception of uncertainty that transcends its rationalist use. At this point, similar discussions in heterodox economics are quite useful where discussions on different meanings of uncertainty had and still have recourse to probability theory (cf. Dequech 2004). In probability theory, it is common to differentiate an ontological, an aleatoric and an epistemological ‘belief’-oriented definition. Without addressing probability theory directly, this chapter follows these lines for the sake of comparability and will differentiate between an ontological and an epistemological conception of uncertainty.9 The ontological approach treats uncertainty as an attribute of ‘things’ or objects. The uncertainty as to which number a dice will show is irremediably linked to the physical properties of the dice itself. Equally, in games such as roulette or in lotteries, the odds result from possible states of the world as defined by the rules of the game.10 Probabilities, in other words, tell us something about the world; they mirror or describe some real relationship. In this context, it is possible to calculate exactly the expected risks, as the uncertain future can be divided into a set of comprehensive and mutually exclusive possible states of the world. Already this rather general remark reveals three assumptions: first, these possible states of the world add up to one: while it is uncertain which outcome or distribution of pay-offs might materialise, there is a specific certainty that there will be at least one result. We may not know whether the dice will show a six, but we know that the result falls into predefined categories: it cannot, for example, fall ‘head’-side up. Equally, there is no discussion as to whether the six on the dice is really a six and not a four, or whether it is ‘really’ a dice. The situation, objects and numbers can be described in objective and value-neutral terms. Second, this approach assumes that probability denotes a quantity, that

Beyond the rationalist bias? 127 probabilities are always a fraction of some unity. As such, probabilities obey the standard axioms of probability calculus, as inscribed in Boolean operations. And, third, this approach assumes that cases are repeatable. Iteration on the other hand is only possible if, as Richard von Mises nicely argued, second-decision problems are well defined and neutrally describable (Mises 1926: 79) – that is, when the ontology is well defined and epistemological questions are of only secondary importance. It comes as no surprise that both Ramsey (1931) and Harsanyi, despite their differences, justify important steps by analogy to physics (see Harsanyi 1967). This approach is of course well known from expected utility theory (Anand 1993; Arrow 1953; Hirshleifer 1989; Hirshleifer and Riley 1992; Howson 1992) and psychometrics (Kahneman and Tversky 1979) and finds, via assumptions about rational expectations, newer expressions in the economics of incentives (Laffont and Martimort 2002; Salanié 1997). Here, too, the concepts of consistency of decisions, trade-offs and equilibrium conditions is fundamental to their analysis (Bolton and Dewatripont 2003). However, even critical approaches to expected utility, such as regret or prospect theory (Loomes and Sudgen 1982; Ramsey 1931; Kahneman and Tversky 1979) and its various applications, share, via their probability theory, a common positivist epistemology and philosophy of science. The epistemological concept of uncertainty conceptualises non-knowledge exactly in terms of an absence of probability relations. This literature commonly contrasts uncertainty and risk to observe qualitative processes and changes by which probabilities are constructed and established. The tendency of methodological individualism to extract all necessary information from individuals, either by assumption or by complex mechanisms, and then to use statistical methods in order to find some interpretation for their data, is fundamentally misplaced when it comes to epistemological uncertainty (Lawson 1988; Shackle 1949). As Keynes summarises: By uncertain knowledge, let me explain, I do not mean merely to distinguish what is known for certain from what is only probable. The game of roulette is not subject, in this sense to uncertainty; nor is the prospect of a Victory bond being drawn. Or, again, the expectation of life is only slightly uncertain. . . . The sense in which I am using the term is that in which the prospect of a European war is uncertain, or the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, or the obsolescence of a new invention, or the position of private wealth owners in the social system in 1970. About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatsoever. We simply do not know. (Keynes 1937: 213–14) To clarify what Keynes meant by ‘we simply do not know’, let us take the example of a room where the light has been switched off.11 If someone were to ask us the probability of our finding our way through this dark and possibly

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unfamiliar environment, our answer would certainly not indicate an average or a fraction. Rather, as our non-knowledge is given in an unstructured and unspecific way, probability is defined in single terms with explicit reference to our ‘stock’ of knowledge – i.e. our familiarity with this room. The more we repeat this setting – and learn from previous attempts – the more familiar the room will become an exact iteration of previous cases, as the ontological concept of probability presupposes, it is exactly not possible as probability relations are irremediably linked to knowledge and experience, that is to practical knowledge. The vantage point of this understanding is not a given game with objective categories, but the observer’s dependence of knowledge. It is quite a strange assumption, but surprisingly common in approaches working in ontological uncertainty, that one could know what one does not know – like one could see what one cannot see. At least, it needs to be acknowledged that knowledge about non-knowledge is of a different kind and requires a different logical foundation than propositional knowledge. According to both John Maynard Keynes (937) and Friedrich von Hayek (1937, 1945), this knowledge is to be found in conventions, tacit rules, and societal norms and institutions. It points at the structuring of social relations and precedes as such the formulation of interests and preferences. This implicit ‘knowing how’, which is constitutive for regulative ‘knowing that’ questions of cause and effects, expresses itself, like our ability to use language, in rules and practices (Hayek 1945: 528). Practical knowledge thus consists not of propositions and theories, but in the ability to follow rules. ‘We do not know’ thus indicated for Keynes that we would fall back on conventions, sentiments, ‘animal spirit’. In this sense, uncertainty describes a space in which common criteria of rationality do not apply. From this perspective, expected utility is simply misleading: consistency and subsequent concepts such as security equivalence have no meaning without a previously fixed context. Proponents of ‘epistemological’ approaches thus commonly emphasise that, next to the theoretical knowledge about causes and effects, humans possess tacit knowledge that is to be found in norms, cultural traditions and institutions (Hayek 1945). Hayek developed this idea further in his studies on cultural evolution and spontaneous order, where the market is not solely an abstract entity where supply and demand meet, but a discovery process embedded in societal structures. Hayek’s concept of rule following even encompasses scientific knowledge. The objective of science is not to reveal simple causalities, such as: the world in which science is interested in is not that of our given concepts or even sensations. Its aim is to produce a new organisation of all our experience of the external world and in doing so it has not only to remodel our concepts but also to get away from the secondary sense of qualities and to replace them by a different class of events. (Hayek 1942: 267)12

Beyond the rationalist bias? 129 A key difference between the epistemological and ontological conceptualisation of uncertainty is thus the question as to whether or not probability can be characterised as a quantitative relation (uncertainty as risk), or whether it includes qualitative changes which require us to abstract from the idea that there is only one given and true model of the world and to inquire into the qualitative judgements by which quantities are made possible.13 This difference translates into a very specific distinction of risk and uncertainty: assuming an already well-defined ontology, the ontological conceptualisation always treats uncertainty in terms of risk. The epistemological counterpart, on the other hand, separates uncertainty and risk to identify those very qualitative judgements by which the world is structured and made knowable. A more detailed analysis of risk and its societal dimensions reveals even a self-reference of risk: each decision to decide or not to decide is subject to risk. To refrain from buying particular stocks might be reasonable from the point of view of minimising risks, but this decision still bears the risk of foregone profits. Thus security in terms of perfect insurance is an empty concept and not of any interest for understanding risk. It is replaced by the paradox that the highest risk is no risk at all. These two approaches to non-knowledge lead via risk to two different conceptions of knowledge. From the perspective of the ‘risk-as-uncertainty’ position, where contingency and non-knowledge are ontological concepts, the concept of knowledge is framed with reference to bivalent logic and thus within the confines of the identity principle,14 where true knowledge transcends human mind, space and time. Natural laws such as gravity are truly independent of human time, social relations or subjective assessments. Either something is knowledge or something is not knowledge. Within these confines, the being of knowledge and the non-being of non-knowledge are diametrically opposed to one another: the more we know, the less we do not know. Newer expressions of epistemological uncertainty often use the linguistic turn and the change from function to rules as the image of knowledge (Winch 1958; Wittgenstein 1953, 1978). The concept of rule makes it possible to disentangle the concept of non-being in order to see how questions of knowledge generation, legitimisation and acceptance are embedded in language games, practices and ‘discourses’, which are part of particular life worlds or societies.15 Epistemological uncertainty points to a broad variety of different knowledge structures. We can know things differently (Lakoff 1987; Polanyi 1958) and what we know is subject to qualitative changes. This points to at least three different kinds of knowledge: knowledge that is commonly associated with propositional logic, knowledge about non-knowledge and, finally, knowledge for processing non-knowledge. But non-knowledge does exist; it has a history, and it is possible to construct rules to translate it into knowledge. The next section tries to elaborate on this point by taking financial markets as an example.

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Uncertain knowledge and systemic risks The previous section introduced two ways in which uncertainty can be defined: ontologically and epistemologically. While the ontological approach defines uncertainty in terms of risk and presupposes the applicability of bivalent logic, the epistemological approach defines uncertainty in opposition to risk in order to observe processes of world construction characterised by a continuing process of uncertainty absorption and regeneration. These two approaches are based on different images of how systems operate and ultimately how crises and instability occur. When we take the example of financial markets, the ontological approach defines their dynamics in terms of equilibria. Equilibria are said to exist, prices are settled by demand and supply, expectations are formed by rational individuals, and markets are said to be efficient (under certain conditions). In this context, financial instability has been described by analogy to a bank run (see Houben, Kakes and Schinasi 2004). Each bank borrows money in the short term from depositors and lends it in the long term to investors and other projects. This difference in the temporal structure of its account gives rise to a liquidity risk: depositors may at short notice withdraw money which is invested long term. As a result, a worsening of the creditworthiness of the bank – or even only a rumour about a worsening of business conditions – might be sufficient to drive the bank out of business, despite the fact that these rumours may have been false. For ontological uncertainty approaches, this self-fulfilling prophecy results from a confidence problem under the condition of asymmetric information: depositors have less information about the quality of the bank than the bank itself. What is necessary is a mechanism that coordinates the depositors’ expectations, as the survival of the bank depends on this. Each depositor needs to trust other depositors not to withdraw their money. Otherwise it might be rational for each individual to withdraw their money, despite the fact that a collective irrational equilibrium is its result. What is interesting here is that the source of instability is not part of the system but is introduced exogenously: the source of instability is asymmetric information, not the financial market itself. If information were symmetric, the system would work efficiently and be stable; if each depositor could observe the true state of the bank, the confidence problem raised by asymmetric dispersion of information would be resolved. Instability is the result of some market failure, not of the markets’ operations themselves. By analogy, the bank run as self-fulfilling prophecy describes systemic risks in financial markets as a coordination problem, as Frederic Mishkin clarifies: Focusing on information problems leads to a definition of financial instability: Financial instability occurs when shocks to the financial system with information flows so that the financial system can no longer do its job of channelling funds to those with productive investment

Beyond the rationalist bias? 131 opportunities. Indeed, if the financial instability is severe enough, it can lead to almost a complete breakdown in the functioning of financial markets, a situation which is then classified as a financial crisis. (Mishkin 1999: 6) The definition by Mishkin implies that, while asymmetric information produces a structural uncertainty, information symmetry (i.e. transparency) guarantees stability. Consequently, the construction of standards and a working surveillance mechanism is the proposed solution, as Barry Eichengreen confirms: the only feasible approach to this problem is for national governments and international financial institutions to encourage the public and private sectors to identify and adopt international standards for minimally acceptable practice. National practices may differ, but all national arrangements must meet minimal standards if greater financial stability is to be achieved. (Eichengreen 1999: 21) At this point, the social-philosophical commitments to methodological individualism and ontological uncertainty shine through: this approach assumes implicitly that financial stability can be achieved by increasing the stability of each actor individually. It is believed that more data and better information are positively correlated with systemic stability. As a result, the primary focus is on an increase of transparency and standardisation of interactions. Caught in quantities, this approach misses out the qualitative changes that characterises contemporary financial markets. Based on an ontological concept of uncertainty, the idea of asymmetric information demands that categories such as depositors, banks, their interactions, and the resulting structural risk are well defined. These models thus have nothing to contribute to the analysis of processes where new actors such as hedge funds and new financial products such as derivatives give rise to new system risks by reorganising the way in which actors observe themselves and others, including the way in which they know about themselves and others. A focus on asymmetric information and more data does not address systemic risks that arise when non-bank actors (such as ENRON, for example) act as if they were banks without being subject to bank regulation: these categorical changes are simply not addressed. The epistemological approach, on the other hand, would reject the idea of information asymmetries as the cause of financial instability. Rather, proponents would point to the fact that no actor can fully grasp the operational logic of complex systems. Any attempt to manipulate the operational logic by demanding a new kind of knowledge will instantly produce new non-knowledge, a position associated with ‘social contingency’ as described above. This social contingency provides a different concept of social systems: social

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systems are not defined in terms of ‘equilibria’, but in terms (to oversimply matters for a moment) of their boundaries. This position claims that each system can be characterised by its own restrictions and excluded spaces, its own boundaries and ways of doing things, which restrict the range of possible and expectable communications. Without going into details at this point, it is sufficient to see that this position rejects the idea of ‘exogenous’ shocks or time-invariant formulations such as ‘asymmetric information’. What may count as ‘shock’ is not independent from the system or regime under consideration: each order produces its own crises. In the context of financial markets, that means that systemic risks emerge through their ever changing reproduction processes: market participants form expectations not by observing ‘objective’ facts, but by taking the expectations of other actors into account. Understood epistemologically, these ‘intersubjective’ expectations differ from game theoretical versions: first, expectations do not refer to an objective game but constitute the game. The important level is not individual expectation formation on the basis of ‘beliefs’ that can be solved, for example, through backward induction, but that of expectations on expectations where new technologies (such as the internet), models (such as option pricing), actors (such as hedge funds) or practices (such as securitization) continually change the system of mutual expectations. In this context, prices, models and expectations do not ‘mirror’ objective facts, but produce them. They do not represent economic conditions, but bring them about (e.g. MacKenzie and Millo 2003). To put it in more theoretical terms: Niklas Luhmann speaks here of structural-determined systems in which the environment of systems may induce – but will never determine – the evolutionary path of systems. The structures of a system can only be varied by system-internal operations that themselves depend on structures of the system (Luhmann 1988: 27). But that does not mean that systems can control their own evolution: the construction not only of ‘stability’, but also of instabilities and uncertainties, are endogenous to the operations of the system. Structure dependency means that closure and openness of systems depends on the drawing of a specific boundary. These selections determine the kind of complexity which will evolve and the possible evolutionary paths. The analysis of social change, the changing range of potential evolutionary paths, requires the analysis of contingency as a social product, as a by-product of the transformative capacity of practices. Seen from this perspective, current endeavours to reform the global financial architecture by improving the quality of data and to bring about ‘homogeneity’ by standards and codes will inevitably create new contingencies and new heterogeneity that counteract the initial proposals. To explore this idea further, let us discuss the example of banking regulation in some more detail. The chapter suggests that current changes under Basel II are an attempt to broaden the realm of ontological uncertainty to issues of epistemological uncertainty and therefore to reproduce and impose the idea of asymmetric information onto ‘the world’. As a consequence, Basel II can be

Beyond the rationalist bias? 133 described as the attempt to reduce qualitative to quantitative considerations and to apply and reproduce standard economic vocabulary and its inscribed ideas of economic (in)stability.

Uncertainty and the social construction of risk: Basel II The objective of the Basel II negotiations can be seen as an attempt to find new possibilities as to what sound banking might look like in an ever changing environment and with the emergence of ‘new global finance’.16 The new accord is based on three pillars. Pillar 1 reformulates the minimum capital requirements; Pillar 2, the Supervisory Review Process, provides additional policy options for regulators;17 and Pillar 3 (market discipline) stipulates enhanced disclosure requirements. Prima facie, it is fair to note that Basel II expands substantially the number of observed risks. While Basel I provided mainly a one-size-fits-all approach to credit risk, the variety of risks considered under Basel II are considerably wider – such as credit risk, operational risk and market volatility risks. Of course, one can find innumerable references in the official documents to the system’s enhanced stability. However, nowhere is there a deeper discussion of systemic risks and thus which new danger the new framework actually seems to address.18 There is no discussion as to what financial stability actually means and what kind of stability regulators envisage. It appears as if this lack represents the very blind spot of the framework, the background knowledge that is no longer visible but nevertheless imposes structures and provides the rationale. I assume the ‘idea’ inscribed in Basel II can be reconstructed by looking at the rationale for those three pillars, which, I assume, points to the hidden pictures, distinctions and blind spots in the framework.19 I suggest that the answer to this non-addressed question, the unifying factor behind the three pillars, can be found in the ontological conception of uncertainty and its picture of the ‘bank run’ as a metaphor of systemic risks. When we look at the pillars more closely, each of them provides a particular answer to the problem of asymmetric information and each is said to overcome associated trust and coordination problems. Within Basel II regulation, financial stability is consequently defined in terms of ‘coordination’ and ‘self-commitment’ while instability is treated in terms of a market failure. This episteme, and thus the concept of non-knowledge inscribed within the approach, is particularly visible in two cases: the discussion on operational risk and the role of credit-rating agencies. Operational risk has been defined by the committee as ‘the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events’ (BCBS 2001c: 1; see also Holton 2003). As the committee states quite explicitly, this definition excludes issues of systemic risks, and ‘the operational risk charge will be calibrated accordingly’ (BCBS 2001c: 2).

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The concept of operational risk summarises all risks arising from the operation of the banks. This category ranges from the risks of computer crashes, miscommunication, failed deadlines and fraud to those arising from the growth of business, the integration of new acquisitions, the growth of e-commerce, outsourcing and securitisation. It seems trivial that this category is defined by its non-definability, by its heterogeneity and by the difficulty or even impossibility of its quantification. As such, the category of operational risk could provide a natural way in to investigating the role of different knowledge structures, the importance of non-knowledge, the importance of experience for doing business, and finally the importance of qualitative changes in financial markets and their influence on both the banks’ risk structures and the nature of systemic risks. Indeed, the very reason why the concept of operational risk has gained prominence is as a result of the qualitative changes in global finance. As the committee explains, Deregulation and globalisation of financial services, together with the growing sophistication of financial technology, are making the activities of banks and thus their risk profiles (i.e. the level of risk across a firm’s activities and/or risk categories) more complex. Developing banking practices suggest that risks other than credit, interest rate and market risk can be substantial. (BCBS 2003b: 1) Even the rise of derivatives changes the importance of operational risks for banks, as banks may engage in risk-mitigation techniques, outsourcing and securitisation to control their exposure. But this creates operational risks in the form of, for example, legal risks, increased vulnerability, and dependence on other companies. As the committee explains: Operational risk can be more pronounced where banks engage in new activities or develop new products (particularly where these activities or products are not consistent with the bank’s core business strategies), enter unfamiliar markets, and/or engage in businesses that are geographically distant from the head office. Moreover, in many such instances, firms do not ensure that the risk management control infrastructure keeps pace with the growth in the business activity. A number of the most sizeable and highest-profile losses in recent years have taken place where one or more of these conditions existed. Therefore, it is incumbent upon banks to ensure that special attention is paid to internal control activities where such conditions exist. (BCBS 2003b: 17) As Andrew Tickell noted, back in 1995, the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) emphasised in a joint paper with the International Organisation

Beyond the rationalist bias? 135 of Securities Commissions (IOSC) that both quantitative and qualitative judgements were needed for regulating derivatives and thus the category of operational risk (Tickell 2000). However, as Marieke De Goede has pointed out, the acknowledgement of the inherent qualitative judgements in assessing operational risks has been wiped out by a fundamental critique during the review process (De Goede 2004). The focus of this critique was exactly this non-quantitative nature of operational risk. The financial industry was fiercely opposed to the qualitative nature of the concept and asked for more precision and specification. Increasingly, the role of epistemology was replaced by that of ontology and subsequently the need for quantification was emphasised (BCBS 2002, 2003b; De Goede 2004). Over time, reference to qualitative judgements died out and were substituted by statements stressing the importance of measurement and quantification. The knowledge gained from experience and knowing the rules of the game is substituted by propositional knowledge. The assessment of risks can no longer be based on experience or intuition, but rather takes on the form of covariance-matrices. A second and particularly prominent aspect of Basel II is the new role of credit-rating agencies (BCBS 2004). Although these agencies have already attracted some attention and were subject to some strong critiques, I assume less effort has been spent on trying to understand what ‘function’ they are said to fulfil. Of course, I cannot provide a very detailed answer at this point, but it seems to me that their role is quite easy to understand when ontological uncertainty is taken into consideration. As the instability of the system has its roots in the asymmetric dispersion of information between actors, rating agencies provide a surveillance mechanism which helps to overcome this market failure and provide a visible systemic learning mechanism inscribed in their symbolic rating categories. From this perspective, their evaluations are objective and neutral, and their risk assessments ease the functioning of the markets through very specialised and standardised processes. Rating agencies are ascribed quasi-regulatory authority on the basis of their ‘better knowledge’ of economic conditions. When we look at recent incidents, in particular ther role of rating agencies in the Asian crisis and the accounting scandals of the late 1990s, the ‘ontological presupposition’ seems to be flawed (see also Sinclair and King 2003): they failed as an early warning system and even acted counter-productively through dramatic downgrades which in fact worsened the crises.20 From the perspective of epistemological non-knowledge, current endeavours will fail precisely because rating agencies are subject to the same heterodox dispersion of knowledge as other actors.21 Their judgements are only one way to structure and give meaning to specific situations, not ‘the’ way. In particular, their ‘objective’ judgements do have limits. For example, the dramatic downgrades during the Asian crisis were justified on the basis that they were the result of a yet unknown trigger: it was the private sector and not the public sector that was indebted. This change in the basic mechanism would have made a prediction impossible, as statistical models would not have taken into

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account the vulnerability of the private sector. However, such a justification raises an eyebrow: in principle it says that ratings fail when qualitative changes are at play, as statistics and context are irreconcilable. To wipe out qualitative judgements and the kind of relevant non-knowledge forming them is certainly more part of the problem than part of the solution. Numbers alone don’t say much about the stability of the system. Numbers have meaning only when the background or context is known and ‘valid’. Even if this context is taken for granted and ‘naturalised’, it will and does change, and numbers and causal chains underlying ratings will then be invalidated. When we look at the Asian crisis again for a moment, the downgrades by the rating agencies were not intended to mirror economic conditions but to restore reputation. Precisely because the legitimacy of rating agencies is based on the distinction of knowledge and non-knowledge under conditions of heterodox knowledge dispersion, the objectives of upholding reputation, maximising profit and mirroring economic facts do not necessarily match. To summarise this discussion, I think the dominance of the ontological approach is evident in current attempts to restore financial stability. There is still an effort to reform banking regulations when it is not absolutely clear what constitutes a bank internationally. What is not addressed are categorical changes which gave rise to this reassessment of current regulations in the first place. Additionally, the current focus on surveillance and transparency is based on an assumed positive correlation between standardisation, information symmetry and stability. What is not discussed, for example, is the question of how credit-rating agencies will change the nature of systemic risks and the extent to which they create new heterogeneity and instability. Assuming that models somehow refer to ‘real’ economic phenomena, the self-referentiality and performative dimension is not taken seriously. In the end, these attempts will only solve the last crisis and disregard the extent to which current ‘solutions’ produce new contingencies, non-knowledge and systemic risks.

Conclusion The notion of uncertainty is often used to represent the absence of order: in the face of uncertainty, actors are either unable to act or their action is shot through with distortions and potential misunderstandings. This chapter directed attention to the construction of non-knowledge and thus the reproduction of uncertainty. It suggested a position of ‘social contingency’. Social contingency means that everything that exists is the result of selections from a wider set of possibilities. What selections become manifest then constitute the horizon of future possibilities. In the context of finance, new risk instruments or management procedures create new non-knowledge and thus new risk structures, which then create a new demand to control risks by new innovations. New knowledge creates at the same time new non-knowledge, about which we try – via risk – to acquire ‘knowledge about our non-knowledge’.

Beyond the rationalist bias? 137 As a consequence, institutions were not seen as mechanisms for rational action by reducing uncertainty. Rather, as soon as uncertainty is absorbed, institutions continually reproduce and generate specific new forms of nonknowledge and uncertainties. The chapter further suggested a basic self-referentiality of institutions where institutions are not simply ‘there’, but are temporally condensed forms of meaning reproduced by communication. Acknowleding this ‘circle of talk’ and ‘puzzle of origin’ opens the door for a particular politics that escapes rationalism: when actors construct their own future – and politics has the very construction of an uncertain future as its theme – the debate between diverging and conflicting opinions has to regain central focus. When politics cannot be based upon a thing-ontology and diverging convictions cannot be subsumed to a ‘representative individual’, contradictions and oppositions become the very ‘stuff’ of politics. There is always a plurality of possible models through which the world is described. This has ontological and methodological consequences: if persuasion and communication is to be possible, interests and identities must be changeable – and thus deprived of their ontological status. Therefore, we need to abandon the idea of a predetermined and given world to incorporate the construction of available ‘alternatives’, the construction of the limits of the ‘thinkable’, including devices of issue linkages, analogies, metaphors, and most of all, semantic juxtapositions and distinctions. Put in this perspective, power – or utility maximizing behaviour, upon which rationalism’s politics is based – has already solved the most interesting political questions. Instead of reducing ideas to provide focal points between already existing alternatives, ideas are relevant in the very construction of alternatives. Thus, politics is not simply located in the choosing between alternatives, but relevant in the construction of the possible, how the unknown gets translated into the known in order to make collectively binding decisions. That said, the politics of ideas cannot be reduced to a psychological or an individual level where ideas ‘have impact’, but rather are ‘intersubjectively’ defined. But this means we need to take seriously the conviction that ideas show their presence only in language which makes it hard to speak about ‘ideas’ for themselves without falling back to some neo-Platonic position. Empirically, this chapter provided a discussion on how Basel II reproduces or rather imposes a certain vocabulary and thereby specific ideas on financial crises inscribed in semantic distinctions.

Notes 1 For a discussion on this distinction, see Gofas and Hay and Tønder in this volume. 2 At this point it might be necessary to clarify the relationship between nonknowledge and uncertainty. Of course, these terms are not synonymous. Non-knowledge is the realm of things, processes and flows we do not know, and is the direct opposite of what we know. Uncertainty is used as an example of how we

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think about non-knowledge, and its function is to allow us to think about a contingent future. The particular way in which uncertainty is defined thus gives us a strong indication as to what kind of ‘knowledge regime’ one thinks of, what the criteria and standards are to deal with ‘non-knowledge’. Risk, on the other hand, names exactly this boundary between knowledge and non-knowledge – i.e. a particular way of knowing about the unknown. I certainly do not attempt to criticise current theorising by providing a detailed description about the similarities and differences between these approaches. Therefore I will not go into differences between rational and historical institutionalism in detail as their treatment of uncertainty is – if addressed – quite similar. For a deeper discussion, see Campbell (1988). Of course, ideas are necessarily an auxiliary explanation in an overall rationalist framework. But it is noteworthy that Goldstein and Keohane (1993) also showed that, even within the rationalist framework, there is a need for inquiries into ideas. For a deeper discussion, see Kessler (2007). See also Laffey and Weldes (1997: 200). Two things should be noted, however. First, while most of middle-ground constructivism passes over the mind–body problem, Alexander Wendt takes pains to deal with mental causality. His supervenience approach is one of the most elaborate and complex systems available in IR. Second, he himself has abandoned his approach. So my intention is not to criticise Wendt’s writing, but to show some conceptual difficulty. For a deeper discussion, see Kessler (2007). Of course, someone could now argue that ideas are no different from matter – and that acknowledging the material underpinnings of ideas would overcome this problem. However, such a position still has to show what the exact relationship is between ideas and matter (reductionist or non-reductionist) and how mental causality is possible. Notions such as ‘emergence’ and ‘supervenience’ are rather vacuous and mere ‘postulates’ as long as the exact mechanisms are not described. For a deeper discussion of various conceptions of probability, see Kessler (2007). Aleatoric probability theory defines probability as the frequency of positive to possible cases. Classic examples are roulette and poker: as soon as the categories and rules are ‘objectively’ given, it is possible to calculate odds, for example for red or black. In this setting, it is necessary that cases can be repeated infinitely, that probability add up to 1 and that, in cases of complete ignorance, it is still possible to describe one’s non-knowledge in numerical terms (½: ½). This position thus assumes that logical operations apply and probability theory is part of number theory. For classic statements, see Kolmogorov (1933); Mises (1940); Myerson (1999). The epistemological approach, on the other hand, defines probability in terms of single cases. Keynes (1921), for example, located probability theory in his argumentation theory and argued that the numerical representation of probability is based on certain assumptions on symmetry and systemic dynamics that need not necessarily be true by assumption. One might argue that uncertainty is not an epistemological but an ontological concept. But that is a complete misrepresentation of his thought. See, in particular, Keynes (1921: 12ff.). See also Ryle (1949). For a deeper discussion, see Kessler (2008). Bivalent logic’s main assertions result in the principle of double negation (a = ¬¬ a), non-contradiction (something cannot be and not be at the same time) and tertium non datur (either something is or is not; a third possibility is excluded). This is further explored in the incommensurability debate and the role of paradigms (Kratochwil 1989; Kuhn 1964; Popper 1974). This part is based on Kessler (2006). The Basel Committee, following the first

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consultation paper from June 1999, made recommendations in a second consultation paper in January 2001 and a third in March 2003 to reform the Basel Accord of 1988. See BCBS (2001a, 2001b, 2003a). Specifically, regulators under Pillar 2 have strengthened the monitoring authority. They can now influence the payments of dividends and require banks to prepare and implement a satisfactory capital adequacy restoration plan or to raise additional capital immediately. The literature has already indicated some of the imbalances between the three pillars of the Basel Accord. In particular, it has been pointed out that there is no discussion of exactly how the new rules, market discipline, and discretionary policies such as governing dividend payments are interconnected. (See also Allen and Gale 2003; Rochet 2004; Thadden 2004). I do not mean simply to draw attention to the debate on what the objective of banking regulation should be. Opinions range from systemic risk management to control of insurance deposits. See, for example, Saidenberg and Schuermann (2003); Benston and Kaufman (1996); Berlin, Saunders and Udell (1991). For a good overview, see Dewatripont and Tirole (1994). But, for example, there is no reference to currency crises, the possibility of twin crises (simultaneous currency and banking crises) or the recent contagion literature. Nor is there any mention that what characterises banks within international financial markets is heavily contested and far from clear. Moody’s alone downgraded Malaysia four steps (from A1 to Baa2), Thailand five steps (A2 to Baa3) and Korea and Indonesia six steps (Baa3 to Caa3 and A1 to Ba1, respectively). Any attempt to restore market trust was thereafter simply impossible, as these downgrades put these countries below investment to speculation level. Consider the simple fact that evaluations from Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s do not match in most of the cases and that, at the onset of the Asian Crisis, Moody’s downgraded Thailand on 8 April 1997 but Standard and Poor’s adjusted only in December 1997.

References Allen, Franklin, and Douglas Gale (2003) ‘Capital Adequacy Regulation: In Search of a Rationale’, in R. Arnott, B. Greenwald, B. Kanbur and B. Nalebu (eds) Economics for an Imperfect World: Essays in Honor of Joseph Stiglitz. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 83–109. Anand, Paul (1993) Foundations of Rational Choice under Risk. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Arrow, Kenneth Joseph (1953) ‘The Role of Securities in the Optimal Allocation of Risk Bearing’, Review of Economic Studies, 31(1): 91–6. Baecker, Dirk (1991) Womit handeln Banken? Eine Untersuchung zur Risikoverarbeitung in der Wirtschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. BCBS (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision) (2001a) Consultative Document: Operational Risk: Supporting Document to the New Basel Capital Accord. Basel: BIS. —— (2001b) Consultative Document: The Internal Ratings-Based Approach. Basel: BIS. —— (2001c) Working Paper on the Regulatory Treatment of Operational Risk. Basel: BIS. —— (2002) Operational Risk Data Collection Exercise. Basel: BIS.

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—— (2003a) Consultative Document: The New Basel Capital Accord. Basel: BIS. —— (2003b) Sound Practices for the Management and Supervision of Operational Risk. Basel: BIS. —— (2004) Outsourcing in Financial Services: Consultative Document. Basel: BIS. Beck, Ulrich (1986) Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhkamp. —— (1999) World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity. Benston, George J., and George G. Kaufman (1996) ‘The Appropriate Role of Bank Regulation’, Economic Journal, 106: 436, 688–97. Berlin, Michtell, Anthony Saunders and Gregory F. Udell (1991) ‘Deposit Insurance Reform: What are the Issues and What Needs to be Fixed?’, Journal of Banking & Finance, 15(4–5): 735–52. Bieri, Peter (1993) Analytische Philosophie des Geistes. Bodenheim: Athenäum Hain Hanstein. BIS (Bank for International Settlement) and IOSC (International Organisation of Securities Commissions) (1995) Framework for Supervisory Information about the Derivatives Activities of Banks and Securities. Basel: BIS. Bloor, David (1997) Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions. London and New York: Routledge. Blyth, Mark (1997) ‘“Any More Bright Ideas?” The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy’, Comparative Politics, 29(2): 229–50. Bolton, Patrick, and Mathias Dewatripont (2003) Contract Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Borio, Claudio E. V., and Renato Filosa (1994) The Changing Borders of Banking: Trends and Implications. BIS Economic Papers 43. Campbell, John L. 1988: ‘Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy’, Theory and Society, 27(3): 377–409. De Goede, Marieke (2004) ‘Repoliticising Financial Risk’, Economy & Society, 33(2): 197–217. Dequech, David (2004) ‘Uncertainty: Individuals, Institutions and Technology’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 28(3): 365–78. Dewatripont, Michel, and Jean Tirole (1994) The Prudential Regulation of Banks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Douglas, Mary (1992) Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London and New York: Routledge. Eichengreen, Barry J. (1999) Toward a New International Financial Architecture: A Practical Post-Asia Agenda. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Ewald, François (1991) ‘Insurance and Risk’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 197–210. G 30 (1997) Global Institutions, National Supervision and Systemic Risk. Washington, DC: Group of Thirty. Gofas, Andreas (2001) Ideas and Interests in the Construction of EMU: Beyond the Rationalist Bias of the New Ideational Orthodoxy. CSGR Working Paper 76: 01. Goldstein, Judith, and Robert O. Keohane (1993) ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework’, in J. Goldstein and R. O. Keohane (eds), Ideas and

Beyond the rationalist bias? 141 Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 3–31. Graz, Jean-Christophe, and Andreas Nölke (2007) Transnational Private Governance and its Limits. London: Routledge. Haas, Peter M. (1992) ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, International Organization, 46(1): 1–35. Harsanyi, John C. (1967) ‘Games with Incomplete Information Played by “Bayesian” Players I–III, Part I: The Basic Model’, Management Science, 14(3): 159–82. Hayek, Friedrich August von (1937) ‘Economics and Knowledge’, Economica, 4(13): 33–54. —— (1945) ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, American Economic Review, 35(4): 519–30. Hirshleifer, Jack (1989) Time, Uncertainty and Information. Oxford: Blackwell. Hirshleifer, Jack, and John G. Riley (1992) The Analytics of Uncertainty and Information. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holton, Glyn (2003) Value-at-Risk: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Academic Press. Houben, Aerdt, Jan Kakes and Garry J. Schinasi (2004) Toward a Framework for Safeguarding Financial Stability. IMF Working Paper WP/04/101. Howson, Colin (1992) ‘Dutch Book Arguments and Consistency’, Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 2: Symposia and Invited Papers, pp. 161–8. Ikkenberry, John (1993) ‘Creating Yesterday’s World Order: Keynesian “New Thinking” and the Anglo-American Postwar Settlement’, in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane (eds) Ideas and Foreign Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 57–86. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky (1979) ‘Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk’, Econometrica, 47(2): 263–92. Kessler, Oliver (2006) ‘Social Contingency: An Avenue for Engaging Regulation Theory with Systems Theory’, Competition and Change, 10(2): 221–38. —— (2007) ‘From Agent and Structures to Minds and Bodies’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 10(3): 243–72. —— (2008) ‘The Limits of Bayesian Thought to the Study of Economic Institutions’, in Wolfram Elsner and Hardy Happani (eds) Advances in Evolutionary Institutional Economics. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 151–72. Keynes, John Maynard (1921) Treatise on Probability. London: Macmillan. —— (1937) ‘The General Theory of Employment’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 51(2): 209–23. Kolmogorov, Andrej Nikolaevich (1933) Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechung. Berlin: Springer. Krasner, Stephen (1993) ‘Westphalia and All That’, in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane (eds) Ideas and Foreign Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 235–64. Kratochwil, Friedrich V. (1989) Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (2000) ‘Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt’s “Social Theory of International Politics” and the Constructivist Challenge’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29(1): 73–101.

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Kuhn, Thomas S. (1964) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Phoenix Books. Laffey, Mark, and Jutta Weldes (1997) ‘Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 3(2): 193–237. Laffont, Jean-Jacques, and David Martimort (2002) The Theory of Incentives, Vol. 1: The Principal–Agent Model. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lakoff, George (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lawson, Tony (1988) ‘Probability and Uncertainty in Economic Analysis’, Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, 11(1): 38–65. Loomes, Graham, and Robert Sudgen (1982) ‘Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty’, Economic Journal, 92: 805–24. Luhmann, Niklas (1988) Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. —— (1991) Soziologie des Risikos. Berlin: De Gruyter. MacKenzie, Donald, and Yuval Millo (2003) ‘Constructing a Market, Performing Theory: The Historical Sociology of a Financial Derivatives Exchange’, American Journal of Sociology, 109(1): 107–45. McNamara, Kathleen (1998) The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mises, Richard von (1926) Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit. Vienna: Springer. Mishkin, Frederic S. (1999) ‘Global Financial Instability: Framework, Events, Issues’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 13(4): 3–20. Myerson, Robert B. (1999) ‘Nash Equilibrium and the History of Economic Theory’, Journal of Economic Literature, 37(3): 1067–82. Polanyi, Michael (1958) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Popper, Karl 1974: Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Power, Michael 1997: The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1931) ‘Truth and Probability’, in The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays. London: Routledge. Rochet, Jean-Charles (2004) ‘Rebalancing the Three Pillars of Basel II’, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, September: 7–21. Ryle, Gilbert (1949) The Concept of Mind. London and New York: Hutchinson’s University Library. Saidenberg, Marc, and Til Schuermann (2003) The New Basel Capital Accord and Questions for Research. Wharton School Working Paper Fic 3–14. Salanié, Bernard (1997) The Economics of Contracts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Searle, John (1995) The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press. Shackle, George L. S. (1949) Expectations in Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sikkink, Kathryn (1991) Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Argentina and Brazil. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sinclair, Timothy J., and Michael King (2003) ‘Private Actors and Public Policy: A Requiem for the New Basel Capital Accord’, International Political Science Review, 24(3): 345–62.

Beyond the rationalist bias? 143 Taylor, Michael (1995) ‘Twin Peaks’: A Regulatory Structure for the New Century. London: Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation. Thadden, Ernst-Ludwig von (2004) ‘Bank Capital Adequacy Regulation under the new Basel Accord’, Journal of Financial Intermediation, 13(2): 90–95. Tickell, Andrew (2000) ‘Dangerous Derivatives: Controlling and Creating Risks in International Money’, Geoforum, 31: 87–99. Tulloch, John, and Deborah Lupton (2003) Risk and Everyday Life. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: Sage. Weingast, Barry R. (1995) ‘A Rational Choice Perspective on the Role of Ideas: Shared Belief Systems and State Sovereignty in International Cooperation’, Politics & Society, 23(4): 449–64. Wendt, Alexander (1995) ‘Constructing International Politics’, International Security, 20(1): 71–81. —— (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winch, Peter (1958) The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1978) Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. Yee, Albert S. (1996) ‘The Causal Effects of Ideas on Policies’, Internatioanl Organization, 50(1): 69–108.

7

Examining ideas empirically The political discourse of globalisation in Ireland Nicola Jo-Anne Smith1

Introduction As this volume attests, there is considerable debate about the status of ideas in understanding political change. There are indeed powerful conceptual reasons for exploring the role of ideas in shaping political processes and outcomes. As Hay (2002) notes, if we accept that actors do not possess flawless knowledge of the world, then we must also acknowledge the importance of ideas in shaping how people formulate, make and act upon decisions. But this raises questions about how and why political actors come to embrace certain ideas over others (Blyth 2002; Schmidt and Radaelli 2004) – issues that cannot be resolved through theoretical reflection alone but also need to be interrogated empirically (Hay and Smith 2005). This in turn raises questions as to which research methods are appropriate in the analysis of discourse. The chapter considers the benefits of a broad-ranging and inclusive research strategy informed by the principle of triangulation. It then provides a brief illustration of how such research might be undertaken through analysis of a discourse that has achieved considerable prominence in recent years: that of globalisation. It does so by looking at the Irish Republic – a country that has attracted considerable international attention on account of its perceived status as a ‘showpiece of globalisation’ (O’Hearn 2003: 73). Employing Schmidt’s (2002) distinction between the ‘cognitive’, ‘normative’, ‘co-ordinative’ and ‘communicative’ functions of discourse, the chapter seeks to map political discourses of globalisation in Ireland by using a variety of methods and techniques, both qualitative and quantitative.

Examining ideas empirically It is certainly not the case that ideational approaches now characterise the mainstream in political science, but they have undoubtedly become more pervasive in recent years. This in turn reflects a broader ‘ideational turn’ (Blyth 1997: 229) across the social sciences. Unsurprisingly, this has led to considerable debate surrounding issues of if, how and why ideas ‘matter’ in political analysis, with scholars often taking opposing perspectives depending

Examining ideas empirically 145 upon their own theoretical traditions. Hence, as has been well documented, for those coming from a discourse theoretical tradition, the tendency is to see ‘all objects and practices [as] discursive’ (Howarth 1995: 119). While there is a ‘real world’ that exists beyond our understanding of it, it does not have any meaningful reality. The purpose of all social and political enquiry is thus to understand the discursive realm; anything beyond that is ‘extraneous to any meaning – the point of departure of social analysis’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1987: 83). In contrast, other authors (often coming from a Marxist tradition) reject claims that all is discursive, instead arguing that what count are the underlying structures in society (see, for instance, Geras 1987; Lukes 2005). Crucially, such structures may not be directly observable but nevertheless exhibit causal properties independent of our understanding of them. Though their role is acknowledged, ideas are ultimately seen as underpinned by material interests. Thus, ideas do ‘matter’ – but chiefly to the extent that they reflect the interests of the powerful. Still others have offered a ‘dialectical’ approach in which ideas are not independent of their material context but nevertheless do possess causal properties of their own (see, for instance, Skogstad 1998; Walsh 2000; Heffernan 2002; Schmidt 2002; Bates 2006; Ryner 2006; Marsh 2008). As Hay (2002: 194) writes, the way in which people act ‘is an irredeemably perceptual matter’, in that they must interpret their world in order to engage with it. At the same time, however, such perceptions must also ‘find a certain resonance’ with people’s experiences if they are to retain their influence, so that the ideational is always bounded by the material (ibid.: 214). As such, ideas are best seen as co-constitutive of the broader economic, political and social environment in which they are situated (Hay and Marsh 2000). While the conceptual benefits and drawbacks of these different paradigms are discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume, the latter ‘middle ground’ position is perhaps the most attractive for those scholars who wish to explore the role of ideas as part of a broader research agenda. In particular, it moves beyond debates about whether ideas matter in political analysis and instead opens up space to consider how and why they are used in particular contexts. While a variety of authors have sought to address these issues (see, for instance, Jacobsen 1995; Bleich 2002; Blyth 2002; Campbell 2002; Morton 2003; Bailey 2008; Bruff 2008), the work of Vivien Schmidt (2002) is especially useful in this regard. Schmidt identifies a number of functions that discourses must perform in order to become successful in particular political contexts. For discourses to become dominant they must not only perform a cognitive function (by delineating the logic and necessity of a particular policy programme) and a normative function (by demarcating the desirability and appropriateness of a policy programme) but also a coordinative function (by providing a common framework through which elites can agree upon a course of action) and a communicative one (by enabling elites to persuade the general public of a policy programme’s necessity and legitimacy). In this sense, discourses are both ‘ideational’ (by delineating what is necessary and desirable) and ‘interactive’ (by providing a basis for elite coordination and

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for convincing the general public of a programme’s merits). The value-added of such an agenda is clear, for it allows us to see discourse as multifaceted (incorporating both interpretations and arguments), to map the different dimensions of discourse, and to consider how they are mediated by the broader context in which they are constituted. Clearly, though, questions such as which ideas are particularly influential, how they are articulated and understood, why they have come to the fore, and how they change over time are open empirical questions that cannot be resolved through theoretical reflection alone. Yet, while a substantial volume of literature has emphasised the need to examine the ways in which and reasons why discourses are used, this has often been couched in conceptual rather than empirical terms (Hay and Smith 2005; Smith and Hay 2008). This highlights the need for systematic empirical investigation in order to map discourses over time and to consider the contexts in which such discourses are articulated and understood (ibid.). But this in itself raises questions, for it is one thing to emphasise the need for systematic empirical enquiry; deciding how to undertake such analysis is quite another. There is some divergence in opinion as to which methods and techniques are appropriate in the analysis of discourse. Most scholars have tended to emphasise the appropriateness of qualitative methods, ranging from the detailed textual analysis of written documents, to semi-structured interviews with individuals, to participant observation of social groups (Phillips and Jorgensen 2002; Wood and Kroger 2000; Wetherell et al. 2001a). Given that discourse is arguably above all about language and meaning, this bias towards qualitative methods is perhaps not surprising. Yet there appears to be new space opening up for the quantitative analysis of discourse too. This reflects a broader breaking down of the qualitative–quantitative divide across the social sciences. As is well documented, quantitative and qualitative methods have traditionally been seen as bound up with polarised ontological and epistemological positions – quantitative research with objectivism and positivism, qualitative research with constructionism and interpretivism (Guba and Lincoln 2004; Ragin 1987; Amaratunga et al. 2002; Bryman [2001] 2008). In recent years, however, there has been growing recognition – not least among critical realists – that quantitative and qualitative techniques are not in fact mutually exclusive (see, for instance, Baum 1995; Wainwright 1997; Newman and Benz 1998; Brewer and Hunter 2006; McEvoy and Richards 2006; Creswell and Clark 2007; Scott 2007). As Miller (1995: 168) notes, quantitative research questions do not fall from the sky but instead ‘reflect the ideas and even the language found in non-quantitative accounts of the subject’. Nor can quantitative data be seen as value-free (as evident in the old maxim ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’) (Wetherell et al. 2001b). Similarly, as Devine (1995) observes, qualitative researchers are often implicitly concerned with issues of quantity (such as finding a large enough sample of potential interview respondents in order to minimise selection bias), with the simple act of categorising itself resting upon implicit quantitative assumptions.

Examining ideas empirically 147 A number of authors (see, for instance, Greene and Caracelli 1997; Howe 1988; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004; Tashakkori and Teddlie 2003; Greene 2007) have thus noted that the quantitative–qualitative divide is more artificial than real: the two may be different (in that one is concerned with measurement, the other with meaning) but this does not mean that they are inherently incompatible. Rather than seeing one method as ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than another, the mixed method approach instead proceeds from the assumption that no one source can tell us everything but that it might be able to tell us something (Devine 1995). Whereas quantitative methods can offer breadth (by allowing the researcher to deal with a large number of cases and to offer generalisations based on that data), qualitative analysis can offer depth (by allowing the researcher to uncover layers of meaning by looking in detail at specific cases). Through methodological triangulation (whereby different research methods are combined to study the same phenomenon), the mixed methods approach explicitly encourages researchers to gather together different kinds of jigsaw puzzle pieces in order to view a particular research problem from as many angles as possible. This is a potentially fruitful approach for the analysis of discourse, for different methods can offer different ways to gain insights into the ways in which and reasons why particular discourses are used. For instance, one typical ‘discourse analytical’ approach in political science is to engage in the detailed textual analysis of ministerial speeches, parliamentary debates, and so on. This can potentially tell us a great deal about the ‘interactive’ dimension of discourse (for example, by revealing how political actors address the general public with respect to specific issues). But precisely because such sources represent the ‘official’ or ‘public’ face of discourse, they cannot really be seen as particularly revealing (at least if used in isolation) when exploring the ‘ideational’ dimension of discourse. Participant observation would seem an especially desirable approach in this regard (in that it allows researchers to spend considerable time observing political actors ‘behind the scenes’, as it were). But this is also usually highly costly in terms of time, money and access to ‘key players’. A more feasible strategy is to undertake semi-structured interviews, which provide political actors with the opportunity to speak more informally and in their own words about their attitudes and beliefs with respect to specific issues (ibid.). Yet, although intensive interviews are less costly than participant observation, practical issues regarding time, funding and access once again militate against interviewing a large number of respondents (Bryman [2001] 2008). In this sense, intensive interviews can offer considerable depth (in the form of rich, detailed accounts) but do not necessarily offer breadth (in that it is difficult to cover a large number of respondents). It is here that quantitative methods (for example, in the form of attitudinal surveys) may be useful. Certainly we must be extremely cautious when talking ‘numbers’ in the analysis of discourse: after all, ideas are by their very nature intangible and cannot be ‘measured’ per se. But what quantitative

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surveys can reveal is how many people profess to hold a particular attitude – for example, by indicating that a particular proportion of respondents agree or disagree with a particular statement. Such information may be particularly useful, for instance, when looking at the ‘coordinative’ function of discourse – that is, when examining whether there is a broad consensus within or between political groupings regarding certain issues, and so on. In turn, such data can be used to investigate whether distinct attitudinal patterns (such as in terms of gender, age, and so on) are apparent. Clearly such data cannot be used in isolation – in particular, they cannot uncover the different layers of meaning that may lie behind a particular attitudinal statement (which is of course where qualitative analysis comes in). But quantitative research can nevertheless help us to glean some insights into whether particular ideas are held ‘across the board’ or whether there are significant divergences in opinion. In this sense, quantitative research can help to redress some of the limitations of qualitative research, and vice versa (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004). It makes sense, then, to consider using both as part of a broad-ranging and inclusive research strategy.

Mapping discourses of globalisation in Ireland The remainder of this chapter seeks to provide a brief illustration of how discourse might be interrogated empirically through mixed methods research. It does so through the analysis of a concept that has achieved considerable prominence in recent years: that of globalisation. As Hay (2002: 202) writes: ‘Globalisation has become a key referent of contemporary political discourse and, increasingly, a lens through which policy-makers view the context in which they find themselves.’ The discourse of globalisation is particularly interesting not only because it appears to wield enormous political influence internationally (although this is in itself an open empirical question) but also because the ‘transparent reality’ of globalisation has itself been questioned. For example, Hay (2004) finds that geographical proximity is becoming less rather than more important in the patterns of trade and investment flows within Europe and suggests that this might point to a process of ‘deglobalisation’ over time (see also Chortareas and Pelagidis 2004). While here is not the place to review such evidence, the key point is that the discursive construction of globalisation cannot simply be assumed to reflect the material ‘reality’ of globalisation. Indeed, in acting as if globalisation were real, policy-makers may serve to produce the very outcomes they attribute to globalisation itself (Hay and Marsh 2000). This illustrates the need to examine specific understandings and constructions of globalisation in their own right. For, while globalisation is widely perceived as a powerful force for political change both nationally and internationally, it is also understood and articulated in different ways within different national contexts. Indeed, in some countries it is European integration rather than globalisation that is appealed to as a key

Examining ideas empirically 149 external imperative for policy change (Hay and Rosamond 2002). This points to the need to map discourses of globalisation within specific national contexts and to explore the circumstances under which such appeals are made (Hay and Smith 2005; Smith and Hay 2008). The Irish Republic is a particularly interesting case study in discussions about discourses of globalisation. Ireland has not only been ranked as one of the most globalised countries in the world (see, for instance, Foreign Policy 2007); in the 1990s it became known as something of a test case for globalisation. Lauded as ‘Europe’s shining light’ (The Economist, 17 May 1997), Ireland received a great deal of international attention on account of its very high rates of economic growth and soon became known as the ‘Celtic tiger’. Despite a subsequent economic slowdown, Ireland continued to be widely regarded as a model of how countries can flourish under conditions of economic integration and interdependence. Yet the impact of globalisation on Ireland has also been criticised by a number of prominent Irish political economists on the grounds that it has gone hand in hand with rising social inequality (see, for instance, Allen 2000; O’Hearn 2003; Taylor 2005; Kirby and Murphy 2008). This has been attributed to the integration of the small and open Irish economy into increasingly globalised markets, with the competitive pressures of globalisation seen to place limits on the economic and social alternatives available to Irish governments. As Kirby (2002: 6) has written: ‘globalisation is forcing not so much the retreat of the state as the resituating of the state “into a subordinate relationship with global market forces”’. Critics have thus identified a shift towards neoliberalism in Ireland in which economic competitiveness rather than social justice has become the principal goal in public policy. Rather than harnessing the resources generated by economic growth to tackle Ireland’s long-standing social inequalities, Irish governments have remained committed to low corporate taxation and fiscal restraint. Yet, as has been argued elsewhere (Smith 2005b), the evidence to suggest that Ireland has become ‘globalised’ is by no means incontrovertible. Again, here is not the place to review such evidence, but suffice it to say that the ‘two main pillars’ of Ireland’s ‘globalisation’ (Forfás 2000: 9), trade and investment, remain highly concentrated in geographical terms. Nor can the small and open nature of the Irish economy explain the strong tendencies towards prioritising economic competitiveness over social justice. For, as a variety of authors have noted, in other European Union countries there is no clear correlation between economic openness and declining welfare effort (Katzenstein 1985; Garrett 1998). Indeed, Hopkin and Wincott (2006) find that – if anything – there is a strong positive correlation between economic liberalisation and social protection (with the UK and Ireland both exceptions to this rule). What this suggests is that the discursive construction of globalisation in Ireland may not necessarily simply reflect the material ‘reality’ of globalisation; indeed, such discourses may themselves play an independent

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causal role in shaping political outcomes. Once again, this points to the need to consider the role of globalisation discourse as an important object of analysis in its own right. The discussion that follows seeks to map political discourses of globalisation in Ireland with reference to Schmidt’s (2002) distinction between the ‘cognitive’, ‘normative’, ‘coordinative’ and ‘communicative’ functions of discourse (see also Smith 2005b). The chapter confines itself to identifying and mapping the relative prevalence of globalisation discourses (for in-depth discussion of how such ideas are mediated by the economic, political and cultural context in Ireland, see Smith 2005a, 2005b). In so doing, it builds upon and extends earlier work (Hay and Smith 2005; Smith and Hay 2008) that sought to map globalisation discourses in both the UK and Ireland according to the contingent or inevitable character of the process of globalisation being appealed to and the positive, open-ended or negative connotations it is seen to entail (see Table 7.1). Data was collected via both qualitative and quantitative means. The qualitative research involved the detailed analysis of key policy documents, such as ministerial speeches, Dáil debates and party political manifestoes, and a series of semi-structured interviews with senior Irish civil servants, economic advisers and opinion formers, who were asked to elaborate upon their attitudes and beliefs regarding globalisation’s impact on Ireland.2 These materials were coded and analysed using QSR Nvivo in order to identify the most prevalent discourses (using a simple ‘number of hits’ methodology). Space does not permit a full representation of these findings, so quotations have been selected simply to illustrate the most prominent discourses. The quantitative research took the form of an attitudinal survey in which a postal questionnaire was sent to all members of the Dáil3 and a random sample of 500 senior- and middle-ranking civil servants. Respondents were asked to ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘neither agree nor Table 7.1 Discourses of globalisation Globalisation as unambiguously positive

Character of globalisation contingent upon political choices

Globalisation as unambiguously negative

Inevitable / inexorable process (non-negotiable)

1 globalisation as a non-negotiable external economic constraint

2 globalisation as inevitable but a process whose content is amenable to political influence

3 globalisation as threat of homogenisation

Contingent process or tendency to which counter-tendencies might be mobilised

4 globalisation as a political project which should be defended

5 globalisation as a political project which must be made defensible

6 globalisation as a political project which must be resisted

Source: Hay and Smith (2005); Smith and Hay (2008).

Examining ideas empirically 151 disagree’, ‘disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ with a range of statements about globalisation and European integration. The response rate was 39.8 per cent for members of the Dáil and 44.0 per cent for Irish civil servants4 and the overall distribution of responses was broadly representative of the sample in such terms as gender and political party.5

Research findings What then did this qualitative and quantitative research reveal about the cognitive, normative, coordinative and communicative functions of globalisation discourse in the Irish Republic? Taking the cognitive function first, semi-structured interview data suggested that globalisation is indeed seen by policy-makers to have a significant impact. In interviews, it was consistently cited as having had an enormous impact on the Irish economy in particular – most notably in terms of heightened trade openness and the attraction of foreign direct investment. In turn, this was perceived to have important policy-making implications – not least in terms of the need for policy-makers to prioritise competitiveness. In particular, interviewees appeared to adhere to discourse 1 (globalisation as a non-negotiable external economic constraint). In the words of one senior civil servant, Irish public policy has been ‘driven very much’ by the need to compete on global markets and to ‘[grasp] the potential that globalisation represents’. In particular, globalisation was seen to heighten the need to prioritise economic competitiveness at the expense of other social and economic goals. As another senior civil servant noted, social aims can be pursued but only ‘without killing the goose that laid the egg’. This is interesting because it appears to reflect very much the public articulation of globalisation discourse in Ireland. The detailed qualitative analysis of ministerial speeches, parliamentary debates and policy documents reveals that globalisation has consistently been articulated as a non-negotiable external constraint to domestic audiences. This can be seen, for instance, in such claims that: As a small country, which is highly integrated into the global economy in terms of trade and investment links, economic conditions in Ireland are crucially determined by the international economic environment and our ability to trade in this environment . . . Our dependence on international competitiveness means that public policy must achieve both a sustainable economic strategy and widespread and rapid adaptation in the face of changing world economic circumstances. (Government of Ireland 2003: 3, 44) Similarly, as Bertie Ahern6 told the social partners: The pressures of globalisation are relentless. The rise of new industrial powers in China and India, in particular, as well as the dynamic created

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Nicola Jo-Anne Smith within the European Union through the membership of new, young, well-educated and dynamic States, and the relentless pace of change in technology and its application, make us all subject to a relentless competitive pressure. (Ahern 2005)

Yet, while both semi-structured interviews and textual analysis might suggest that Irish policy-makers tend to articulate globalisation in terms of discourse 1, the attitudinal survey data suggests that such ideas are not necessarily held across the board (see Table 7.2). While nearly all respondents strongly agreed or agreed that globalisation represents the integration of world markets (98.5 per cent) and that the dynamics behind globalisation are primarily economic (99.6 per cent), with only a minority (23.3 per cent) emphasising its political nature, this was not seen to translate into a threat to their policy-making autonomy. Indeed, slightly less than half of Irish members of the Dáil strongly agreed or agreed with this statement (49.2 per cent), although the figure was rather higher for civil servants (59.1 per cent). Of the members of the Dáil, it was those within the Labour Party who were most likely to see globalisation as a threat to their policy-making autonomy (63.6 per cent). In contrast, just 39.1 per cent of Fianna Fáil TDs and 33.3 per cent of Fine Gael TDs strongly agreed or agreed with this statement (and indeed were just as likely to disagree or strongly disagree). In terms of specific policy effects, the majority of respondents did not identify globalisation as a force for convergence in terms of education policy (48.1 per cent), immigration policy (50.4 per cent) or personal taxation (39.8 per cent). Nor did the majority associate globalisation with downward pressure on social expenditure – in fact, just 14.8 per cent of civil servants and 10.9 per cent of TDs strongly agreed with this statement (with 67.9 per cent and 72.7 per cent respectively strongly disagreeing or disagreeing). That having been said, most respondents did identify globalisation as a force for convergence in labour market policy (78.0 per cent), monetary policy (78.5 per cent) and levels of corporate taxation (66.9 per cent) (see also Smith and Hay 2008). Given the semi-structured interview data and textual analysis, such findings are perhaps surprising in that they appear to reflect more closely discourse 2 (globalisation as a contingent process) than discourse 1. This suggests that a number of contradictions and tensions are apparent that are not necessarily reflected in the public articulation of globalisation discourse. Turning to the normative function of discourse, the semi-structured interviews with senior policy-makers and opinion formers revealed that, on the whole, globalisation was seen as a positive development. In the words of one senior civil servant, ‘having an open economy – which means being open to globalisation – has been fundamental to what we have achieved’. Another stated that globalisation has had ‘a huge impact here, and it has a huge and favourable impact because we have embraced it and opened up to it’, and

Examining ideas empirically 153 another declared: ‘if it is globalising financial markets, globalising investment, yes please, we’ll have it, thank you’. Again, this appears to be consistent with the public articulation of globalisation discourse in Ireland. As Bertie Ahern argued at the launch of the National Development Plan in 2007, for example: It is perhaps too easily overlooked that, in the short space of only two decades, we have escaped an invidious legacy of involuntary emigration, joblessness, inflation and high taxation while effectively doubling to well over two million the number of people now engaged in productive employment. This transformation has delivered the standing we now enjoy as a dynamic, prosperous and high-participation economy at the very vanguard of the globalisation era; a location offering unrivalled attractiveness to investor and worker alike; and a success story which continues to unfold as both a model for others and the envy of our international peers. (Ahern 2007a) In particular, globalisation has been presented in public policy discourse as a benign yet constraining force (discourse 1) that must be harnessed to fulfil Ireland’s full potential. As the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, stated at the Sixth Annual Finance Dublin Conference in 2005: ‘Ireland’s recent economic success is built, to a considerable extent, on capitalising on the opportunities presented by globalisation. We should appreciate more than most that globalisation also means that competition is relentless’ (Cowen 2005). In a similar vein, Bertie Ahern argued at an international conference in 2007: The profile we now enjoy in this globalisation era is a dynamic, prosperous and high-participation economy . . . Competition for foreign direct investment is relentless and global . . . while we have come a long way and are proud of what we have achieved, we have no plans for resting on our laurels any time soon. (Ahern 2007b) This broadly positive view of globalisation was also reflected in the attitudinal survey data (see Table 7.2). The majority of Irish policy-makers (69.9 per cent) felt that the benefits of globalisation outweigh the costs for Ireland, with Fianna Fáil TDs particularly likely to be positive about its overall impact.7 Both Irish civil servants and members of the Dáil were enthusiastic about globalisation’s impact on Ireland’s economic prosperity (92.2 per cent), employment (83.6 per cent) and international profile (70.3 per cent). Globalisation was also seen by most respondents to benefit Irish firms (83.5 per cent) and, to a lesser extent, Irish workers (70.0 per cent). Nor was it

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perceived as a significant threat to democracy (just 15.4 per cent of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ with this statement) or indeed to national identity (27.8 per cent), national sovereignty (23.0 per cent) or national security (16.3 per cent). Yet the postal survey did reveal that in some respects globalisation was not seen as unambiguously positive. In particular, less than half of respondents (48.4 per cent) felt that globalisation benefited quality of life in Ireland. And just 25.5 per cent ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ with the statement that ‘globalisation benefits the poor in Ireland’ (although this did vary between the political parties; see Table 7.2). Yet, while this might seem to resonate with discourse 5 (globalisation a project that must be made defensible), it is interesting that very few respondents (just 25.8 per cent) saw globalisation as a threat to social justice in their country. These apparent contradictions seem to indicate the potential fragility of policy-makers’ commitment to globalisation when faced with its social consequences (Smith and Hay 2008). In terms of the coordinative function of discourse, several interviewees pointed to the high level of consensus in the overall policy approach that has become embedded through the social partnership agreements between government and key economic and social groups. This consensus was widely perceived to be driven by the need to achieve sustained economic growth and, more specifically, to prevent the kind of economic crisis that had been experienced in the 1980s in which Ireland experienced spiralling unemployment, debt and inflation. As one senior policy-maker observed: We had made some policy mistakes in the late ’70s and early ’80s and I think we were close to being a basket case in the mid-1980s in terms of the macro-economic environment . . . The vehicle for creating the consensus about what needed to be done was the social partnership. It is considered that the social partnership structure that we developed in the late ’80s period was the essential means for underpinning what had to be addressed. Another noted: Back in the bad days in the late 1980s when the social partnership structures were put in place we were a basket case, and it needed to generate a consensus with respect to some of the difficult things we were going to have to do. And that consensus was forged and it survived and continued as the good times began to roll. A number of interviewees also explicitly linked social partnership to the need for Ireland to respond to globalisation – as one noted: ‘with globalisation there’s been a lot of homogenisation at a political level’. This linkage has

67.9

49.3 27.5 21.4

70.0 93.1

14.8

63.9

75.0

‘Globalisation has a positive impact on Ireland’s economic prosperity’

‘Globalisation increases the need for Ireland to reduce social expenditure’

‘Globalisation benefits the poor in 24.0 Ireland’ 44.1

‘For Ireland, the benefits of globalisation outweigh the costs’

‘Globalisation increases the need for social corporatism in Ireland’

‘Economic competitiveness is a precondition for the pursuit of all other economic and social goals’

‘The anti-globalisation movement seeks to reverse the irreversible’

9.7

3.2

11.5

24.2

59.1

‘Globalisation undermines the autonomy of Irish policy-makers’

1.4

98.6

‘Globalisation represents the integration of world markets’

82.6

57.7

28.5

50.0

0.0

91.7

72.0

39.1

92.0

Strongly agree / agree

Strongly agree / agree

Strongly disagree / disagree

Fianna Fáil

Civil servants

0.0

11.5

23.4

36.3

50.9

8.4

12.0

39.1

3.1

Strongly disagree / disagree

Table 7.2 Irish policy-makers’ attitudes towards globalisation (percentages)

69.2

80.0

30.8

35.7

18.2

100.0

66.6

33.3

100.0

Strongly agree / agree

Fine Gael

7.7

6.7

30.8

36.3

81.8

0.0

27.0

33.3

0.0

Strongly disagree / disagree

70.0

66.6

40.0

0.0

0.0

90.9

63.7

63.6

100.0

Strongly agree / agree

Labour

10.0

16.6

30.0

90.0

100.0

0.0

9.1

9.1

0.0

Strongly disagree / disagree

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repeatedly been highlighted in public political discourse. As Ahern argued in 2002, for instance: We realised early on that for a small economy such as ours to prosper, we had to embrace free trade, and adapt creatively to the global currents which more and more define our economic environment. We have worked hard and successfully over many decades to promote a culture of co-operation rather than confrontation among the economic and social partners of our society. (Ahern 2002) Similarly, in an address to the social partners about the challenges of globalisation, Ahern told the social partners: we are all in this together . . . The plain reality is that unless we are all engaged and operating from a common understanding of where we are, where we are going and the challenges which must be faced, then none of us, alone, can be successful. (Ahern 2005) The existence of a broad consensus surrounding the need for economic competitiveness appears to be supported by the results of the attitudinal survey. Indeed, just 16.9 per cent of TDs and 21.4 per cent of civil servants strongly disagreed or disagreed with the statement that ‘economic competitiveness is a precondition for the pursuit of all other economic and social goals’ (although again there was some variation between the political parties; see Table 7.2). The existence of a broad-based agenda for globalisation was also supported by the fact that most respondents (71.1 per cent) felt that globalisation was not being pursued by any one particular political party. Intriguingly, however, most respondents did not appear to believe that globalisation increases the need for social partnership in Ireland – in fact, less than half ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ that globalisation heightens the importance of social corporatism to Ireland. This again reveals inconsistencies that are not necessarily reflected in the public articulation of globalisation discourse. Turning finally to the communicative function of discourse, as noted before, Irish policy-makers have tended to articulate globalisation in highly positive terms to domestic audiences – in particular linking it with discourses surrounding Ireland’s status as the ‘Celtic tiger’. For example, in its 2002 election manifesto, Fianna Fáil referred to Ireland as ‘one of the most successfully globalised countries in the world’ and highlighted the fact that it came first in the A. T. Kearney Globalisation Index (Fianna Fáil 2002). As Hay and Rosamond (2002) note, whether or not policy-makers deem particular discourses to be true, they may also perceive them as highly useful. The ‘logic of no alternative’ associated with both globalisation and European

Examining ideas empirically 157 integration is of use precisely because it provides decision-makers with the perfect alibi for policies (such as welfare retrenchment) that would otherwise prove highly unpopular with electorates. In turn, for such discourses to be successful they must have resonance with voters’ perceptions and values. For Hay and Rosamond, globalisation is thus unlikely to be articulated as a non-negotiable external constraint (discourse 1) in countries in which it has negative connotations. The limited survey evidence available suggests that such positive articulations of globalisation have indeed had resonance with Irish voters’ perceptions. For example, one 2003 Eurobarometer survey found that 71 per cent of Irish people were in favour of globalisation’s development (the second highest in the EU), 66 per cent were optimistic about the impact for themselves and their families should globalisation intensify (the highest in the EU), and 48 per cent believed that the Irish economy was ‘suited to the development of the global economy’ (with a further 28 per cent identifying the Irish economy as ‘too closed’). Moreover, 72 per cent of Irish citizens expressed trust in their national government for ensuring that globalisation goes in the right direction, although 69 per cent also felt that their national government does not have enough influence in the process of globalisation (Eurobarometer 2003). This is not to suggest, however, that globalisation has been uncontested in Ireland, even at the height of the ‘Celtic tiger’ boom – as demonstrated by a number of anti-globalisation protests. In interviews, 80   70  60  50  40  30  20  10

■ In favour (%) ■ Opposed (%) Figure 7.1 Public opinion in the EU towards globalisation. Source: Eurobarometer (2003).

Greece

Spain

Austria

Sweden

UK

Denmark

France

EU15

Portugal

Belgium

Luxembourg

Finland

Italy

Germany

Ireland

Netherlands

 0

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several senior policy-makers remarked about the growth of anti-globalisation sentiment in parts of the wider Irish community, which they felt was being driven by perceptions that the fruits of Ireland’s growth were not being shared equally. As one senior civil servant commented: ‘the biggest cliché in the last few years is this area or this group, we never saw the Celtic tiger’. Nevertheless, the results of the attitudinal survey suggest that Irish policymakers did not consider this to be too much of a concern: while the majority of respondents (58.2 per cent) felt that anti-globalisation protestors were well intentioned, nearly three-quarters (73.7 per cent) felt that the anti-globalisation movement was seeking to reverse the irreversible and just 9.3 per cent felt that it was likely to prove effective (see also Table 7.2). This appeared to resonate more closely with discourse 4 (globalisation as a political project that must be defended) than with discourse 5 (globalisation as a political project that must be made defensible).

Conclusion This chapter has examined how discourses might be interrogated empirically and, in particular, has considered the merits of a broad-ranging and inclusive (or ‘mixed methods’) research strategy. It has argued that both qualitative and quantitative methods have the potential to generate insights into the role of ideas and has considered the benefits of combining them. The chapter has then provided a brief illustration of how such research might be undertaken through analysis of a discourse that has achieved considerable prominence in recent years: that of globalisation. Focusing on the Irish case, it has sought to map the cognitive, normative, coordinative and communicative functions of globalisation discourse in Ireland by using a variety of methods and techniques (both qualitative and quantitative). The data collected suggest that ideas about globalisation have indeed come to play a significant role in Irish public political discourse. However, it also reveals a number of tensions and contradictions in the way in which such discourses are articulated and understood, in turn highlighting the contingency and complexity of globalisation discourse in Ireland. What is interesting in the light of a discussion about research methods is that such tensions and contradictions may not have been exposed if either qualitative or quantitative methods had been used in isolation.

Notes 1 2

I would like to thank the ESRC for funding the research upon which this chapter draws (awards T026271309, R00429934414, K00429813737 and RES000220780). Interviewees were offered complete anonymity and confidentiality, although most gave their permission for the discussions to be taped and transcribed (on the understanding that the text would then be anonymised). For further details of the qualitative research upon which some of this chapter draws see Smith (2005a, 2005b) and Hay and Smith (2005).

Examining ideas empirically 159 3 4 5 6 7

The official title of a Member of the Dáil is teachta dála (abbreviated to TD). In total, sixty-six Members of the Dáil and 220 Irish civil servants responded to the questionnaire. The raw quantitative data can be downloaded at www.data-archive.ac.uk and is reported in Smith and Hay (2006, 2008), together with a detailed description of the research methodology. Bertie Ahern served as Taoiseach of the Irish Republic from 26 June 1997 to 7 May 2008. In contrast, Labour TDs were the least likely to be positive, which may in turn relate to the fact that (as noted above) they were more likely to identify globalisation as a threat to their policy-making autonomy.

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Chortareas, Georgios E., and Theodore Pelagidis (2004) ‘Trade Flows: A Facet of Regionalisation or Globalisation?’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 28(2): 253–71. Cowen, Brian (2005) ‘Address by the Minister for Finance to the Sixth Annual Finance Dublin Conference’, 5 April. Creswell, John W., and Vicki L. Plano Clark (2007) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. London: Sage. Devine, Fiona (1995) ‘Qualitative Analysis’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science. London: Macmillan. Eurobarometer (2003) Globalisation. Brussels: European Commission. Fianna Fáil (2002) A Lot More Done: More to Do – Fianna Fáil Manifesto 2002–7. Dublin: Fianna Fáil. Foreign Policy (2007) ‘Globalization Index Rankings’, Foreign Policy, no. 163, November/December. Forfás (2000) Enterprise 2010: A New Strategy for the Promotion of Enterprise in Ireland in the 21st Century. Dublin: Forfás. Garrett, Geoffrey (1998) Partisan Politics in the Global Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geras, N. (1987) ‘Post-Marxism?’, New Left Review, 163: 3–27. Government of Ireland (2003) Sustaining Progress: Social Partnership Agreement 2003–2005, Dublin: Stationery Office. Greene, J. (2007) Mixed Methods in Social InquiryOxford: Blackwell. Greene, Jennifer C., and Valerie Caracelli (1997) ‘Defining and Describing the Paradigm Issue in Mixed-Method Evaluation’, New Directions for Programme Evaluation, 74: 5–17. Guba, Egon, and Yvonna Lincoln (2004) ‘Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues’, in S. Hesse-Biber and P. Leavy (eds) Approaches to Qualitative Research: A Reader on Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hay, Colin (2002) Political Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. —— (2004) ‘Common Trajectories, Variable Paces, Divergent Outcomes? Models of European Capitalism under Conditions of Complex Economic Interdependence’, Review of International Political Economy, 11(2): 231–62. Hay, Colin, and David Marsh (2000) ‘Introduction: Demystifying Globalization’, in C. Hay and D. Marsh (eds) Demystifying Globalization. London: Macmillan. Hay, Colin, and Ben Rosamond (2002) ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2): 147–67. Hay, Colin, and Nicola J. Smith (2005) ‘Horses for Courses? The Political Discourse of Globalisation and European Integration in the UK and Ireland’, West European Politics, 28(1): 125–59. Heffernan, Richard (2002) ‘“The Possible as the Art of Politics”: Understanding Consensus Politics’, Political Studies, 50(4): 742–60. Hopkin, John, and Daniel Wincott (2006) ‘New Labour, Economic Reform and the European Social Model’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 8(1): 50–68. Howarth, David (1995) ‘Discourse Theory’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science. Basingtoke: Macmillan.

Examining ideas empirically 161 Howe, Kenneth (1988) ‘Against the Quantitative–Qualitative Incompatibility Thesis: Or Dogmas Die Hard’, Educational Researcher, 17(8): 10–16. Jacobsen, John Kurt (1995) ‘Much Ado about Ideas: The Cognitive Factor in Economic Policy’, World Politics, 47(2): 283–310. Johnson, R. Burke, and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie (2004) ‘Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm whose Time Has Come’, Educational Researcher, 33(7): 14–26. Katzenstein, Peter J. (1985) Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe. New York: Cornell University Press. Kirby, Peadar (2002) The Celtic Tiger in Distress: Growth and Inequality in Ireland. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kirby, Peadar, and Mary Murphy (2008) ‘The Competition State’, in Maura Adshead et al. (eds) Contesting the Irish State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe (1987) ‘Post-Marxism without Apologies’, New Left Review, 166: 79–106. Lukes, Steven (2005) Power: A Radical View. Basingstoke: Palgrave. McEvoy, Phil, and David Richards (2006) ‘A Critical Realist Rationale for Using a Combination of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods’, Journal of Research in Nursing, 11(1): 66–78. Marsh, D. (2008) ‘Understanding British Government: Analyzing Competing Models’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 10(2): 251–68. Miller, W. L. (1995) ‘Quantitative Methods’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science. London: Macmillan. Morton, A. (2003) ‘Historicising Gramsci: Situating Ideas in and Beyond their Context’, Review of International Political Economy, 10(1): 118–46. Newman, Isadore, and Carolyn R. Benz (1998) Qualitative–Quantitative Research Methodology: Exploring the Interactive Continuum. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. O’Hearn, Denis (2003) ‘Macroeconomic Policy in the Celtic Tiger: A Critical Reassessment’, in C. Coulter and S. Coleman (eds) The End of Irish History? Critical Reflections on the Celtic Tiger. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Phillips, Louise, and Marianne W. Jorgensen (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage. Ragin, Charles (1987) The Comparative Method: Moving beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies. London: University of California Press. Ryner, M. (2006) ‘International Political Economy: Beyond the Poststructuralist/ Historical Materialist Dichotomy’, in M. De Goede (ed.) International Political Economy and Poststructural Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 139–56. Schmidt, Vivien A. (2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, V., and C. M. Radaelli (2004) ‘Policy Change and Discourse in Europe: Conceptual and Methodological Issues’, West European Politics, 27(2): 183–210. Scott, David (2007) ‘Resolving the Quantitative–Qualitative Dilemma: A Critical Realist Approach’, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 30(1): 3–17. Skogstad, Grace (1998) ‘Ideas, Paradigms and Institutions: Agricultural Exceptionalism in the European Union and the United States’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, 11(4): 463–90.

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Smith, Nicola Jo-Anne (2005a) ‘Deconstructing “Globalisation” in Ireland’, Policy & Politics, 32(4): 503–19. —— (2005b) Showcasing Globalisation? The Political Economy of the Irish Republic. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Smith, Nicola Jo-Anne, and Colin Hay (2006) ‘Discourses of Globalisation and European Integration in the UK and Ireland: Full Report of Research Activities and Results’, ESRC Project Grant RES000220780. —— (2008) ‘Mapping Political Discourses of Globalisation and European Integration Empirically in the UK and Ireland’, European Journal of Political Research, 47(3): 259–82. Tashakkori, Abbas, and Charles Teddlie (2003) Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioural Research. London: Sage. Taylor, George (2005) Negotiated Governance and Public Policy in Ireland. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wainwright, Steven P. (1997) ‘A New Paradigm for Nursing: The Potential of Realism’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 26: 1262–71. Walsh, James I. (2000) ‘When Do Ideas Matter? Explaining the Successes and Failures of Thatcherite Ideas’, Comparative Political Studies, 33(4): 483–516. Wetherell, Margaret, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon J. Yates (2001a) Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis. London: Sage. —— (2001b) Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader. London: Sage. Wood, Linda, and Rolf Kroger (2000) Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action in Talk and Text. London: Sage.

Part III

Responses

8

Some reflections on ideas, ontology and where we go next Mark Blyth and Vivien Schmidt

Since one of the co-authors of this concluding comment announced the “ideational turn” over a dozen years ago (Blyth 1997), the study of ideas and discourse has grown immeasurably. We can now identify numbers of different approaches that “take ideas seriously,” many of which, taken together, can be seen to constitute a fourth “new institutionalism,” beyond rational choice and historical and sociological institutionalism, which the other co-author has termed “discursive institutionalism” (Schmidt 2002, 2008). And yet, the fact that all of the contributions in the book spend a good deal of their time critiquing rationalist approaches in one way or another indicates that one overarching problem remains for scholars who take ideas seriously: the fact that much of mainstream political science still does not. This book offers some compelling reasons why it should. This book’s central theme is that the turn to ideas in political analysis has not gone far enough, that it needs to get beyond the traditional “mind–body” dichotomies of interests vs. ideas, institutions vs. ideas, causes vs. ideas, and the like. We agree. The contributors target rationalist approaches in particular, arguing that these restrict not only political analysts’ understanding of politics but also political actors’ political discourses and practices. Again, we agree, since we have both been saying exactly this for about a decade and a half. Significantly, however, they also take to task constructivist approaches that are not, in the opinion of the authors, either clear enough or bold enough to get beyond these dichotomies and, thereby, really to take ideas seriously, including our own. This, too, is fair enough. The book is grounded in philosophy, articulated via political science, and illustrated through policy analysis. Contributors focus on the nature of interests, causes, institutions, legitimacy and uncertainty, and illustrate their arguments through brief cases such as US foreign policy under Bush (Tønder) and the social sources of financial power (Seabrooke) or by examinations of media narratives about the Barings Bank scandal (Hudson and Martin), the Basel II bank regulatory reforms (Kessler), and the Irish discourse of globalization (Smith). Their critiques center on three main areas: ontology, or “what is” and is not; epistemology, or “how we know what we know” (or

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don’t know) about what is; and methodology, or “how we demonstrate what we know” (or don’t know) about what is. The main problem addressed by the contributors to the book, as the co-editors note in their introduction and first chapter (Gofas and Hay), is that political analysis has been dominated by the rationalists, who posit a dualistic ontology that divides the material from the ideational, or what is from what we think it is; a dualistic epistemology that divides causal and constitutive logics, or supports an ideas as variables approach that serves to explain what happens vs. ideas as conditions that serve to understand what happens; and a dualistic methodology, or quantitative techniques to generalize explanations of what happened vs. qualitative approaches to contextualize understandings of what happened. All of the contributors argue, in one way or another, that getting beyond these dualisms is not only possible but necessary. And, once beyond the dualisms, they introduce us to a world that is actually more knowable in a substantive way, in which we can find out more about how change really occurs. They show us not just how elites’ ideas and discourse lead to action in the real world but also how the media shape those ideas (Hudson and Martin), how everyday people’s everyday practices affect the world (Seabrooke), how those everyday practices create not only what we know but also what we don’t know on an everyday basis (Kessler), and in which quantitative methods can be put to qualitative uses in order to understand how elites seek to shape everyday people’s understandings of that world (Smith). Finally, all the contributors, in one way or another, link rationalist quantitative methods to neoliberal ideas, and they point to the problems that have arisen from neoliberal reform programs that presuppose that the world is knowable (or unknowable) as a place populated by narrowly interest-motivated individuals who are predictable most of the time using rationalist models and quantitative methods. Again, we agree with such a stance. However, applause gets boring quite quickly, so in what follows we divide our comments according to where we can offer the most value-added by striking a note of what we hope can be seen as “reflective discord” with the authors. Blyth begins this with his discussion of Gofas and Hay’s chapter. He then juxtaposes this to the chapters of Tønder on causality and Seabrooke on “the everyday.” Following this, Schmidt picks up on the chapters by Hudson and Martin, Kessler, and Smith.

Bibliography Blyth, M. (1997) “‘Any More Bright Ideas?’ The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy,” Comparative Politics, 29(2): 229–50. Schmidt, V. A. (2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —— (2008) “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse,” Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 303–26.

9

On setting and upsetting agendas Blyth on Gofas and Hay, Tønder, and Seabrooke Mark Blyth

Introduction There is a line in Saul Bellow’s Ravenstein that says something like “a thing is not a thing until it happens in Paris.” One might alter that claim here to something like “a thing is not a thing until it has happened to critical realists.” For while I very much support the thrust of this book, especially the theoretical contributions, I wonder if the chapter by Gofas and Hay does not err in two “critical” directions. First, is there anyone out there among “ideas” scholars who doesn’t already know much of what they say in their contribution to this volume and has indeed already said much of it in print? If so, do we really need to beat up on rational choice theory and post-structuralism again, and for much the same reasons as last time? Second, and this is my main concern, can we really ground our claims in the philosophy of science, especially in some conception of the “right” ontological position one should have, as these authors seem to contend? In discussing Gofas and Hay’s contribution I address both of these themes. I then consider Tønder’s chapter and the issues it raises for the understandings of causation used in ideational scholarship. Finally, I discuss Seabrooke’s concern with legitimacy and the focus on periods of “uncertainty” among some ideational scholars, myself included, that Seabrooke, as well as Gofas and Hay, find problematic.

Finding one(s) place in the literature Gofas and Hay’s chapter ambitiously aims to “to develop a cartography of existing ideational approaches and to submit these to critical assessment” (p. 13). Before doing so, however, they offer the caveat that “we make no apology for our inevitable failure to reflect the full subtlety and range of existing ideational scholarship; nor do we claim that our review is exhaustive” (p. 14). And here resides my first problem. I wonder whether this caveat is in fact broad enough to accommodate a literature review so reliant on one or two sources (or, as we shall see in one instance, no sources at all) that the assertions it generates can be relied upon to sustain the argument they wish to make. In brief, Gofas and Hay discuss all of rational choice’s adoption of

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ideas by reference to a single volume: Goldstein and Keohane’s Ideas and Foreign Policy (1993), published sixteen years ago. All of constructivism is reduced to the single contribution of Alex Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999), published ten years ago. Worryingly, all of poststructuralism is harshly criticized without any direct engagement of any actual post-structuralist work. And, most strange of all, none of the self-identified “ideas literature,” apart from a few references to my own work, is actually discussed. If this is a map, I hope the authors remembered to pack the sat-nav. Beating up the rationalists – again . . . In 1997 I reviewed Goldstein and Keohane’s edited volume (Blyth 1997) and made very similar points to Gofas and Hay – that focal points presume a social knowledge that is not reducible to individual beliefs, that ideas are “fillers” for holes in institutional theories, etc. Indeed, Gofas and Hay echo my own line that ideas “exist prior to individuals and give meaning and content to their preferences” (ibid.: 239) with their view that “ideas must be causally prior to interests.” Needless to say, I couldn’t agree more. However, I must also note that, if it has already been said before, then, as David Byrne once quipped, “say something once; why say it again?” Indeed, their discussion of “rational choice by way of the Goldstein and Keohane volume” makes largely the same points against rational choice theorists’ adoptions of ideas as those offered by myself (1997, 2002a, 2003), McNamara (1998), Berman (1998), Schmidt (2002), Parsons (2003), Béland (2006), and a host of other scholars. As such, the value-added of rehearsing a well-known critique of what is probably one of the most reviewed (and old) books in the ideational canon is not exactly obvious. Moreover, doing so is more than a little unfair to rational choice theorists. If the authors think that there has been absolutely no theoretical progress within this research program in its many and varied attempts to incorporate ideas since 1993, then they can say so. But to say so they need to show so. Recent work by North (2005), Katznelson and Weingast (2005), and most recently Greif (2006) offer far more sophisticated attempts to bring ideas into a rationalist framework – attempts that speak to the authors’ core concerns of ontology and epistemology. If Gofas and Hay think that these authors have committed the same errors as Goldstein and Keohane, then they can show that by actually engaging with the work. But simply to rely on one rather dated volume and a caveat that says “we can’t review it all and so make no apology for it” strikes me as insufficient evidence for their case to proceed. Greif’s recent book at least deserves a mention, since it engages with the key concerns of the authors – duality, insofar as Greif views institutions as simultaneously ideational/virtual and real/material.1 As he puts it, institutions “provide individuals with the cognitive, coordinative, normative, and

On setting and upsetting agendas 169 informational micro-foundations . . . [that] . . . motivate them” (Greif 2006: 14). Key here are agents’ ideas, seen as “cultural beliefs . . . [that] . . . influence the selection of institutions,” since the “motivation provided by beliefs and norms . . . is the linchpin of institutions” (ibid.: 28, 45). In short, there have been at least a few rational choice attempts to deal with ideas after 1993 that might have been worth a look. Wendt’s world and planet everyone else The weakness of the review is also apparent when Gofas and Hay use Alex Wendt to typify all of “thin” constructivism. Wendt is an IR theorist whose book The Social Theory of International Politics (1999) has rightly garnered much attention. It was indeed critical in gaining constructivist approaches mainstream respect in the American IR community, and it is, as Gofas and Hay note, not without its problems, among them being Wendt’s “rump materialism” and his insistence on separating cause and constitution. However, those problems, as highlighted by Gofas and Hay, just as we saw in their critique of Goldstein and Keohane, have been extensively documented elsewhere. Indeed, in the case of Wendt there is an entire book on these very same points (Guzzini and Leander 2006). So once again I invoke David Byrne – “why say it again?” More broadly, constructivism within IR, even in its “thin” mode, contains scholars as diverse as Chwieroth (2007), Weaver (2008), Bukovansky (2002) and Checkel (1998), to name just a few. So why restrict this to “Wendt’s world”? What about “planet everyone else”? An engagement with these other authors’ works would show that any claim that they can be simply read off “Wendt’s world” is impossible to sustain given the very different ontological starting points of these authors. But what’s really surprising for a book on the “ideas literature” is that Gofas and Hay’s review doesn’t engage any of the self-described “ideas literature” that came out of comparative politics and comparative political economy in the last two decades. From Hall’s seminal 1993 piece on policy paradigms, through McNamara (1998), Berman (1998), Schmidt (2002), Parsons (2003), Campbell (2004), Béland (2006) and Jabko (2007) to Woll (2008), none of it is either acknowledged or discussed. How, then, can this be a review of the ideas literature? And don’t forget to dump (on) the post-structuralists on the way out . . . Most worrying for me is the rather scattershot attack on post-structuralism/ postmodernism (I use the terms interchangeably) Gofas and Hay feel it necessary to mount in their review. In this instance no actual real existing poststructuralist work is addressed. Instead of a review of what actual scholars have actually said, we are warned broadly that “postmodernism is a form of idealism” – a “virulent form” no less. And the evidence for this cited in their chapter is an exchange over what a cat (really, a cat) can and cannot be by

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virtue of its physical limitations. This is supposedly relevant because postmodernists’ “analytical commitments seem to accord them [physical limits] no significance and largely prevent them [physical limits] from becoming the subject of analysis. The result is apparently an immaterial form of analysis.” Consequently, quoting Wendt approvingly this time, Gofas and Hay opine that “postmodernism tends to fail to consider ‘the resistance of the world to certain representations.’” It is unfortunate that in making this case not a single postmodernist work on, for example, political economy is discussed. Instead we get two gedanken, about cats/lions as pets and gravity as a cause of drowning.2 As far as I am aware no postmodernist has ever suggested that cats can become cab drivers or that humans can overcome drowning by discursively constituting water as air. In the actual postmodern literature, if it is examined, one finds acute awareness of the limits of the physical/material, since this is what sets the parameters of the possible for any discursive project and the subject positions that this in turn enables. Take De Goede’s (2005) work on finance, which shows how laws against gambling prevented the rise of finance until the same gambling technologies (martingales and the like) became domesticated in the financial theory of the mid-twentieth century. Or, consider Langley’s (2008) work on the ‘everyday’ logics of finance. Langley discusses in depth how, rather than pre-formed investors constructing markets, markets of specific types constitute specific investor subjects and indeed rely upon such the construction of such subjectivities for their maintenance. Similarly, if post-structuralist authors completely ignore material reality, as is maintained here, then Epstein’s (2008) discussion of how whales – big out-there material objects – went from being commodities to being seen as uniquely intelligent creatures, to the extent that the hunting of them today marks a state as a “barbarian” nation, would be strange indeed. What Epstein shows beautifully is that whales can be socially constructed as very different things at different times while their materiality remains constant. She is not saying that whales can be narrated as spaceships or midwives willy-nilly. Gofas and Hay are, unfortunately, engaging in a straw-manning exercise of the worst type. Yes, nuclear weapons are real things – to pick up on their other example of the supposed ignorance of the material in post-structuralist work – but an Iranian bomb means something entirely different from a Russian or British bomb, which is the post-structuralist point. The meaning of the physical object is not reducible to its materiality. It is neither exhausted by it nor is it independent of it – a point which all the post-structuralist work I know actually takes very seriously indeed. Post-structuralists are not saying that an Iranian nuclear weapon can be discursively constructed as a teapot – or, for that matter, as a cat. Bob Jessop once went after post-structuralists with the following line. “[I]f the only properties which entities have are the products of a discourse, then one could discursively turn base metal into gold” (quoted in Bieler and

On setting and upsetting agendas 171 Morton 2008: 114). This is the same criticism, in essence, that Gofas and Hay offer when they call post-structuralism a “virulent idealism.” But this mode of reasoning is fabulously flawed. It is not the physical properties of an object that are discursively constructed. Rather, it is the way we apprehend and describe these physical properties, which is always a discursive operation (the very terms “gold” or “base metal” are linguistic categories). To take Jessop’s example, materials such as gold are only valuable to the extent that there exists a shared intersubjective convention that it is valuable. It has nothing to do with the object’s intrinsic properties.3 Similarly, cats are cats to the extent that we call them cats and imbue them with a limited, but variable, set of meanings, such as pets or pests. Admitting this doesn’t mean we can also call them “nuclear reactors” and power submarines with them. Caveats concerning breadth notwithstanding, for their literature review to carry the weight of argument that Gofas and Hay want, it needs actually to review the literature it purports to speak authoritatively about and not simply rely on two rather old books and a fistful of assertions about poststructuralism. If one undertook such a review, then it might become apparent that statements such as the following have actually been said by many different people, even those virulently idealistic poststructuralists, many times before: we might benefit from seeing the process of narration, constitution and re-constitutions of actors’ interests as itself causally constitutive . . . If this is correct, then the determinants of seismic institutional and political change are not to be found in the appeal to materialist conceptions of self-interest. Rather they are to found in the identification of the processes in and through which actors come to a different understanding – a different construction – of their interests. (Gofas and Hay, this volume, p. 51)

Still bewaring gurus: why should I care what philosophers of science think? My second issue with Gofas and Hay’s chapter concerns their reliance on the philosophy of science to get them to where they want to go. Indeed, when scholars of the social world invoke a position in the philosophy of science as a kind of solution to studying the political and economic, I get worried. Many years ago Hollis and Smith (1991) replied to Wendt (1992) with a piece entitled “Beware of Gurus.” One of the gurus discussed was Giddens, who also drew, perhaps mistakenly, on Bhaskar’s version of scientific realism. Hollis and Smith pointed out then that philosophers of science do not solve problems in other fields, so appealing to them as authority and/or solution for such problems is problematic. I agree, and submit that Gofas and Hay may be making the same mistake here. Gofas and Hay argue that the key problem for ideational analysis is the

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persistence of analytic dualisms, since such dualisms “reveal elements of dualistic thinking . . . in the attempt to accord ideas an explanatory role” (Gofas and Hay, this volume, p. 5). This matters because, for Gofas and Hay, (onto)logical inconsistency is a key concern insofar as logical consistency in the relationship between one’s ontological position and one’s epistemology is necessary to say something meaningful about the world. When one is ontologically inconsistent, according to Gofas and Hay, bad things happen, so we should all be ontologically consistent – which seems to be reducible in their chapter to keeping one’s ontology explicit and consistent with one’s epistemology. And a very good way of doing this, according to Gofas and Hay, is to be a critical (qua scientific) realist. What bothers me here is that I am far from convinced that ontological (and therefore logical) consistency is the sine qua non of good research, or that scientific (or critical) realism is of much help to empirical researchers. (Scientific) ‘critical’ realism: the primer that’s missing . . . Gofas and Hay claim that “our aim is not to engage in ontological proselytising” (p. 13). This is a bit of a caveat emptor claim, however, insofar as throughout their chapter they assert the superiority of something called “critical realism,” drawn from scientific realism, a position in the philosophy of science. Their problem in doing so, at least here, is that we are never actually told what critical realism is, what it does, or how it works. Indeed, quite how it matters at all is left opaque and implicit in their chapter.4 I have read a lot of this stuff over the years and, despite my sincere efforts to engage with those who do (Blyth 2002b), I have ended up concluding that I simply do not see how and why it matters for what I do as a researcher. Whether in the work of Wendt (1987, 1999), in its original (Bhaskar [1979] 1998) or adopted forms (Giddens 1984, 1999; Archer 1988; and Wight 2006), I fail to see how a position derived from the study of the physics of subatomic particles can be simply scaled up to model social structures and complex patterns of agency so unproblematically. The basic idea behind it, just so the reader and I are on the same page, seems to be some variant of the following. We have no direct access to the world, so we do not know the world as it really is. Instead, we can divide it analytically into three realms – the real (what is really there in the world but which we usually cannot see), the actual (what we know about the world) and the empirical (what we can evidence about the world) – even if doing so in practice is extremely difficult.5 Things in the world, not the world itself, can then be divided into transitive and intransitive objects of science. These are the concepts with which we do the explaining, as opposed to things we can posit as real. So, for example, the concept of an electron is a transitive object that allows us to make statements about the world, whereas “electrons” are real things (intransitive objects) independent of our inferences about them.6 Given these observations about the unobservable, social researchers can

On setting and upsetting agendas 173 use a logic of abductive inference7 to show how things that are unobservable have effects and are therefore real. And since we can know them through their effects, we can therefore say something about, for example, massive unobservable social structures such as class, and immaterial objects such as agents’ ideas, that are real in their effects too. After all, what is true for electrons, or Higgs bosons, or dark matter (Wight 2008) is therefore equally and obviously true for classes, or ideas, or anything else we want to see but for which we cannot find direct evidence. It is just a question of scale, agency, causation, kinds and, well, evidence. Take class, for example. Agents in the world may not think in terms of it, talk about it or act in accordance with its supposed logic – they may even actively eschew it (as in the case of most Americans) – but so long as the critical realist says it is real, and she can find evidence for it by some combination of abductive inference and ontological insistence, then it is “real,” regardless of what the actual agents concerned do, think or say about what they may or may not be doing, thinking or saying. Given this, America, for example, may be in the throes of class politics as you read this, despite very few actual living Americans acting in terms of such a discourse or expressing such sentiments.8 Underlying this assuredness is the claim that “to be is more than to be perceived” and the associated notion of Bhaskar’s (1979) “epistemic fallacy” that knowledge of being is not a condition of being itself (Wight 2006: 25). Given this caveat, realist authors can deploy appeals to agency and “conditioning” and the like to get from studies of particles to studies of people, but ultimately the jump from particles to politics is made by assumption. Yet unless Bhaskar has become Latour – and there is the last time I checked not much performativity in physics – this just doesn’t scale up as advertised.9 Indeed, if this is realism, to me it is rather unrealistic and smacks of wishful thinking.10

Critical is to realism as testing is to positivism: a trope and a trump The basic problem I have with relying so much on the philosophy of science is one that speaks to Seabrooke’s concerns with legitimacy (more on Seabrooke below). That is, deploying the philosophy of science (my italics) as a legitimacy claim/trump card and a discursive trope.11 When you have paradigmatic incommensurability – a given in social research, since we can neither stand apart from the object we study nor see its causal generators directly (Blyth 2006, 2008) – one way to trump someone else’s position is to appeal to some external authority. As Schmidt’s essay in this volume makes clear, positivists appeal (mistakenly) to Popper (1959) while neopositivists appeal (equally mistakenly) to Lakatos and Musgrave (1968). Scientific realists appeal (often) to Bhaskar ([1979] 1998). Gofas and Hay are no exception. To take one example of such deployments, “the range of positions labelled constructivist in contemporary international relations theory alone is far greater and far more internally diverse than the equivalent range in the

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philosophy of science literature” (p. 30). I am not sure what to make of such a statement. After all, if the philosophy of science is an entirely different field from the study of IR, why should I expect the numbers to converge? Indeed, if such a statement is at all relevant, its relevance lies in its deployment as a trope insofar as there is no agreement in the philosophy of science itself as to the “truth veracity” of the positions inside these debates, since many of these philosophers get to the same position via different starting points. Pragmatists, realists and constructivists (constructivism itself being a position within the philosophy of science, pace Hacking and Latour) all tell mutually intelligible but mutually exclusive stories about the practice of science, and no one story wins. The field consensus, as I understand it, seems to be that no one thinks these matters settled, let alone with scientific realism coming out on top, since they are at base mutually irresolvable (Miller 1987). As Schmidt notes, philosophers of science have “very different approaches to scientific rationality . . . [t]hey start with very different ontologies and epistemologies; and none of them have a corner on knowledge and certainty” (this volume, p. 191). Given this, deploying them as settled matters (“Bhaskar has shown that . . . ”) in an entirely different field is basically a bit of a trope. Second, they are deployed as trumps in that the word science, or in this case critical, does all the work.12 If Gofas and Hay were to tell us about the politics of ideas by reference to the philosophy of morals they would not get very far. But by invoking the “s” word (even if it’s hidden in a “critical” wrapper) they play the same game as the positivists that they criticize by using a claim to science (or “criticality”) as a claim to legitimacy. “Look,” says the realist, “this is how science does it. Science is legitimate; I claim legitimacy for my views.” Except that this is the “philosophy of science” – a second-hand commentary on what scientists may or may not do that, as Schmidt (this volume) reminds us, posits no agreement on that very topic. Wight may well be right that “one cannot be both a scientific realist and a positivist” (2002: 36, quoted in Gofas and Hay, this volume, p. 37), but that doesn’t stop one appealing to either inconclusive philosophical position to bolster one’s claims in the absence of empirical evidence with an appeal-toscience trump card.13 Gofas and Hay are far from the most egregious examples of this tendency, but they fall victim to it nonetheless, and that too worries me if this is to be the next stop on the train of ideational research.

As Spock knew: logic alone is insufficient But even if Gofas and Hay are right that, in principle, such philosophical declarations do have purchase on the real world by aligning ontology and epistemology, how would they know that their approach in fact does so apart from their appeal to internal logical consistency? And is such (onto)logical consistency alone enough to make their case? Consider their discussion of Wendt once again. Against Wendt, they argue that

On setting and upsetting agendas 175 Wendt here seems to imply that ontological choices are epistemologically neutral and vice versa. This is patently not the case – as, indeed, scientific realists such as Bhaskar (1989: 67ff.) have spelled out very clearly (uncharacteristically clearly, as it happens). If ontology concerns the nature of social and political reality itself, then clearly it sets limits on what one can hope to know about that reality. (Gofas and Hay, this volume, p. 36) Apart from the clear invocation of “scientific authority” via Bhaskar as trump here, how would Gofas and Hay know this to be true beyond their appeal to internal logical consistency as their marker of the appropriate alignment of ontology and epistemology? Imagine for a moment this version (my version, as it happens) of the world. Agents do not stand outside of reality but constitute it through their actions. We do not see the generators of reality directly. Rather, all outcomes are mediated, as are our responses to these outcomes. Non-linearities, disequilibria, and recursive looping are the norm in all social systems. Social systems are complex adaptive, entropic, nonergodic, and evolving social systems. One cannot assume fixed identities or Laplace-like people-as-particles that are transcendental over time. Neither identities nor interests are fixed categories. Ontology is historical; it evolves. I think Gofas and Hay might accept some version of this world, but, if they do, what would be the conditions of possibility for knowing that a particular position in the philosophy of science has the “right” ontology to access it apart from bare logic? After all, the philosophers invoked cannot definitively show this, despite what their partisans in the social sciences from positivism to realism and back seem to contend. And if we are all stuck, to use a mangled geometric metaphor, in one corner of the hermeneutic circle without a transcendental point of truth to see the world as it really is, and I submit that this is the case (Abdelal et al.: 2010), then what gets critical realists off the hook, enabling them, uniquely, to see the world as it really is since they alone can tell us what the correct ontology and epistemology is and indeed should be? I don’t see how they can. But if they cannot, then all they have is logical consistency, and here is why this is not enough. There is a field in the social sciences that values logical consistency above all else. Micro generates macro, internal logical consistency and strict derivation from clearly stated assumptions are the benchmarks of knowledge, and ad hoc leaps of explanatory faith are forbidden. It’s called neoclassical economics, and its fixation with internal logical consistency over external fit with the evolving and inconstant nature of the actual world we inhabit just helped blow up the global financial system (Abdelal et al.: 2010; Turner 2009). This is why (onto)logical consistency alone is not only insufficient; it is

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extremely misleading while it is extremely seductive. If Gofas and Hay have nothing more than this to demonstrate the value-added of their philosophical propositional predicate, then I do indeed worry.14

Don’t fret the ontology, especially if it evolves To me, and I am still willing to be persuaded on this point, positing a definitive ontology is ultimately a parlor game. You can do it all night for fun, but how do you know if you are right beyond logical fit? Consider the following. Except for conjoined twins, the world is composed of individuals – which is true, but it is hardly a license for embracing a transcendental methodological individualism. The world is also composed of classes. Sometimes those classes act “an sich” as Marx had it, and in those moments they are hugely consequential for all of our lives. Yet this is not a license to see classes everywhere and at all times driving everything. So if they are both “real” but “effectively real” at different moments, then a commitment to intransitivity/ transitivity in social objects and absolute consistency in ontology/epistemology as an a priori must be, at best, severely limiting, especially for a constructivist. If constructivism means anything, it means “things can be otherwise,” à la Hacking (1999), which itself means that fixed identities and qualities are a bad place to start. Yet this seems to be where Gofas and Hay want us to go. This I really do worry about.15 In sum, then, does the positing of a definite ontology and a commitment to a particular philosophy of science help us understand that world? As far as I am concerned, the answer is no. I see it as a hindrance to doing actual empirical work, since ontology is historical and evolving (Hacking 2002).16 Ontology is what needs to be discovered in particular historical moments – not what needs to be assumed by scaling up what natural scientists do, or what they do not know about subatomic particles. So I do not care what philosophers of science think, since I operate in a very social, evolving and very multi-level world that is not the world of particle physics. I study people, not positions or potentials. And I do worry about the restricting nature of ontological “commitment,” especially any injunction that I should be so “committed.” In an open and evolving world I think this is a very brave tenet with which to begin research.

We took a wrong turn back at Hume: Spinoza and immanent causation in Tønder Gofas and Hay might respond to these concerns with the rejoinder that critical realism also gives them a superior understanding of causation to mainstream approaches, since causation can be, as Tønder shows, immanent as well as efficient in its form. This may be the case, but the insight that modes of causation apart from the linear efficient may be relevant for the social sciences is hardly unique to critical realists (Cartwright 2007). Rather, what

On setting and upsetting agendas 177 Tønder shows is how philosophy, when it is used to generate new insights rather than when it is used as a trump card to justify positions, can indeed push forward an ideational agenda for research. Tønder sees immanent causality as “a mode of explanation that recognizes the way in which the agentive capacities of the ideational challenge a neat separation of cause and effect” (p. 71). He divides the existing ideational literature into two camps: those who wish to incorporate linear efficient causality into their analysis (Berman) and those who reject it (Wendt; Laffey and Weldes).17 And, having made this separation, he invites us to reject it as false by moving away from the notion of cause pioneered by the likes of Hume and Mill – the temporally dependent constant conjunctions model – towards the immanent model offered by, in this case, Spinoza and Deleuze.18 To do this Tønder takes a bold step towards what some scholars have called “thing-theory” (Bennett 2004), where non-human actants are granted agency. For Tønder, ideas are actants in that they “have the power to cause changes in policy because of their agentive capacities to express in more or less adequate ways the circumstances from which they arise” (p. 66). Tønder thus grants ideas an “expressive quality,” since ideas are always ideas “of something” material, such that the capacity to act upon the material is engendered by the interaction of the ideal with the material itself, making “an idea a repository for future action.” This itself gives rise to the notion of ontological parallelism where the ideal and the material are mutually expressible in action via the ability of ideas to be an actant in the world. This is turn gives us a notion of why some ideas “win out” based upon their adequacy – a measure of the ability of an idea to engage with, and persist in, the world that an idea is inter-involved with. Tønder’s point is that, once one makes these moves, the idea of cause and effect as temporally discrete events and objects becomes difficult to sustain. As Tønder puts it, “as the idea engages the world, causing it to follow this or that policy path, the ideational itself becomes that which gives meaning to the outcome of this path,” such that “the latter is immanent in the cause rather than deriving from it” (p. 69). This closing of the temporal causal gap enables ideational scholars to get beyond the cause–constitution dualism noted by both Gofas and Hay and Tønder to, significantly, begin to talk systematically about the non-linear and recursive causal properties of ideas – properties that make them of interest to scholars in the first place.19

Philosophy as insight, not trump card My main criticism of Tønder is that he doesn’t go far enough in this analysis. But before going there I would like to note the different uses to which philosophy is put in these two opening chapters. In Gofas and Hay philosophy is deployed as a trump and a trope. In Tønder, in contrast, it is deployed as a flashlight. It illuminates by asking questions rather than seeking to define the already appropriate answers (qua scientific/critical realism). As Tønder asks

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philosophically, most scholars, given their training, seem to think linearefficient cause is the only game in town, so “what would happen if we challenged that assumption?” Philosophy, in Tønder’s hands, thus opens up possibilities rather than closes them down, as, for example, when the philosophy of science is deployed by Gofas and Hay. Rather, Tønder hones in on a mode of causation that is actually useful, not just for social scientists, but across the sciences and humanities in general: the notion of emergent (immanent) cause. Indeed, if scientific realists see cause as, according to Kurki (as quoted by Gofas and Hay), “all those things that bring about, produce, direct or contribute to states of affairs or changes in the world” (Kurki 2006: 202), then what we are presented with is a state description of the world, not something with which to understand that world. Tønder’s conception of cause, in contrast, usefully extends our notion of causation in a way that engages fields as different from ideational social science as neuroscience and evolutionary biology – fields where such notions of cause are already commonplace. For example, Rizzolatti’s work in neuroscience on mirror neurons and affective responses relies on a notion of emergent cause explicated through the work of Merleau-Ponty (Rizzolatti 2008). Goodwin (1997) and more recently Kauffman (2008) engage emergent cause directly in their work on complex biological systems. Kauffman’s notions of ontological emergence and “emergent possible” spaces where similar conditions produce dissimilar outcomes are grist to this same mill. Indeed, my only criticism is that Tønder could marshal much more than Spinoza to his cause, since it is a cause that has already won converts in many other fields.20 This is no more true than in the study of causation itself where, as Cartwright has noted, causation has become “one word” that signifies “many things” (2007: 11). Causation is increasingly recognized in its own field of study as plural and domain specific. As such, linear, efficient, Bayes nets, modular, Granger and emergent causes are all seen to exist, because “there is a variety of different kinds of causal laws that operate in a variety of different ways and a variety of different kinds of causal question that we can ask” (ibid.: 19). Accordingly, each mode of cause may have discrete truth markers such that “the causal arrangements of the world may be infinitely variable” (ibid.: 24). In such a world the insistence that one embrace a particular ontological commitment, a move Tønder wisely avoids, becomes ever more problematic. Tønder’s stress on immanence is something future scholars of ideas need to take seriously, as they are being taken seriously already elsewhere. As well as a philosophy of immanence, it is a statement of ontology; but crucially it is a historical and evolving ontology, which brings me to Seabrooke’s contribution.

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Little people and big claims: Seabrooke on legitimacy, uncertainty, and crisis Seabrooke undertakes the literature review missing in Gofas and Hay, and he does it well. He surveys recent literature in the rationalist, historical institutionalist and constructivist traditions in such a way that the review supports his later interesting contentions. Those are, first, that legitimacy is an ongoing social process granted by everyday actors and is not something that is simply proclaimed by elites; and, second, that ideas are important in noncrisis moments too. As such, the focus on periods of radical (Knightian) uncertainty stressed by me (Blyth 2002a) and authors such as Parsons (2003) and McNamara (1998) is somewhat misplaced. I have no critique of either point in the abstract. There is no doubt that the focus on elites battling it out at the top of the social heap in moments of extreme environmental uncertainty is perhaps a limit case rather than a typical case. After all, most of the time the world seems stable; and it would indeed be odd for ideational scholars to say that ideas do not matter in such moments, since it would mean that their ability to say much about the world much of the time would be seriously truncated. Seabrooke puts it more strongly, however, when he contends that “the focus on uncertainty also raises questions about selection bias, since we know from common sense that institutions, and the ideas that create them, are typically changed as much during periods of normality as during periods of uncertainty – if not more so” (p. 85; my italics). In Seabrooke’s world, “periods of ‘normality’ are just as important as, if not more so than, periods of crisis and uncertainty” (p. 90). Again, I am not unsympathetic to this point of view. I think that Seabrooke has made a great case for this extension of ideational research in this “everyday politics” framework in both his empirical (2006; Hobson and Seabrooke 2007) and theoretical (2007) work. In fact, he is not alone in pointing out the limits of such a model where we live in a world of passive risk most of the time that is punctuated by periods of radical uncertainty when all the politics happens (Gofas and Hay in this volume – among others). As one of the main authors of this approach, I have taken these criticisms seriously, to the point that I have been rethinking this model of change for quite some time now in an attempt to get away from the risk/uncertainty binary towards a new formulation (Blyth 2006, 2007, 2008). So, I agree. But I also, in light of recent events, wish to push back a little on this view, perhaps a bit more than I would have done a year ago – for two reasons. First of all, such a model does not actually say that ideas only matter in periods of crisis. What it says is that ideas matter differently in periods of stability (Blyth 2002a: 27–35), in that they are used in everyday practices to give meaning and content to the institutions to which they have given rise. Their performance in such an institution constitutes the institution itself, which in no way rules out change at the margin.21 They also give rise to a different politics of “salami tactics” characterized by incremental changes

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(Blyth 2007; Thelen and Streek 2005). As such, the claim that such a model says they only matter in period “z” rather than in period “a–y” is not quite accurate. The second reason is a classic “baby and the bathwater” issue. As I write this chapter the world is in the midst of a massive endogenous, and largely unforeseen, global financial crisis. It is generating what I would term radical uncertainty, insofar as existing institutions are destabilized and agents, mainly global elites and their talking-head advisors, are struggling to define what it is a crisis of, who is to blame and how to fix it, just as the model criticized predicts (Blyth 2002a). Given this, Seabrooke’s claim that ideas are more important in periods of stability seems to me to be a step too far – erring in the other direction from the original model, as it were. For example, ideas that would have been laughed out of the boardroom just a year ago, such as state control of banks, the need for more regulation and the “end of neoliberalism,” are all too suddenly standing room only at Davos.22 Such situations are rare, but they are also when ideas really matter. To put it bluntly, one does not get to the point where the nationalization of the US financial sector is a serious topic for discussion through incremental change. Moreover, how the crisis is defined is profoundly important – something Hay has written extensively about (Hay 2001), since it is in these moments that future institutions, regulations, policies and distributions are framed. So far, in the US case, the financial crisis has been framed as one of liquidity (Paulson), capitalization (Geithner), toxicity (Geithner) and even, and against much resistance, insolvency (Roubini, Taleb, Rogoff). Which definition of the crisis wins out occurs in moments of crisis, not in stasis, and is ultimately a battle of ideas. So, far from putting periods of stasis on par with periods of crisis, I would like to suggest that, while Seabrooke offers a needed corrective and a useful extension to the literature, we shouldn’t throw the crisis baby out with the everyday bathwater. Seabrooke’s critique of “legitimacy by proclamation” is surely correct, but it does not follow from this position that all things are being “stress tested” for legitimacy by the masses all of the time. Consider the current outrage over bankers’ bonuses. Were they always legitimate before the crisis threw them into question, or were they simply unnoticed? Everyday acts of resistance are perhaps, then, a bit more like moments of crisis after all. That is to say, they don’t actually happen every day.

Concluding remarks I like this book, I really do, but I do worry about the utility of some of the stances taken in these more theoretical chapters at the front end of the book. My main concern with Gofas and Hay, beyond not straw-manning other people’s positions, was their desire to use the philosophy of science as a trope and a trump. To reiterate my concern briefly: I don’t care what Bhaskar

On setting and upsetting agendas 181 thinks, and (onto)logically presupposition alone doesn’t show anything about the politics of the world we inhabit. Rather, such a stance presumes as known what we need to investigate. For an ideational research program to thrive, it needs to tell us things about the world that we don’t already know. If its main claim to future fame is going to be that we should all spend lots of time worrying about ontology, then I fear that the project is doomed. My concerns with Tønder and Seabrooke are lesser, since I think that they both point out new and exciting directions for actual empirical research. Rethinking cause as immanent or emergent is really useful. Similarly, bringing the everyday into focus has produced new knowledge on old problems across cases (Hobson and Seabrooke 2007). The pay-off is already proven. My criticisms of these chapters revolve around questions of calibration and scope, not direction. At the end of the day I study ideas in the world as well as ideas about the world. I label myself a “reluctant constructivist” because I did not come to constructivism through a reading of Alex Wendt’s book or some other onetime epiphany. I came to study ideas because studying the world without reference to them simply made no sense to me.23 This book pushes that agenda further, so I am happy it is here. But if all we end up doing is to study “how to study ideas about the world by banging on about obscure philosophy,” then I need to get off the bus and go do something else. So at the moment I remain a “reluctant constructivist,” but I don’t fret the ontology or the philosophy: here’s why. There is a set of equations in the mathematics of continuous time processes called the Kolmogorov series. There is a Kolmogorov forward equation (KFE) and a Kolmogorov backward equation (KBE).24 With the forward equation you can take an ice cube, and with all the known data about it (salinity, temperature, volume) predict what the puddle will look like when it melts. The KBE can tell you to a specific probability value what the ice cube looked like from the data in the puddle (the present state of the probability distribution). It’s pretty clever stuff. The problem for ideational researchers is that all we have is the historical puddle, and what we study are the multiple contending “backwards Kolmogorovs” that agents put out there to explain why the world is the way it is (the puddle generator). We don’t really know how the puddle formed, and nor can we, since we can’t step out of the hermeneutic circle, so the struggle over defining how and why it formed is a political struggle. The social world, a vast non-ergodic and non-programmable system, admits no easy Kolmogorovs. The ideational project is to acknowledge this and then figure out which “backwards Kolmogorov(s),” which idea(s), stick(s) and why. If this is the case, then there are no fixed ontologies or identities to worry about, just ideas about them that agents develop, deploy, act upon, perform and eventually dissolve in the course of social, political and economic lives. They are, at base, the most unfixed of things.

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Notes 1 Seabrooke reviews Greif in his chapter but views Greif’s work in a different light from that which is presented here. 2 Incidentally both are wrong on their own terms. Humans float in water and some people do have lions as pets. 3 One can object that gold is valuable since it is scarce, but so are many other metals, such as cobalt. However, when there is an inflation risk we have yet to see a “flight to cobalt.” 4 That it takes until page 47 to get to a section entitled “towards a critical realist constructivism” is telling. 5 Try walking into a restaurant and deciding which of the three realms you are in before and after a nice bottle of wine. 6 I thank Patrick Jackson for his help with this formulation of the problem. 7 Which is something that, despite several attempts, I have never quite been able to figure out. 8 It’s really not much of a stretch of the imagination to see this embrace of “critical” rather than “scientific” realism as the feel-good philosophy of neo-Marxists, who have given up on both historical materialism and the transformative power of the working class but just can’t let go of the analysis. It also has the bonus of allowing the realist to do so without positing “false consciousness” among several million people she has never met. 9 Not to mention that the randomness of social responses would make a nonsense of any inference drawn abductively or inductively from a time series of outcomes even if ontology was constant. 10 This is why the notion of a constructivist critical realism strikes me as especially problematic. E. P Thompson (1963) said it best: class is real to the extent people think, talk and act as classes – to the extent that they don’t, it isn’t. Otherwise one ends up with the problem John Shotter identified, where We have only to read any science fiction novel to know that what is presented and experienced as an account of an actual (but in fact imaginary) reality works, so to speak, to “manufacture” the sense of reality it conveys. What if, because we (wrongly) believe that such texts “represent” the true subjectmatter of our science, we (wrongly) accord such representations . . . more prominence scientifically than the social activities and practices making their production possible? Then we can become the victims of a corporate or institutional self-deception. (Shotter 1993: 76) This quotation was given to me by Patrick Jackson. 11 I wish to think Patrick Jackson for a great many of these insights, especially the trump and trope conditions, from a talk he gave at the Johns Hopkins University, 9 March 2009. 12 Actually, in the UK deploying the word “critical” seems to perform the same function as deploying the word “science” does in the US. 13 For example, Wight (2006: 26) opines that “scientific realism makes intelligible what scientists do” (my italics). I must presume, then, that other approaches do not do such things, are therefore wrong, and – QED – only scientific realists are social scientists? If so, I would like to suggest that these self-described scientists start wearing white lab coats when at conferences just to make sure we know authority is on their side. 14 But even if they could “step outside the circle” and show critical realism to be right, the result for the study of ideas is worse; for, if they can, what’s there left to construct? How can scientific or critical realism give rise to a constructivism when

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16 17 18

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20 21 22 23 24

one of its main tenets is that there are intransitive objects out there that have nothing to do with our inferences about them? As Patrick Jackson has put it, for scientific realists, “Quarks, inertia and capitalism simply are as they are, even absent any human observer noticing how these things operate” (Jackson 2008: 342). But if they are not fixed, as some realists allow (Wight 2006: 252), then, as Jackson (2008: 343) argues, what exactly is the value-added of insisting that one does in fact know the right ontology independent of our inferences (abductive or otherwise) about it? And, yes, I know I am deploying a philosopher as support here, but I would say the same thing without Hacking’s support too. I just like his terminology, and so he gets the credit for it. I could raise once again the problem of dividing a field based on a couple of readings, but I will resist the temptation. One could easily expand this list to include figures as diverse as James, Nietzsche, Whitehead and, even towards the end of his life, Popper, who all in one way or another saw causation as an emergent quality of interaction rather than mere temporal succession. One caveat I do have is that, if temporality is collapsed entirely, phenomena such as phase transitions, when elements transform themselves through interaction, become problematic. One example would be thermodynamic reactions. Once petrol is converted into a gas, there is no way back for the gas into that prior liquid state. Similarly, knowledge of my age doesn’t enable me to get any younger. Time’s arrow and the second law of thermodynamics both suggest temporal succession of events is still pretty important. We could misquote Ravelstein once again to the effect that “a thing is not a thing until it has happened to mainstream social scientists.” To take one example, corporatist collective bargaining institutions are (re)constituted by the agents who act within them as they act upon a Keynesian cost-push version of wage inflation as the problem they are set up to avoid. I refer here to the sessions at Davos hosted by Nassim Taleb and Nouriel Roubini that really were standing room only and where Bill Gates reportedly queued for six hours to get in. Private conversation with Nassim Taleb. For a brief discussion of why, see the preface to Blyth 2002a. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_forward_equation and http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_backward_equation.

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Bieler, A., and A. Morton (2008) “The Deficits of Discourse in IPE: Turning Base Metal into Gold?” International Studies Quarterly, 52: 103–28. Blyth, M. (1997) “‘Any More Bright Ideas?’ The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy,” Comparative Politics, 29(2): 229–50. —— (2002a) Great Transformations: The Rise and Decline of Embedded Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (2002b) “Institutions and Ideas,” in Dave Marsh and Gerry Stoker (eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science. London: Macmillan, pp. 292–310. —— (2003) “Structures Do Not Come with an Instruction Sheet: Interests, Ideas and Progress in Political Science,” Perspectives on Politics, 1(4): 695–703. —— (2006) “Great Punctuations: Prediction, Randomness, and the Evolution of Comparative Political Science,” American Political Science Review, 100(4): 493–8. —— (2007) “When Liberalisms Change: Comparing the Politics of Deflations and Inflations,” in Arthur T. Denzau, Thomas D. Willett and Ravi K. Roy (eds) Neoliberalism: National and Regional Experiments with Global Ideas. London and New York: Routledge. —— (2008) “The Secret Life of Institutions: On the Role of Ideas in Evolving Economic Systems,” Revue de la Régulation: Capitalisme, Institutions, Pouvoirs, 3/4: 1–11. Bukovansky, M. (2002) Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Campbell, J. L. (2004) Institutional Change and Globalization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cartwright, N. (2007) Hunting Causes and Using Them: Approaches in Philosophy and Economics. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Checkel, J. (1998) “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations,” World Politics, 50(2): 324–48. Chwieroth, J. (2007) “Neoliberal Economists and Capital Account Liberalization in Emerging Markets,” International Organization, 61(2): 443–63. De Goede, M. (2005) Virtue, Fortune and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Epstein, C. (2008) The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an AntiWhaling Discourse. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity. —— (1999) Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives. London : Profile Books. Goldstein, J., and R. O. Keohane (eds) (1993) Ideas and Foreign Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Goodwin, B. (1997) How the Leopard Changed its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Greif, A. (2006) Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guzzini, S., and A. Leander (2006) Constructivism and International Relations: Alexander Wendt and his Critics. New York: Routledge. Hacking, I. (1999) The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —— (2002) Historical Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

On setting and upsetting agendas 185 Hall, P. (1993) “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State,” Comparative Politics, 25: 275–96. Hay, C. (2001) “The ‘Crisis’ in Keynesianism and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Britain: An Ideational Institutionalist Approach,” in J. L. Campbell and O. K. Pedersen (eds) The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 193–218. Hobson, J. M., and L. Seabrooke (eds) (2007) Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollis, M., and S. Smith (1991) “Beware of Gurus: Structure and Action in International Relations,” Review of International Studies, 17(4): 393–410. Jabko, N. (2007) Playing the Market – Political Strategy for Uniting Europe, 1985– 2005, Cornell: Cornell University Press. Jackson, P. T. (2008) “Ontological Investigations: Colin Wight, Agents, Structures, and International Relations,” Cooperation and Conflict, 43: 341. Katznelson, I., and B. Weingast (eds) (2005) Preferences and Situations: Points of intersection between Historical and Rational Choice Institutionalism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Kauffman, S. A. (2008) Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. New York: Basic Books. Kurki, M. (2006) “Causes of a Divided Discipline: Rethinking the Concept of Cause in IR,” Review of International Studies, 32(2): 189–216. Lakatos, I., and A. Musgrave (eds) (1968) Problems in the Philosophy of Science. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Langley, P. (2008) The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in Anglo-America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McNamara, K. (1998) The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Miller, R. W. (1987) Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation and Reality in the Natural and the Social Sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. North, D. (2005) Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Parsons, C. (2003) A Certain Idea of Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Popper, K. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books. Rizzolatti, G. (2008) Mirrors in the Brain: How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions, trans. F. Anderson. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, V. A. (2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Seabrooke, L. (2006) The Social Sources of Financial Power: Domestic Legitimacy and International Financial Orders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. —— (2007) “The Everyday Social Sources of Economic Crises: From ‘Great Frustrations’ to ‘Great Revelations’ in Interwar Britain,” International Studies Quarterly, 51: 795–810. Shotter, J. (1993) Conversational Realities: Contructing Life through Language. London: Sage. Thelen, K., and W. Streek (eds) (2005) Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Capitalist Societies. New York: Oxford University Press. Thompson, E. P. (1963) The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Gollancz.

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Turner, I. (2009) The Turner Review: A Regulatory Response to the Global Banking Crisis. London: Financial Services Authority. Weaver, C. (2008) Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wendt, A. (1987) “The Agent–Structure Problem in International Relations Theory,” International Organization, 41(3): 335–70. —— (1992) “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization, 46(2): 391–425. —— (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wight, C. (2002) “The Philosophy of Social Science and International Relations,” in W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse and B. Simmons (eds) Handbook of International Relations. London: Sage. —— (2006) Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (2008) “Motives, Essentialism and Defending the West Pole,” Cooperation and Conflict, 43(3): 347–53. Woll, C. (2008) Firm Interests. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

10 On putting ideas into perspective Schmidt on Kessler, Martin and Hudson, and Smith Vivien Schmidt

Mark Blyth’s chapter began by asking whether “a thing is a thing unless it has happened to critical realists.” I follow with the question: “How do we know that a thing is a thing unless critical realists claim to know it?” While Blyth’s essay has focused primarily on the ontological issues raised in the first set of chapters, in particular on the discussion of dualities between the material and the ideational, my chapter focuses on the epistemological issues raised in the second set of essays, in particular on the discussion of (non-)knowledge, (un)certainty and (methods of) explanation. But in order to connect the two parts, and to bridge the divide between ontology and epistemology, I, too, begin with Gofas and Hay. Here, I have nothing to add to Blyth’s thorough critique of the problems resulting from their use of the philosophy of science, via critical realism, to ground social science ontology. But I have more to say with regard to the use of the philosophy of science to ground social science epistemology, arguing that what we need in its stead is philosophy based in society and language – using Wittgenstein in illustration. This will then help bring out flaws in Kessler’s epistemology, showing how, if we are not careful, his general approach to (non-)knowledge leads us into radical uncertainty. I then add a few more thoughts about “how we know what we know” with regard to the empirical explanations of Martin and Hudson, Smith, and Seabrooke (briefly). Much like Blyth, and as stated in the introduction to our commentaries, I see these as important essays that go to the heart of many of the issues faced by scholars who take ideas and discourse seriously. The proof lies in the fact that both of us find so much to say on them and beyond them.

You can’t get from particles to people but you can get from people to particles Blyth strongly criticizes Gofas and Hay for falsely claiming to survey the literature on ideas by focusing on old and unrepresentative approaches, including rational choice as epitomized by Goldstein and Keohane (1993), constructivism as represented by Wendt (1999) and post-structuralism as represented by no one. He then goes on to offer a primer on the ontological presuppositions of critical realism – as used by Archer ([1988] 1996) and

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adopted by Gofas and Hay (this volume), with its roots in the philosophy of science. The problems he identifies result not just from the fact that critical realism hails from science rather than society – and therefore conflates subatomic particles with people – but also because it makes claims for superior knowledge for its practitioners. As a result, Blyth notes, critical realists are no better than those they condemn, whether Marxian determinists who would attribute false consciousness to (American) workers who don’t recognize their class interests or rationalist determinists who attribute material interests to (rational) actors, whether or not those actors themselves think it. There is one additional criticism that Blyth fails to make, however, which is that the seeds of the destruction of critical realism are embedded in the Gofas and Hay argument itself. After first laying out the problems of dualism in the ontologies of the three established approaches to ideas and then explaining Archer’s critical realism at length, Gofas and Hay critique Archer in the end for her still dualistic and ultimately rationalist materialist assumptions. They argue instead that she should have dropped the dualism and accepted that materialism and constructivism meld together. However, they make their case not on sustained philosophical grounds but on empirical ones – using the example of monetarism. So why, we might ask, have we gone through this whole lengthy exercise in the first place, if empirical rather than philosophical reasoning makes the case? My question (and the underlying thrust of Blyth’s critique) is: Why don’t Gofas and Hay take the final step, and acknowledge that an ontology based in the philosophy of science does not solve their ontological problems? My guess is that the reason Gofas and Hay cling to critical realism, as do many philosophers of science, is that they fear the slippery slope of relativism. They worry that, if there is no rationalist “truth,” no “objective” material reality, there is no way to protect contextualized (social) “scientific” explanation from the radical relativism of “anything goes,” in which power and subjectivity could trump truth and objectivity. But need we necessarily end up with radical relativism if we give up on rationalism grounded in the philosophy of science? I argue below that we run that danger mainly if we start with a philosophy of science that goes from particles to people rather than with a more society-focused philosophy that goes from people to particles. To make this argument, I provide a second primer, related to the epistemological presuppositions of the philosophy of science, to provide background information as to why the critical realists ended up where they did.

The world upside down; or, why not to apply the philosophy of science to social science and society I used to worry about relativism a lot, in particular with regard to how it affected our ability in comparative politics and political economy to explain actors’ ideas and intentions with some measure of certainty across cultures and time. For answers, much like Gofas and Hay, I turned first to the philos-

On putting ideas into perspective 189 ophy of science. I wrote a dissertation at the University of Chicago on the debates in the philosophy of science from the 1920s through the 1970s and their implications for the social sciences in general and for political science in particular. I came up with three main reasons why political scientists were not well served by the philosophy of science. First of all, I found that, even as philosophers of science sought to explain scientific knowledge according to one overall ontology and epistemology, their explanations were based on very different ontological and epistemological premises, and sooner or later all ended up in relativism. This made me wonder whether we really needed to have one overall approach to explanation based on a single overarching logic of being, with a single overall definition of knowledge and certainty. Second, I discovered that the only thing on which philosophers of science agreed was that the social sciences could never be as good as “science” (see Schmidt 1988a), mainly because they were too messy, given that their objects of inquiry were reflexive subjects (Winch [1958] 1970). As Fritz Machlup (1969) noted, “if molecules could talk,” we would be in a very different universe indeed. This made me wonder why social scientists would want to subsume their own explanations of social science and society under a much narrower explanatory approach focused on science, and one which philosophers of science themselves insisted applied poorly to social science and society. Third, I realized that, if we look at what philosophers of science do when they explain science rather than what they say, we would see that they use the methodological approaches of the social sciences to explain “science.” But if the philosophy of science is social science applied to science, and pretty rudimentary social science at that, why should so many political scientists seek to emulate science (poorly), especially since the science in question is itself mostly a stylized and idealized version of physics? Finally, why should political scientists accept the ontology and epistemology of the philosophy of science, given that it is based on a narrower slice of (non-social) reality? Rather, we would do better to look at the philosophy of science as a subset of social science applied to science, and one in which the different approaches of philosophers of science fit more or less neatly into the four basic methodological approaches of the social sciences (i.e. lawlike, systemic, historical and interpretive) – as they were conceived of at the time that the philosophy of science was influencing political scientists’ epistemological debates (Schmidt 1986, 1988a).

The world right side up: the philosophy of science as social science Philosophers of science who use a lawlike framework of analysis – which shares its explanatory ideals about the importance of causal or statistically probable explanation with behavioral and rationalist social scientists – run from early logical empiricists such as Carl Hempel (1965) and Ernst Nagel (1961), who

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insisted that progress toward universalistic knowledge in science proceeds by using methods of verification to establish the absolute truth of lawlike (hypothetico-deductive or deductive-nomological) propositions, through to Karl Popper. Popper’s method of falsification, however, by the time he wrote The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1961: 273–6), could only reach proximity to truth, and his explanations, by Objective Knowledge (1972: 163–89), could take any form, so long as they solved problems, even if they did not formally reduce to lawlike terms (Schmidt 1988a: 176–8). Substituting problemsolving for truth and using the language of falsification even without lawlike explanatory practice empties the logical empiricist enterprise of much of its substance, promotes a tolerance for many methods, so long as they solve problems, and denies behavioral and rationalist political scientists of the “scientific” trump card they had come to take for granted. Around this same time, the truth basis for lawlike philosophy of science was also being undermined from another side. Thomas Kuhn’s ([1962] 1970) “paradigm” theory used a systemic framework of analysis typical of the sociology of Parsonsian equilibrium systems, or, better, Marxian revolutionary theory, to reject the truth claims of the logical empiricists. With progress in science based on the revolutionary succession of fully incommensurable paradigms that die under the weight of accumulating anomalies, Kuhn gets rid of the Popperian fig leaf altogether with regard to truth and certainty. He substitutes a success standard for the truth standard, leaving a radical relativism in which there can be no understanding from one paradigm to the next. Imre Lakatos (1970) sought (unsuccessfully) to reapply Popper’s fig leaf by positing overlapping (and therefore partially commensurable) research programs in which a method of “sophisticated falsification” provided a (heuristic) success standard. Paul Feyerbend (1978), by contrast, plunged wholeheartedly into relativism with his argument that physicists, like witchdoctors, construct “cosmologies,” and that Popper himself ends up with “anything goes” (Feyerabend 1981: 161). The response of rationalist political scientists who read Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend in the 1970s tended to be not something like “so let’s be more humble and more tolerant of different approaches” but rather “even if our lawlike methods of explanation cannot be justified on the basis of scientific truth, they can be on the grounds of problem-solving success.” In short, power trumps truth, the scientistic language of falsification and causation remains, and lessons about the importance of methodological openness in light of the relativity of truth are set aside. By the 1990s most political scientists had forgotten Kuhn and were back to thinking that they were discovering universal truths for a science of politics; all they retained of Popper was the language of falsification. For a few political scientists, it should be said, paradigms took on a new life in the ideas literature. But that is another story (see Skogstad and Schmidt n.d.). Back in the 1970s, political scientists generally missed out on two other

On putting ideas into perspective 191 approaches in the philosophy of science: historical and interpretive analytic frameworks. The historical framework of analysis was developed most extensively by Stephen Toulmin (1972), who consciously modeled his approach on Darwinian biology rather than on physics – despite identifying physics as the ideal “compact” science. Here, “disciplinary enterprises” escape relativism with a standard not of truth or success but rather of historical progress, with the genealogy of disciplinary concepts, problems, procedures and ideals affected by the extent to which scientists’ intellectual concerns complement or compete with their social concerns over time, leading to disciplinary evolution, extinction or unchanging continuity (Schmidt 1988b). The alternative approach of Larry Laudan (1977) instead built on Kuhn and Lakatos to similar effect, by identifying overlapping research traditions for which the standard, again, is historical progress. In both Toulmin’s and Laudan’s approaches, radical relativism is avoided through the presence of continuities as well as discontinuities in ideas over time, although Laudan’s weakness, much as with Lakatos, comes from his attempt to identify “objective” standards that stand outside the ideas of the scientists themselves (Schmidt 1988a: 186–91). Even earlier than this, we find the interpretive framework of analysis of Michael Polanyi (1958) – Karl’s brother and a physicist. For Polanyi, scientists’ “personal knowledge” informs the often unconscious rules of science which are at the basis of scientific explanation – rather than lawlike propositions, systemic paradigms or historical enterprises – while the creativity of the scientific imagination is the standard of evaluation rather than truth, success or progress (see Schmidt 1988a: 191–7). This is all about “tacit knowledge,” then, which is developed and carried by “succeeding generations of great men,” and networks of scientists in epistemological communities. This approach finds echo by the 1990s in the work of anthropologists of science such as Bruno Latour (1987) and Steve Woolgar (Latour and Woolgar 1986) – while its social science counterpart, political anthropology, is notably mentioned in the conclusion to Gofas and Hay’s essay. This is of course closest to the kind of approach today of political scientists who take ideas and discourse seriously. What is the moral of this fourfold story? Philosophers of science from the very beginning have had very different approaches to scientific rationality that mirror the four main methods of explanation of the social sciences. They start with very different ontologies and epistemologies; and none have a corner on knowledge or certainty. Interestingly enough, we can find a parallel to these philosophy of science debates in the current debates surrounding the “new institutionalisms.” Rational choice institutionalism is the only approach that remains caught up in the pretence of being “science,” and is still focused on lawlike explanation through causes and the “logic” of rational action, with assumptions about the existence of an “objective” material reality that makes it possible to attribute interests to actors. Historical institutionalism clearly fits within the

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historical framework of analysis as it traces continuities and changes over time in institutional rules and regularities, whether it analyzes progress through path dependence (Pierson 2000) or through incremental change via layering, drift and conversion (Streeck and Thelen 2005). This said, elements of the systemic framework are present in the work of historical institutionalists who view change in institutions as coming at critical junctures (Collier and Collier 1991) or who divide market economies into two equilibriumbased varieties of capitalism (e.g. Hall and Soskice 2001). Sociological institutionalism sits somewhere between systemic and interpretive frameworks. It leans more toward the systemic side when it focuses on how cultures “frame” social agents’ ideas and actions, the interpretive when it concentrates on how social agents reinterpret or “reconstruct” their cultures on an everyday basis. Finally, the turn to ideas and discourse, or what I call discursive institutionalism, is fully interpretive in framework, as it emphasizes the creative or “constructivist” side of human action without, however, ignoring the structures. Significantly, all these political scientific approaches, including rational choice institutionalism, have largely turned their backs on the philosophy of science (even when they make claims to doing science!). So what does this tell us about critical realism? And how do we explain the turn to critical realism by scholars who take ideas seriously – and thus are closest to discursive institutionalism? Critical realism traces its roots back to the ambivalence of Bhaskar ([1979] 1998) and others to choose between, on the one hand, beliefs in proximate truths established through standards of empirical verification or falsification of (objective) explanations and, on the other hand, beliefs in relative truths established through standards of evaluation based in the success, progress and/or creativity of (subjective) ideas. Critical realists, in other words, remain on the fence, trying to reconcile what are essentially unreconcilable approaches grounded in different ontological and epistemological presuppositions. My conclusion? We should stop trying to emulate philosophers of science, with their idealization of physics, and looking for answers to fields so much narrower in their objects – rather than subjects – of study. Rather, we should get on with the task of explaining political reality with as many methods as are appropriate. We may lose the “trump” of science, as Blyth has already suggested, but we gain our freedom to be social scientists.

A society-based approach to explanation: pictures vs. experiences of the world But where, then, does this leave us with regard to questions of knowledge and certainty? Contemporary debates about the four kinds of institutionalisms don’t really help us here since, as Gofas and Hay rightly note, they pay little attention to questions of ontology or epistemology. They operate within their own paradigms, research traditions or sets of unconscious rules, and seek to justify and persuade through their own problem-solving success, progress or

On putting ideas into perspective 193 creativity. Relativism does indeed remain an issue, along with questions of knowledge and certainty. So where do we go for answers? Kessler is right to note in his critique of rationalist approaches that we should look to the philosophy of language and social philosophy of people such as Wittgenstein, Searle and Bloor, although he does not tell us how to do this. I turn briefly to Wittgenstein in what follows to offer one way of doing so. Wittgenstein suggests answers to our questions in On Certainty (1972) by differentiating between different kinds of knowledge and certainty based in different “forms of life,” as expressed through “language games.” Here, he makes a little-noticed but important distinction between language games based on our experience in the world, for which radical uncertainties rarely occur, and those based on our pictures of the world, which involve knowledge closer to the kind found in (social) science, and which can involve radical uncertainty akin to shifts in “paradigms” and “cosmologies.” Language games based in our everyday experiences in the world ordinarily admit of no doubts and mistakes – such as knowledge of one’s own name, address, actions and history; of the number of hands and toes one has; and of the meaning of the words one uses. If doubts occur, they suggest exceptional circumstances (I doubt that this is my name because I have amnesia) (Wittgenstein 1972). Similarly, moreover, we don’t doubt that the step will be there as we step down, or that the mountain we see out of our window will disappear if we look away. If there is no reasonable explanation for such doubts, we might assume that the individual expressing doubts does not know the meaning of the words themselves, or is not rational in any everyday sense of the word. By contrast, language games based in our pictures of the world, which often follow from our (social) scientific interpretations of the world – such as belief in the existence of the earth one hundred years ago, in the events of history, in the temperature at which water boils – always allow for doubts, mistakes and even gestalt switches, although much less often for those at the “foundation” of our picture of the world, which “stand fast” because they are part of the very “scaffolding” of our thoughts (Wittgenstein 1972: #s 211, 234). We could add the existence of subatomic particles – molecules, quarks, neutrinos, and so on – along with theories of relativity, which exist for us today in the way that the humors and gases or the four elements of earth, wind, fire and water existed for the Ancients – at the very foundations of our scientific explanations of the world. The experience games of everyday life, in other words, are so certain as not to be doubted; but picture games may always be doubted, although some may be more uncertain than others depending upon their place in the overall system of picture games. Moreover, while knowledge derived from picture games always allows for a radical conversion process, as in revolutionary changes in scientific paradigms à la Kuhn, experience games do not (see Schmidt 1986). Radical relativism, as a result, could be much more of a

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danger for picture games, in particular if they are far removed from the “scaffolding” of our own pictures of the world, than for experience games, which tend to be more universal. As Wittgenstein has noted elsewhere: “The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (1968: I #206). And although this need not mean that we will have words for everything, such as the Hopi Indian’s understanding of time or Eskimo’s many words for snow (see Whorf [1956] 1997), we can translate these into our own language and experience. This ensures a high degree of certainty not only for common behavior (knowing one’s name) but also for commonly experienced material realities – what we see, such as mountains and buildings – even if their significance may be more uncertain for us depending upon where they fit against our pictures of the world. And these are matters of translation and interpretation. The social sciences, in particular those using approaches based in historical and interpretive analytic frameworks, tend to be closer to everyday experience in terms of the phenomena they seek to explain, while systemic and lawlike social scientific frameworks produce explanations that are arguably closer to picture games. Even in the natural sciences, however, we can differentiate between knowledge based on pictures of the world and those closer to everyday experience. For example, changes in the theories of physics – say, from Newtonian mechanics to Einsteinian relativity – are very different from those in natural history – say between Linnaeus and Darwin. Whereas in physics the very nature of the phenomena described may change – from the elements of the Greeks to subatomic particles – much as in Kuhn’s duckrabbit picture (first you see a duck, then a rabbit), they do not in natural history. An eagle remains an eagle for Darwin and Linnaeus. Only if the characterization of an eagle perched on a cliff turned into a “cleagle” would the change in explanation be similar (Schmidt 1988a: 184–5). The distinction between matters of experience and pictures of the world is a crucial distinction for my discussion of Kessler, and the (non)sense of (non-)knowledge as a general way of dealing with questions of (un)certainty. This is not only because Kessler’s terminology is confusing in terms of ordinary language but also because it risks leaving us with the impression that everything is uncertain, everyday knowledge as much as rationalist theory, thereby resulting in radical relativism. Applied strictly to rationalist theories about the financial markets, however, Kessler’s argument works.

The (non)sense of (non-)knowledge and the risk of radical everyday uncertainty Kessler starts his discussion back where Gofas and Hay (this volume) began, by critiquing approaches to ideas that maintain a mind–body duality, whether they treat ideas like material objects that “cause” individual action (as in Goldstein and Keohane), see ideas as sponsored by interests (Sikkink), or hold to some kind of mental causality (Wendt). Unlike Gofas and Hay,

On putting ideas into perspective 195 however, Kessler claims to ground his approach not in some non-dualistic critical realism based in the philosophy of science but in the work of philosophers who focus on language and communication (although he does not develop this in any way), and he argues that we need to drop the mind–body ontological question for the epistemological question about how we go about knowing (and not knowing) about institutions. In his epistemology, Kessler further critiques all the dualistic ideational approaches as flawed because supportive of positivist (read lawlike) approaches. These approaches conceive of uncertainty as knowable because linked to experience, and experience therefore as quantifiable and predictable through probability theory. Worse, he finds all such approaches connected to assumptions about progress, in which uncertainty diminishes because the more we know, the less we do not know, until the critical moment when the probability theories can no longer predict, at a time of radical (Knightian) uncertainty, when a new set of ideas is needed. For Kessler, this view of new ideas as coming only at critical moments of radical breakdown in knowledge is fundamentally flawed, because new ideas not only produce more of what we know (knowledge) but also more of what we don’t know (non-knowledge) all the time, as part of the everyday practices of producing what we do know. To put this more clearly, he sees uncertainty as going hand in hand with knowledge, such that the production of new knowledge brings with it the everyday creation of new uncertainties (non-knowledge). In his empirical case, the Basel II international banking reforms, Kessler seeks to demonstrate this dynamic. He contends that rationalist economists’ approach to risk assumes that assessment of risk (what one doesn’t know) can be built on quantification of probabilities based on experience (what one knows). This, he argues, ignores the fact that uncertainty is all about what one cannot know because it involves social contingencies and the everyday process of generating new risk (new knowledge). As a result, the rationalist approach treats new phenomena as it does the old, and cannot deal with hedge funds and derivatives that reorganize the ways in which actors know, see one another and act. Moreover, in the case of Basel II, rationalist remedies cannot really solve the problems, since putting “an authority,” the standard-setting bodies, “in authority,” does not reduce risk; it simply creates new risks because it alters the way in which the system works. For Kessler, as a result, change in knowledge (ideas) and uncertainty in financial markets, as in all institutions over time, is incremental, not cumulative, and he therefore also critiques another part of the ideas literature for its assumption that change in ideas and institutions comes only at critical junctures. Kessler’s critique of “big-bang” accounts of change in ideas is appropriate. But Blyth, in his response to Seabrooke’s (this volume) similar critique of the critical juncture literature, is also right to suggest that to dismiss all such bigbang accounts is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater: ideas matter in periods of stability as well as in periods of crisis, although they may matter differently. It is equally important to add that, even though a given set of

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ideas may explain or predict less and less of what is going on, social agents often nonetheless hold onto those ideas until a major crisis hits – as in the case of the current economic crisis. In other words, change in ideas occurs all the time, not only incrementally but also in big-bang paradigmatic ways, depending on what actors themselves think. I therefore worry that Kessler’s argument that knowledge and uncertainty go hand in hand, measure for measure, seemingly regardless of what the actors themselves think, may throw us back into the very critical realist ontological dualism he said he was trying to escape. To avoid this, it would be useful to turn to a constructivist such as Donald MacKenzie (2006; see also Blyth 2008), whose work on performativity in financial markets provides insight into the interdependence of rationalist economics and social action, as social agents employing probabilistic models to measure market performance actually alter the market because their models act as an “engine” transforming the environment, not a “camera” recording it. With Kessler, I have the impression that we still have a camera lurking in the background, out of sync with the engine in the foreground. This said, Kessler is right to criticize rationalist probability theory for assuming that its models just get better and better, by adding more and more data based on subsequent experience. But this point has been made many times before – and in greater detail. Taleb (2005, 2007), for example, offers a scathing critique of the underlying assumptions of probabilistic theorists and their inability to predict “black swans.” However, and most importantly for our discussion, Taleb, much like Wittgenstein, makes a distinction that Kessler blurs, between probabilistic theories (read Wittgenstein’s pictures of the world) – for which unpredictable “black swan” events happen with much greater regularity than probabilistic theories expect – and the more everyday experiences (read Wittgenstein’s experiences in the world), which are not subject to such radical uncertainties. Even in the financial markets, after all, we can differentiate between knowledge based on bankers’ rationalist probabilistic models, which fit Kessler’s argument well, and bankers’ everyday experience of lending, assessing the reliability of risk, creditworthiness and likelihood of repayment over time, which they know cumulatively, and with a high degree of certainty. Where bankers go very wrong – and where Kessler’s “non-knowledge” comes in – is when they ignore entirely what they know from experience and turn to predictive models that they are led to believe are more certain because based on “scientific” methods. These are indeed, as Kessler insists, less rather than more certain over time, as probability models are applied to a changing reality. But Kessler also leaves us with the impression that banking reforms won’t work, period, because they alter the realities that probabilistic models assume. What he should have made clear is that banking reforms may undermine the predictability of probabilistic theories, since they do indeed alter the way the system works, but such reforms may nonetheless produce significant change for the better, because they affect the everyday experience and actions of bankers by introducing greater caution as well as oversight.

On putting ideas into perspective 197 One could argue, after all, that what went wrong with the international financial markets was not just blind belief in rationalist economic models. It was the lack of oversight by regulatory bodies (an authority) – indeed, resistance to introducing any serious oversight by Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan, among others – combined with the herd mentality that ensured that no one was going to stop the party when everyone was having such a good time. Remember that numbers of bankers and pundits were apprehensive about so much easy money, were concerned about increasingly complex financial instruments such as credit default swaps that no one seemed to understand, and knew that the financial boom was heading for a bust sooner or later. The question was “when,” not “if.” If seen as a discursive device by which to focus attention on the problems of rationalist approaches to financial markets practices, then, Kessler’s argument about the incremental production of non-knowledge along with knowledge is appealing – but only if we narrow the application of the concept to rationalist models within lawlike analytic approaches alone. The problem with Kessler’s argument as it currently stands is that it seemingly treats all explanation as producing the same kind of (non-)knowledge and uncertainty, thereby conflating knowledge based on rationalist economic “pictures” of financial markets’ behavior and those based on everyday “experience” in banking practices. This undifferentiated stance leads us into the very kind of radical relativism about which Gofas and Hay, along with the critical realists, were most worried. But we need not go there.

How do we get from ideas to action? Some of the problems with the arguments of Gofas and Hay as well as Kessler bring to mind a more general problem with approaches that fit under the rubric of the “turn to ideas.” Ideas are mostly treated as if they “float freely” (see critique in Risse-Kappen 1994), as if they were disconnected from social agents. But even where social agents are treated as “carriers of ideas,” the connections between ideas and action remain unclear. The question, which none of the contributors address directly, is how do we get from ideas to actions? In my own work, I suggest that the missing link is “discourse,” and I use the term “discursive institutionalism” to describe the analytic framework encompassing approaches that take ideas and discourse seriously (Schmidt 2002: ch. 5; 2006, ch. 5; 2008). In identifying this framework, I seek not just to define a fourth new institutionalism but also to suggest that, in order to explain political and social reality adequately, we need to consider both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse through which ideas are conveyed. This means that we ask not only “what is said” and “what it means” but “who is talking to whom about what, when, where and how.” The institutionalism in the term, moreover, suggests that this approach is not only about the construction and communication of ideas but equally importantly about the institutional context in which and through which ideas

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are communicated via discourse. This institutional context refers first and foremost to the structure, construction and communication of meaning. But it can also be understood as the background information provided by the other three “neo-institutionalisms” in political science with which discursive institutionalists may engage and from which they often emerge. The problem with all three other neo-institutionalisms is that the structures – of incentives, culture or path-dependence – that make up their institutional contexts act mainly as external constraints on action. Instead, in discursive institutionalism, institutions are at one and the same time given, as structures that are the context within which agents think, speak and act, and contingent, as constructs that result from agents’ thoughts, words and actions. Here, continuity and change in institutions can be explained by the dynamic processes through which agents use not only their “background ideational abilities” – a generic term for John Searle’s “background abilities” or Pierre Bourdieu’s “habitus” – to create and maintain their institutions but also their “foreground discursive abilities” – akin to Jürgen Habermas’s “communicative action” – to communicate and deliberate about taking action collectively to change (or maintain) those institutions (Schmidt 2008). These foreground discursive abilities are key to thinking about how we go from ideas to action, since they refer to people’s ability to think outside the institutions in which they continue to act, to talk about such institutions in a critical way, to communicate and deliberate about them, to persuade themselves as well as others to change their minds about their institutions, and then to take collective action. Such action may be taken by policy elites (as “policy entrepreneurs” or “ideational leaders”) building “discursive coalitions” for reform (whether through “epistemic communities” or “advocacy coalitions”) against entrenched interests in the “coordinative” policy sphere or by political elites deliberating and engaging with the public (whether general or specialized, including the media, social movements and informed publics) in the communicative political sphere. These discursive processes are the focus of Hudson and Martin, Smith, and Seabrooke. And we see that they can go in any direction, whether from top-down, bottom-up, top to top, or bottom to bottom.

Where do ideas come from? The ideational literature has long focused on elites as the carriers of ideas and the main agents of change. In doing so, it tends to be top-down in its approach to communication, whether because it focuses on formalized, elite processes of coordinative consultation or on elite-led processes of communicative deliberation, or indeed on both. As a result, it tends to overlook the other side of the ideational and discursive process, including the impact of the media and the public more generally. The media, for one, are often key to framing the terms of the communicative discourse, creating narratives and images that become determinant of

On putting ideas into perspective 199 interpretations of a given set of events. Hudson and Martin demonstrate this in the case of the Barings Bank debacle, which was personalized in terms of a “rogue trader” as opposed to being generalized as a deeper critique of the internationalized banking system or of top bankers’ negligence. Why? On the reasons behind the emergence of the discourse, we find strategic ideas – it was in the interests of the bankers to avoid blame, the regulators to avoid a perception of systemic failure, and the press to have a sensational human interest story – and structural ideas – about the hyper-individualism of financial markets. And why did the discourse of the “rogue trader” crowd out all others, such as ideological debates about the financial market system, in order to focus on the epiphenomenal role of one individual? Hudson and Martin explain it in terms of the power of the media’s ideas as well as in terms of its sociology. The media’s ideational power came as a result of its role both as an interpreter of ideas, through agenda-setting, framing and indexing, and as a broker of ideas, by providing a story with salience and resonance. Its sociology also influences which ideas came to the fore, and resulted from power relationships within newspapers that moved the story from the financial pages to the front pages, the pressures for news generation and deadlines, the visual imperatives of media presentation, and competition between newspapers, as well as consultation among journalists. In the end, the case exposes the fragility of the neoliberal discourse at the same time that it explains why it was not challenged primarily in terms of power and interest within given institutional structures. This is a persuasive account. But Hudson and Martin leave out one very important element that makes the power of interests and structure possible. There is a deeper layer of meaning or worldview that explains why most actors did not challenge the scaffolding of the “picture game” in which media, financial analysts and the public participated. The media would not challenge the architecture of the ideational system because they couldn’t imagine anything other than this. Their ideology – or picture of the world – was based in it. Importantly, even today, when the system has fallen apart as a result of the economic crisis, people are hard put to imagine anything else. And there is as yet little serious change in the system of regulation. Take the testimony to Congress of Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, a radical individualist follower of Ayn Rand, and one of those chiefly responsible for the lax US financial regulatory regime that contributed to the financial market meltdown. When asked if he saw a problem with his ideology, he admitted that: “those of us who have looked to the selfinterest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief”; and he conceded, in response to the question “Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?” that “Yes I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact” (New York Times, 24 October 2008). It is interesting to note, however, that,

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although at the time he continued to resist new regulation, not long thereafter, by March 2009, faced with the total collapse of the financial market system, he strongly supported the Obama administration’s public rescue of the banks, and even nationalization.

Who leads and who follows? Another issue with the Hudson and Martin account is that it presents the entire set of events as elite-driven by the media, as if they control the story. This neglects the fact that members of the public are not just passive viewers but active consumers of the news, as readers and buyers of newspapers. As such, the media are also necessarily sensitive to the public’s desires, if only to ensure that their stories sell newspapers. This has its own perverse set of effects, of course, as the media compete for readers in an often ever-downward spiral of quality news. But it also means that they respond to what they see as readers’ expectations. This means that they are not as entirely in control of the pitch and the picture as Hudson and Martin suggest. This is the bridge with Seabrooke’s approach, in which the “everyday practices” of ordinary people suggest a more bottom-up approach to ideas. Seabrooke (this volume) highlights the “everyday practices” of ordinary people who, through their actions if not contestations, convey ideas that make clear that they no longer see the established rules as legitimate, in a kind of unspoken discourse which is then picked up by the media and reformist political leaders, and which in the end can lead to significant reform. In his empirical work on the changes in the macro-economic policy of major powers (Seabrooke 2006), to which his brief sketch in this volume refers, Seabrooke shows that the drivers of domestic institutional change in the face of international economic crisis were not government elites but the mass public, whose everyday discourses delegitimizing government policy served as the impulse for those elites to close the “legitimacy gap” by experimenting with and then instituting more acceptable policies. There are dangers in overplaying the importance of the bottom-up influence of the mass public, however. If one looks at Seabrooke’s empirical work, he shows that it took a very long time for elites to respond to the masses with the politics they wanted and needed. So who is leading whom? The problem is that we always need elites, if only to interpret and give voice to the mass public’s concern. But when do they respond? At critical moments? Incrementally? When they recognize the problem? When they have new ideas that may help solve the problem? When they have the power and position, meaning they have won election on the basis of promises to mass publics for reform? Ideational change, in other words, requires not just the generation of new ideas coordinated among elites in the policy sphere in response to public demand but also the communication of those ideas to the general public in the political sphere. And this is all about discourse, which is where Nicola Smith’s chapter comes in.

On putting ideas into perspective 201 Smith brings us back to the discourse of elites and the ways in which they seek to frame the everyday understandings of everyday people, focusing on the case of Irish elites’ discourses of globalization. She does this, moreover, by mixing methodologies in order to show that quantitative methods, used carefully and building on the results of qualitative studies, can lend further insight into ideational and discursive processes. In the literature on ideas and discourse, much of the empirical analysis in comparative political economy tends to use qualitative methods. These include conceptual refinement of the scholarly literature, cross-case analyses, and in-depth in-case analyses which use causal process observation, or process-tracing, to show “the systematic variables related to causal heterogeneity” (using the language of quantitative analysis) that have influenced the cases of study over time. But, as Smith demonstrates, there is no reason not to attempt to bridge the qualitative–quantitative divide by using quantitative techniques to generalize as well as test qualitative results, so long as the qualitative is not lost in the quantitative (which Kessler finds to be the case for financial market analysis). Thus, Smith shows that there are numbers of quantitative techniques that do not impose a rationalist bias. These involve surveys that are inductive and statistical rather than deductive and causal, which adduce inductive taxonomies that produce descriptive inferences about unique as well as replicable phenomena. This is very different from more deductive typologies intended to generate causal inferences about replicable empirical phenomena to be tested and confirmed via quantitative methods, which often embed causal inferences in the typology itself. Smith makes the point, moreover, that there are good substantive reasons to add quantitative studies to qualitative ones. It is not enough just to look at leaders’ speeches in a top-down communicative discourse to the public. Although this is useful as shorthand for the “ideas” floated, it often obscures the differences among elites in terms of their ideas and discourse about the subject in question regarding what they say to one another in their coordinative discourse, as well as what they say to the public in the communicative discourse. For example, in the Irish case, we find out that, in the discourse on globalization, there are sometimes important ideational differences among policy actors regarding the nature and impact of globalization. Smith shows that, although all policy actors interviewed shared the cognitive idea that globalization represented a non-negotiable external constraint, they differed over whether this represented a threat to policy autonomy. Normatively, though, all senior policy-makers and opinion-formers saw globalization as a positive development. And, within the context of the coordinative policy discourse, all embraced the idea that a high level of consensus was necessary for success. This raises another issue, not addressed here, about the nature of the coordinative interactions through which ideational consensus can be achieved. In fact, the discursive interactions in the coordinative policy sphere that encompassed all policy actors, including the social partners, were largely

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responsible for building a very wide consensus that in turn promoted general public acceptance of globalization. These discursive interactions were the result of Irish leaders’ creation of an elaborate deliberative process to reach consensus that brought in a wide range of stakeholders in a “four room” negotiating procedure coordinated by the Prime Minister’s Office. Once consensus was reached in the forum on policy issues, the positive frame for globalization could be successfully presented in the communicative discourse with the public. Smith shows that this frame involved a consistent refrain from political leaders as well as opinion-formers about the positive nature of globalization – which was also reflected in public attitudes toward globalization, despite a vocal anti-globalization movement. Elites’ discourse matters, in short, not just to respond to the public ideas but also to reframe those ideas as they change their everyday practices through the policies they institute.

Concluding remarks This is book worth reading both for the things I like in it and for those I don’t. What I worry about most, much like Blyth, is the thrust of the theoretical essays. With Gofas and Hay, we run the risk of being sucked back into the unresolvable debates of the philosophy of science instead of looking to the philosophy of society and language for clues as to how to deal with ontological questions – if we must. With Kessler, we risk radical relativism, since non-knowledge tends to blur the boundaries between different kinds of knowing, and thereby creates the impression that uncertainty is everywhere, and the same. The more empirical chapters of Martin and Hudson, Smith, and Seabrooke are less problematic, providing insights into the different ways in which ideas and discourse influence political reality. My critiques here are ones that point to roads not taken. My own approach to the study of ideas adds the interactive processes of discourse, and is open to a wide range of approaches to the study of politics and society. So where does this place me on the positivist–constructivist scale? If Blyth is a reluctant constructivist, what have I been all these years? Perhaps I am a pluralist constructivist. By this I mean that I see all analytic frameworks as constructivist, whether political scientists “construct” their own analytic frameworks in positivist or constructivist terms. We, meaning political scientists, live in a world of ideas and discourse. Some of us (meaning constructivists) are more “objective” about the subjectivity of this than others. Some of our explanations are also more “certain” than those of others, because political scientists who use historical and interpretive methods are more likely to concern themselves with social agents’ “experiences in the world” than political scientists, who use lawlike and systemic methods to produce “pictures of the world.” None of these approaches to explanation have much predictive power, mind you. The difference is that, whereas historical and interpretive approaches do not expect to predict, systemic and lawlike approaches do. When the latter actu-

On putting ideas into perspective 203 ally do succeed in their predictions, it is either because they are describing in more “parsimonious” terms patterns also expected by interpretive and historical approaches or because social agents begin to act as if those predictions reflect empirical reality . . . as in the case of the financial markets. What does this mean for political science? That we do best to use a multiplicity of analytic frameworks for our explanations of politics and society. As Nietzsche (1967: 199) once wrote: There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity,” be. And, as Wittgenstein (1968: I #133) himself suggested: “There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.” Most importantly, if we look to philosophy for ontological and epistemological grounding for our methods and perspectives, rather than turning to the philosophy of science, which extrapolates from particles to people, we should go to the philosophy of language and society, which begins and ends with people.

Bibliography Archer, M. S. ([1988] 1996) Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhaskar, R. ([1979] 1998) The Possibility of Naturalism. 3rd edn, London: Routledge. Blyth, M. (2008) “On Constructivist Theory and Political Economy: Reasons for, and Approaches to, a Leveraged Buy-Out,” paper presented at the Conference on Constructivist Political Theory, Nagoya, Japan, 1–2 June. Collier, D., and R. Collier (1991) Shaping the Political Arena. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Feyerabend, P. (1978) Against Method. London: Verso. —— (1981) Problems of Empiricism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldstein, J., and R. O. Keohane (eds) (1993) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hall, P. A., and D. Soskice (2001) Varieties of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hempel, C. (1965) Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Free Press. Kuhn, T. ([1962] 1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakatos, I. (1970) “Methodology of Sciencific Research Programmes,” in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds) Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B., and S. Woolgar (1986) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. 2nd edn, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Laudan, L. (1977) Progress and its Problems. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Machlup, F. (1969) “If Matter Could Talk,” in S. Morgenbessser, P. Suppes and M. G. White (eds) Philosophy, Science and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel. New York: St Martin’s Press. MacKenzie, D. (2006) An Engine, not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nagel, E. (196l) The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Nietzsche, F. (1967) On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. W. Kaufman. New York: Vintage. Pierson, P. (2000) “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review, 94: 251–68. Polanyi, M. (1958) Personal Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Popper, K. (1961) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books. —— (1972) Objective Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Risse-Kappen, T. (1994) “Ideas Do not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War,” International Organization, 48(2): 185–214. Schmidt, V. A. (1986) “Four Approaches to Scientific Rationality,” Methodology and Science, 19(3): 207–32. —— (1988a) “Four Models of Explanation,” Methodology and Science, 21(3): 174–201. —— (l988b) “The Historical Approach to Philosophy of Science: Toulmin in Perspective,” Metaphilosophy, 19(3): 223–36. —— (2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —— (2006) Democracy in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —— (2008) “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse,” Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 303–26. Seabrooke, L. (2006) The Social Sources of Financial Power: Domestic Legitimacy and International Financial Orders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Skogstad, G., and V. A. Schmidt (n.d.) “Introduction: Internationalization and Policy Paradigms,” in G. Skogstad (ed.) “Internationalization and Policy Paradigm Change,” MS. Streeck, W., and K. Thelen (eds) (2005) Beyond Continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taleb, N. N. (2005) Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. New York: Random House. —— (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House. Toulmin, S. (1972) Human Understanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wendt, A. (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whorf, B. L. ([1956] 1997) Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Winch, P. ([1958] 1970) The Idea of a Social Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L. (1968) Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. —— (l972) On Certainty. New York: Harper.

Index

adequacy, concept of 68–9, 177; capital adequacy (see Basel II) Adler, Emmanuel 21–2, 30 Ahern, Bertie 151–3, 156 Archer, Margaret 15, 40–7, 52, 187–8 axis of evil/ war on terror, Bush administration policies on 63, 67–8, 70–1, 75 Baker, Andrew 97–8 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 134–5 banks: bank runs 130–1, 133 see also Barings Bank; financial regulation Barings Bank, collapse of 7; background to 98–100; broadsheet and tabloid coverage 107–9; consequences of 100–1, 110–13; media, strategic/ structural interests of 101–3, 199–200; neoliberal regulatory background, impact on 97–8; rogue trader narrative 7, 97–8, 100–6, 108–10, 112–13, 198–9 Barnett, Michael 86 Basel II 8, 137–8, 195; credit ratingagencies, role of 133–6, 139; objectives 133, 139; operational risk under 133–5; risk, social construction of 133–6 Beckert, Jan 87–8 Berman, S. 13, 58–61 Bhaskar, R. 37, 171, 173–5, 180–1, 192 bias 13–14; of ideas over interests 25, 121–2; of research practices 14, 146, 179, 201; and uncertainty 7, 85, 179 ‘black swans’ 196 Bloor, David 125 Blyth, Mark 20, 25–7, 52, 84–5, 122–3, 187–8, 195

Bourdieu, P. 103–4, 107, 198 Bush, George W. (US Presidential administration of): axis of evil/war on terror policies 63, 67–8, 70–1, 75 Campbell, J.L. 21 capitalism: and historical institutionalism 80–3; state capacity 81–3 Cartesian dualism see material vs. ideational dualism; mind–body principle cats and dogs, ontological status of 31–3, 169–71 causality: causal consensus 42, 57; causal vs. constitutive approach 16, 120–1, 123–4; cause and effect, separation of 7, 16, 22, 57, 60–3, 66, 69–72, 128, 177; efficient causality 60–2, 65–6, 71–3, 122; emergent causality 178, 183; historical institutionalism 58–62, 65–7; Humean concept of 6, 16–17, 23–8, 39–40, 48–9, 52; immanent causality 57, 65–73; and materialism vs. ideational dualism 56–7, 63–5; meaning of 57; mental causality 119–20, 122–4, 138; programmatic beliefs 59–62, 73; and rational choice theory 18–19, 22–8; rational institutionalism 58–9; social constructivism 58–9, 62–7; vs. constitutive logic 4, 6–7, 14–17, 39–40, 64–5, 119–20, 124 class, reality vs. theory 173, 182 competition: and globalisation 149, 152–4, 156; institutions, influence on 82–3; in media 98, 103–4, 109, 199 conflation 40–1, 46

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constructivism 4, 14–15, 29–30, 165, 176; and critical realism 35–8; criticisms of hybrid theory 36–8; economic constructivism 7, 83–6, 90; knowledge vs. non-knowledge 8, 119–20; and material vs. ideational dualism 29, 34–5; and mental causality 123–4; and monetarism 50–1; and neomaterialism 3–4; and postmodernism 31–4, 36, 169–71; social constructivism 58–9, 62–7; thick constructivism 17, 31–4, 119–20; thin constructivism 17, 29–31, 34–5; Wendt on 31–9, 62, 64–5, 123–4, 169 contestation, as social mechanism 89–90 credit rating-agencies, role of 134–6, 139 crises, importance of 7, 25, 40, 83, 85, 89–90, 110–12, 199; Barings Bank collapse 97–8; ‘black swans’ 196; critique of theories of 179–80; and uncertainty 89–90, 118; vs. periods of stability 179–80 critical realism 15, 17, 30–1, 167, 188, 192; and constructivism 35–8; critique of 172–6; and cultural conditioning 40–7; morphogenetic approach 15, 40–7; and ontology, in political science 15, 173–6; and scientific realism 172, 182; Wendt on 31–9, 62, 64–5, 123–4, 169 cultural conditioning, and critical realism 40–7; cultural elaboration 42–3; cultural integration 44–7; socio-cultural action 42–3 De Goede, Marieke 135, 170 Deleuze, Gilles 66–70, 177 derivatives 119, 134 Descartes, René: Cartesian dualism 38, 41, 122 determinism 43, 46, 57 Devine, Fiona 146 discursive institutionalism 145, 165, 197–8 discursive selectivity 34 Doty, R.L. 32–4 dualism, in political analysis 3–6; criticisms of 5–6, 171–2 see also constructivism; material vs. ideational dualism; mind–body principle

eclecticism, theoretical 14 economic constructivism 7, 83–6; and contestation 85; and legitimacy by proclamation 85–6, 90; and uncertainty 85 Eichengreen, Barry 131 elites: influence on political change 78, 80–4, 97–8, 179, 198–202; and media interests 102–3, 198–200; vs. non-elites 86–90 embeddedness, concept of 82–3 empirical research, into role of ideas 144–8; qualitative vs. quantitative methods 146–8, 201–2 epistemology, in political science 14–15, 17; causal vs. constitutive logic 4, 16, 120; dualism in 4–5, 171–2; epistemic fallacy 173; and non-knowledge 120, 127–9, 131–3; and ontology, compatibility with 37–8, 174–5; and philosophy of science 189; positivism and post-positivism 18, 32, 36–8, 195; and rational choice theory 22–8; and taking ideas seriously 47; and uncertainty 127–30, 131–3, 138 Epstein, C. 170 European Monetary Union 84, 86 European Union: economic liberalisation vs. social welfare 149–50, 153–6 experience games 193–4 Feyerbend, Paul 190 financial markets: bank runs in 130–1; ‘black swans’ 196; derivatives and hedge funds, risks of 119, 131–2, 134; exogenous shocks in 132; and information asymmetries 130–3, 135; performativity in 196; systemic risks in 130–3 financial regulation: and Barings Bank collapse 102–3, 107; credit rating-agencies, role of 133–6; and operational risk 133–5; regulatory interests of media narratives 102–3; risk vs. financial stability 130–3; transparency 131, 136 see also Basel II Finnemore, M. 30, 86 The German ideology 31 globalisation 89, 97; anti-globalisation movements 157–8; benefits of 153–6; cognitive function of 151–2; communicative function of 156–8; coordinative function of 154, 156;

Index critique of theories on 201–2; and deglobalisation 148; and economic competitiveness 149, 152–4, 156; economic liberalisation vs. social welfare 149–50, 153–6; of financial services 134; in Irish Republic 144–59; mapping 89–90, 150–1; normative function of 151–4; and operational risk 134–5; pressures of 151–2; role in political discourse 148–9; types of 150 Gofas, Andreas: critique of theories of 166–80, 187–8, 191–2 Goldstein, J.: on causal approaches to ideas 121; Ideas and foreign policy 19–28, 168; on ideas as focal points 26–7; on ideas as road maps 23–6; on institutional influence on ideas 27–8; on rational choice theory, influence of 19–28; on three types of ideas 121 gravity, idea of 31, 34, 129 Greenspan, Alan 199 Greif, Avner 80, 168–169 Hall, P.A. 3–4, 81, 83 Hay, Colin 36–7, 85, 144–5, 148, 156–7, 180; critique of theories of 166–80, 187–8 Hayek, Friedrich August von 128–9 hedge funds 131–2 historical institutionalism 7, 73, 165, 191–2; and capitalism 80–3; and causality 58–62, 65–7; and ideational analysis 58–62, 65–7, 73; and legitimacy 81–3, 90; national trajectories of development 81–3, 90 Hobson, John M. 82 Hopkin, John 149–50 Hudson, David: critique of theories of 198–200, 202 Hume, David 60; conception of causality 6, 16–17, 23–8, 39–40, 48–9, 52 ideas, in political analysis generally 3, 6; as auxiliary vehicles 18–28; as capital/ commodities 63–5; casual ideas/ beliefs 121; as collective structures of meaning 21–2; contribution to outcomes 121; as deus ex machina 20; empirical research methods 144–8; expressive quality of 67–9; as focal points 26–7, 80; and generative logic 62–5; and globalisation. necessary functions 145–6, 150–8; grafting onto

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existing theories 4, 13–14, 47; and identifying change 111–12; innocence of 13; institutional influence on 27–8, 123, 168–9; and interests, separation of 25, 49, 121–4; and knowledge vs. non-knowledge 120; moving from idea to action 197–8; perspective, seeing vs. knowing 18–28; and philosophy of science 171–8, 187–92; politics of ideas 137–8; principled ideas 121; as road maps 23–6; role of, generally 17; social context of 24; structural vs. strategic reasons for emergence 101–2; studying ideas, methods of 110–12; and theoretical diversity 13–15; and uncertainty 24, 125–6; as weapons 84; when shown only through communication 125–6; whether important 24–5, 144–5; whether taken seriously 6, 14, 18–19, 29, 47, 165 see also constructivism; ideational analysis; media; rational choice theory Ideas and foreign policy 19–28, 168 ideational analysis: causality, general concepts in 56–66; criticism of 56, 171–2; empirical methods 144–8; feedback loops 57, 66, 69–70, 73; historical institutionalism 58–62, 65–7, 73; ideational receptivity 27–8; and immanent causality 57, 65–73; and philosophy, generally 177–8; and philosophy of science 171–8, 187–92; programmatic beliefs 59–62, 73; rational institutionalism 58–9; social constructivism 58–9, 62–7 ideational dualism see material vs. ideational dualism immanent causality 57, 65–73, 178; adequacy, concept of 68–9; and agentive capacities of ideas 72–3; critique of 176–8, 181; expressive quality of ideas 67–9; feedback loops 57, 66, 69–70, 73; materialism vs. ideational dualism 66–73; parallelism, doctrine of 67–9, 74 individuals, role in political change 85–6; elites 78, 80–4, 97–8, 179, 198–202; elites vs. non-elites 86–90 institutionalism 120 see also discursive institutionalism; historical institutionalism; rational institutionalism institutions: and causal sequence,

208

Index

influence on 27–8; communicative construction of 124–5; and economic competition 82–3; influence on policies 123, 168–9; knowledge vs. non-knowledge 8, 119–20; pathdependent vs. path-shaping logic 28, 42; role in explaining state actions 123; self-referential basis of 125, 137; and uncertainty, in opposition 118–20 intentional rationality 78 interests: and ideas, separation of 25, 49, 121–4; and self-interest, concept of 7, 49–51 international relations: causal relationship with State 16–17; media role in 103–4 Irish Republic, globalisation in 144–59; anti-globalisation movements 157–8; and economic liberalisation vs. social welfare 149–50, 153–6; mapping of 150–8; research findings 150–8; scale of 149–50; types of 150 Jacobsen, J.K. 3, 14 Jessop, Bob 170–1 Joseph, J. 34 journalism, sociology of 104–10 Katzenstein, Peter 84 Kauffman, S.A. 178 Kegley, C.W. 31 Keohane, R.O. 36; on causal approaches to ideas 121; Ideas and foreign policy 19–28, 168; on ideas as focal points 26–7; on ideas as road maps 23–6; on institutional influence on ideas 27–8; on rational choice theory, influence of 19–28 Kerkvliet, Benedict J. Tria 88 Kessler, Oliver: critique of theories of 187, 193–7, 202 Keynes, John Maynard 127–8 knowledge vs. non-knowledge 8, 119–20, 136–8; and constructivism 8, 119–20; critique of theories of 193–7; epistemological approach to 120, 127–30, 131–2; language and experience games 193–4; ontological approach to 120, 126–7, 129–31; and perspective, seeing vs. knowing 18–28; and uncertainty 8, 119–20, 126–33 Krasner, Stephen 36, 121

Kratochwil, Friedrich 33–4, 124 Kuhn, Thomas 190–1, 193 Kurki, Milja 39–40, 178 Kynaston, David 101, 103 Laffey, Mark 62–5, 122 Lakatos, Imre 190–1 Landman, T. 5 Langley, P. 170 language games 193–4 Laudan, Larry 191 Leeson, Nick 98–108, 110, 112–14 see also Barings Bank legitimacy 7; and belief-driven actions 87–8; critique of 179, 200; and economic constructivism 83–6, 90; and elites vs. non-elites 86–90; and historical institutionalism 81–3, 90; processes of legitimisation 87; by proclamation 83–6, 90; and rational institutionalism 79–81, 90; social mechanisms 88–90; and state capacity 81–3 Levi, Margaret 79–80 liberalism: embedded 84–5 see also neoliberalism logic: of abductive inference 172–3; causal vs. constitutive 4, 6–7, 14–17, 39–40, 64–5, 119–20, 124; generative 62–5; and neoclassical economics 175–6; situational 43 Luhmann, Niklas 132 McAnulla, S. 45 MacKenzie, Donald 196 McNamara, Kathleen R. 86, 126 macro-ideas 7–8, 111–12 Mann, Michael 81 Martin, Mary: critique of theories of 198–200, 202 Massumi, Brian 70–1 material vs. ideational dualism 7, 19–22, 122–3; analytical dualism 41–2, 45–6; causal powers 56–7, 63–5; and constructivism 29, 34–5; and expressive quality of ideas 67–9; and immanent causality 66–73; mind– body principle 122–4, 125, 138, 165, 194–5; morphogenetic approach 15, 40–7, 52; neomaterialism and constructivism 3–4; in ontology, of political science 3–5, 7, 15–16, 19–22, 25–7, 29, 34–5, 171–2; parallelism, doctrine of 67–9, 74;

Index post-structuralism 168–71; and rational choice theory 7, 15–16, 19–22, 25–7; separation of, criticism of 166; Wendt on 35–9, 169 media, role in political change 7, 112–13; agenda setting 104; Barings Bank/ rogue trader narrative 7, 97–8, 100–6, 108–10, 112–13, 198–9; competition in 98, 103–4, 109, 199; framing 104–6; indexing 105; journalism, sociology of 104–10; media hierarchical politics and practices 104, 106–10; media power, aspects of 104–5; multiple information sources, impact of 109–10; neoliberalism, impact on 97–8, 103–4; visual media, influence of 107–8 methodology, in political science: dualism in 4–5; qualitative vs. quantitative methods 4–5, 8–9 micro-ideas 7–8, 111–12 mind–body principle 122–4, 125, 138, 165, 194–5 Mishkin, Frederic S. 130–1 monetarism, causes of 50–1, 188 money, defining 124–5 Moravcsik, A. 3 morphogenetic approach 15, 40–7, 52; and actors’ reflexivity 46–7; analytical dualism 41–2, 45–6; causal consensus 42; cultural conditioning 42–3; cultural elaboration 42–3; cultural integration 44–7; problems with 45–7; socio-cultural interaction 42–3 neo-institutionalism see historical institutionalism; rational institutionalism neoliberalism 166, 180; analysis of 97–8, 111–12; in Irish Republic 149; and media, role of 97–8, 103–4; regulatory influence on 97–8 neomaterialism 3–4, 89, 97–8 Nietzsche, F. 202 norms: and economic constructivism 83–6; as error terms 79–81, 90; importance of, for political change 89–90; influence on behaviour 84–6; and legitimacy 81–3 ontology, in political science 17; cats and dogs, ontological status of 31–3, 169–71; and critical realism 15, 173–6; dualism in 3–5, 7, 15–16,

209

19–22, 25–7, 29, 34–5, 171–2; and epistemology, compatibility with 37–8, 174–5; and immanent causality 178; material–ideational dualism 7, 15–16, 19–22, 25–7, 29, 34–5; neomaterialism and constructivism 3–4; and nonknowledge 120, 126–7, 129–31; and philosophy of science 189; and positivism / post-positivism 37–8; and rational choice theory 17–22; and taking ideas seriously 47; and uncertainty 126–7, 129, 135–6, 138 Onuf, N. 14 Osterud, O. 33 parallelism, doctrine of 67–9, 74 Parsons, Craig 16, 44, 86 perspective, seeing vs. knowing 18–28 philosophy: and ideational analysis 177–8; of science, critique of theoretical reliance on 171–8, 187–92, 202 philosophy of science 202; background to 189–92; critique of theoretical reliance on 171–8, 187–92, 202; and ideational analysis 177–8; vs. social science 189–92 Polanyi, Michael 191 Popper, Karl 190 positivism and post-positivism 18, 32, 36–8, 195 post-structuralism 168–71 postmodernism 31–4, 36, 169–71 probability theory 120, 126–9, 138, 195–6 programmatic beliefs 59–62, 73 propagation, as social mechanism 89–90 qualitative vs. quantitative research methods 4–5, 146–8, 158, 201–2; and cognitive function of globalisation 151–2; and communicative function of globalisation 156–8; and coordinative function of globalisation 154, 156; and normative function of globalisation 151–4 rational choice theory 17–28, 167–8; and causality 18–19, 22–8; epistemological position of 22–8; ideational significance 18–19; material–ideational dualism 7, 15–16, 19–22, 25–7; ontological position of 17–22; and rationalist individualism 21–2

210

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rational institutionalism 7, 58–9, 73, 191–2; criticism of 79–80; interdependence in 195–6; and legitimacy 79–81, 90 rationalist individualism 21–2 realism see critical realism; scientific realism redistribution, as social mechanism 89–90 relativism 188; language and experience games 193–4; and philosophy of science 189–90 research methods see qualitative vs. quantitative research methods risk 119; credit rating-agencies, role of 134–6,139; and exogenous shocks in market 132; and information asymmetries 23, 130–3, 135; operational risk 133–5; systemic risk 130–3; and uncertainty 125–6, 129–33 Rizzolatti, Giacomo 178 rogue traders see under Barings Bank Rosamond, Ben 153–6 Ruggie, John 21, 29 Schmidt, Vivien 8–9, 144–5, 150, 174 science see philosophy of science; social science scientific realism 37, 172, 174, 182–3; and critical realism 172, 182; Wendt on 35–6, 38–40, 175 Searle, John 125, 198 self-interest, concept of 7, 26, 49–51, 171 Sending, Ole Jacob 86 Sikkink, Kathryn 86, 123 Smith, Nicola Jo-Anne: critique of theories of 201–2 social constructivism 58–9, 62–7 social contingency 119–20, 136 social partnership, in Irish Republic 153–6 social science: language and experience games 193–4; social mechanisms 88–90; vs. philosophy of science 189–92 Social theory of international politics 34–5, 123, 168–9 sociological institutionalism see discursive institutionalism Soskice, David 83 Spinoza, Baruch de 66–70, 74, 177–8 state capacity 81–3 Suganami, H. 16 Sweden: embedded liberalism 84–5

Taleb, N.N. 196 Tickell, Andrew 134 Tønder, Lars: critique of immanent causality theory 176–8, 181 Topper, K. 5 Toulmin, Stephen 191 transparency 131, 136 uncertainty: and Basel II construction of risk 133–6; and bias 7, 85, 179; conceptualism of 4, 8, 24–6, 48; critique of theories of 179, 195–6; and economic constructivism 85; epistemological approach to 127–30, 131–3, 138; and ideas as road maps 23–6; and institutions, in opposition 118–20; knowledge vs. non-knowledge 8, 119–20, 126–33; language and experience games 193–4; ontological approach to 126–7, 129, 135–6, 138; and probability theory 120, 126–9, 138, 195–6; reproduction of 118–19, 136–7; and risk, generally 125–6, 129–30; role of crises in political change 89–90, 118; and systemic risk 130–3 United States: axis of evil/ war on terror, Bush administration policies 63, 67–8, 70–1, 75; social mechanisms in 88–90 war on terror, Bush administration policies 63, 67–8, 70–1, 75 Weber, Max 61 Weldes, Julia 62–5, 122 Wendt, A.: on cats and dogs, ontological status of 31–3, 169–71; on causal and constitutive logic 16–17, 39, 64–5, 124; on constructivism and critical realism 31–9, 62, 64–5, 123–4, 169; criticisms of 36–8, 174–5; on material–ideational dualism 35–9, 169; on mind–body principle 123–4, 138; on rational choice theory 22–3; on scientific realism 35–6, 38–40, 175; Social theory of international politics 34–5, 123, 168–9 Wight, Colin 37, 174, 182 Winch, Peter 60 Wincott, Daniel 149–50 Wittgenstein, L. 193–4, 203 Yee, A.S. 24, 28, 56, 123