Wesley Widmaier
Biographic Data
| ID | 4373244 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wesley Widmaier |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wesley |
| FAMILY NAME | Widmaier |
| SIGNATURE | WIDMAIER W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Griffith University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2261-4479 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 321 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Australian Foreign Policy Stability and Instability
Over the past century, crises have enabled the construction of Australian foreign policy orders, or sets of ideas that reduce uncertainty and stabilise interests. However, such ideas have also engendered misplaced certainty and renewed crisis. Developing a constructivist framework, I stress the ways in which ideas can over time impede the use of information and fuel instability and crises. In a staged model, I trace the construction of ties with …
Australian foreign policy in political time
Over the past century, Australian foreign policy orders have been stabilised by the construction of ideas that have reduced uncertainty regarding national interests. Yet, such ideas have often evolved in ways that have engendered misplaced certainty, renewed instability, and crisis. To explain such shifts, I highlight the role of an Australian ‘pragmatic liberal tradition’, one which has enabled alternating tendencies to principled stability or t…
International Political Economy meets the unexpected
The power of economic ideas – through, over and in – political time
In recent years, scholarly concern for ‘great transformations’ has yielded to a stress on ‘gradual transitions'. In thiscontribution, I offer a discursive institutionalist model of the shifts in ideational power which drive order construction, consolidation and crisis. First, I argue that leaders exercise rhetorical power through ideas, employing communicative appeals to shape principled beliefs. Second, I argue that élites employ epistemic power…
Breaking promises and raising taxes
Where historical institutionalists have stressed the path-dependent efficiencies that stabilise policy orders, their rationalist assumptions have increasingly obscured the scope for instability. To redress such oversights, I integrate historical institutionalist insights regarding incremental change with discursive institutionalist analyses of interpretive tensions in a way that accords with Daniel Kahneman’s analyses of shifting ‘fast’/principle…
When the fix isn’t in
Over recent decades, scholars and policymakers spanning an array of theoretical perspectives have stressed the scope for constructing beliefs and "fixing" expectations, in ways that can see shared ideas acquire the reflexive weight of self-fulfilling prophecies. In international relations theory debates, scholars argued that the "strategic social construction" of ideas and norms might in turn acquire the force of self-reinforcing taken for grante…
Reflexivity and International Relations
Lawyers, Gender, and Money
How did the interplay of intellectual overconfidence, gender, and professional socialization limit economic policy debate over the subprime boom and global financial crisis? In this article, I integrate historical institutionalist and feminist institutionalist insights to make sense of the interplay of gender and professional socialization in limiting the scope for precrisis regulation and postcrisis reform. First, drawing on historical instituti…
Presidents, Prime Ministers and Policy Rhetoric
US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma — of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framework highlighting the tensions between ‘outside’ moral appeals which raise expectations and the ‘insid…
The benefits of norm ambiguity
Over the past two decades, International Relations scholars have highlighted the importance of efforts by hegemonic states and norm entrepreneurs to foster norm clarity when promoting the establishment, institutionalisation, and internalisation of norms. Yet, such analyses obscure the benefits of norm ambiguity in facilitating consensus, flexibility, and compliance. The authors offer a framework positing that hegemonic and institutional ambiguity…
Macroprudential Ideas and Contested Social Purpose
In response to Terrence Casey's argument that the emergence of macroprudential regulation since the financial crash can and should save neoliberalism we raise five objections. 1). The Debt-Driven Growth Hypothesis (DDG) and the Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH), as Casey terms them, are just as likely to be complementary as they are oppositional and they are by no means incompatible. 2) Casey's empirics are too thin and static, drawn from th…
From Bretton Woods to the Global Financial Crisis
How do popular values shape constructions of crises and paradigmatic debates? In this paper, I offer a constructivist framework highlighting the popular bases of paradigmatic ideas and policy interests. In historical terms, I then trace the evolution of values, ideas, and polic]ies across three crises—the Bretton Woods-era inflation and currency crises of the 1960s, the South Korean and Long Term Capital Management crises of the 1990s, and the gl…
Presidential Rhetoric from Wilson to Obama
Over the past century, presidential constructions of foreign policy crises have legitimated recurring transformations of U.S. national interests"--Provided by publisher
The Institutionalist Roots of Macroprudential Ideas
One consequence of the global financial crisis has been to prompt debate over macroprudential regulation – meant to limit private risk-taking that threatens systemic stability. In this paper, we stress the roots of macroprudential ideas in the Institutionalist economics of Veblen and Galbraith in a way that highlights both unrecognised policy possibilities and underappreciated impediments to policy effectiveness, arguing in particular that regula…
Differences Beyond Theory
Over the past two decades, one of the main themes in IR theory debates has been a concern for the interplay of agents, structures, and change. In this article, we engage with these debates as they pertain to “the state of the art” by highlighting in broad fashion three “constructivist turns” and their implications for efforts to explain the rise and demise of norms. More specifically, we offer a stylized history of a debate marked by shifting emp…
Emotions Before Paradigms
Emotional forces shape not only market tendencies to ‘manias, panics and crashes’, but also policy debates as they predispose agents to definitions of state and societal interests. Nevertheless, IR scholars often downplay emotional influences, casting them as secondary to coalitional or cognitive forces. In this article, I address these limitations by disaggregating intersubjective understandings into popularly resonant traditions of thought and …
Economics are too important to leave to economists
Emotional forces shape not only market tendencies to 'manias, panics and crashes', but also policy debates as they predispose agents to definitions of state and societal interests. Nevertheless, IR scholars often downplay emotional influences, casting them as secondary to coalitional or cognitive forces. In this article, I address these limitations by disaggregating intersubjective understandings into popularly resonant traditions of thought and …
Where You Stand Depends on How You Think
I thank for their advice David Andrews, Jacqueline Best, Mark Blyth, David V. Edwards, James K. Galbraith, Francis Graham Lee, Leonard Seabrooke and Alexander Wendt. The usual disclaimers apply. Notes 1. The CEA is not, of course, the only agency responsible for wage and price guidelines. However, as the agency closest to the President, and given the importance of public leadership in securing consent, it often played the most prominent role in m…
Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises
This symposium addresses the role of wars and crises as mechanisms of international change. Over the past two decades, the international system has undergone a number of remarkable transformations, from the end of the Cold War to the emergence of an ongoing ''War on Terror,'' and from the collapse of statist development models to the emergence of a contested-if evolving-neoliberal ''Washington Consensus.'' This volatility exceeds any underlying s…
Constructing Foreign Policy Crises
Over the past century, crises have often driven shifts in U.S. foreign policy, as a liberal tradition has been permissive of varying tendencies to isolationism, pragmatism, or a crusading internationalism. While materialist analyses emphasize the impacts of crises on the capabilities of state and societal agents, they obscure the role of agents in interpreting crises. In this paper, I therefore offer a constructivist analysis, stressing the role …
Micro- or macro-moralities? Economic discourses and policy possibilities∗
This paper highlights the ethical implications of the distinction between micro- and macroeconomics, arguing that the methodological emphasis on establishing microfoundations has hardened into a liberal-individualist normative bias. We first argue that the key difference between micro- and macroeconomics is less any ostensible concern for small- or large-scale processes than a value-laden emphasis on the priority of private or public interests. W…
Systemic Pressures and the Intersubjective Bases of State Autonomy in Russia
Over the economic crises of the 1990s, global economic understandings shifted from the early classical orthodoxy of the 'Washington Consensus' to a later Keynesian support for demand stimulus and capital controls. However, Russian policy - particularly after the 1998 ruble crisis - partly deviated from these broader trends, combining Keynesian capital controls with classical budgetary restraint. In offering a 'constructivist-institutionalist' exp…
The Democratic Peace is What States Make of It
In 1971, the United States and India — the world’s two largest democracies — almost went to war in a ‘near-miss’ at odds with the hypothesis that democracies do not fight one another. In this article, I reformulate the democratic peace hypothesis by subsuming it under a broadened constructivist analysis, one that recognizes that institutional qualities do not ‘speak for themselves’ but rather that struggles over the meaning of democracy can engen…
Theory as a Factor and the Theorist as an Actor
In IR theory debates, there exists a recurring tendency to draw a distinction between problem-solving and critical theory. Whereas problem-solving theory ostensibly pertains to the short term, critical theory purportedly examines the evolution of more enduring social structures over the long term. In this essay, the argument is made that this distinction obscures the ongoing role—equally in the long and the short runs—of theory in the reconstitut…
"The Social Construction of the "Impossible Trinity
Over the postwar period, states have shifted from cooperation in support of monetary guidelines, or standards for variation in wages, prices, and exchange rates, to the use of austerity as the primary means of maintaining monetary stability. In this article I offer a constructivist theory of international monetary relations in order to explain this shift, contrasting the effects of Keynesian and Neoclassical understandings on interests in coopera…
Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises
This symposium addresses the role of wars and crises as mechanisms of international change. Over the past two decades, the international system has undergone a number of remarkable transformations, from the end of the Cold War to the emergence of an ongoing ''War on Terror,'' and from the collapse of statist development models to the emergence of a contested-if evolving-neoliberal ''Washington Consensus.'' This volatility exceeds any underlying s…
Constructing Foreign Policy Crises
Over the past century, crises have often driven shifts in U.S. foreign policy, as a liberal tradition has been permissive of varying tendencies to isolationism, pragmatism, or a crusading internationalism. While materialist analyses emphasize the impacts of crises on the capabilities of state and societal agents, they obscure the role of agents in interpreting crises. In this paper, I therefore offer a constructivist analysis, stressing the role …
The power of economic ideas – through, over and in – political time
In recent years, scholarly concern for ‘great transformations’ has yielded to a stress on ‘gradual transitions'. In thiscontribution, I offer a discursive institutionalist model of the shifts in ideational power which drive order construction, consolidation and crisis. First, I argue that leaders exercise rhetorical power through ideas, employing communicative appeals to shape principled beliefs. Second, I argue that élites employ epistemic power…
"The Social Construction of the "Impossible Trinity
Over the postwar period, states have shifted from cooperation in support of monetary guidelines, or standards for variation in wages, prices, and exchange rates, to the use of austerity as the primary means of maintaining monetary stability. In this article I offer a constructivist theory of international monetary relations in order to explain this shift, contrasting the effects of Keynesian and Neoclassical understandings on interests in coopera…
Micro- or macro-moralities? Economic discourses and policy possibilities∗
This paper highlights the ethical implications of the distinction between micro- and macroeconomics, arguing that the methodological emphasis on establishing microfoundations has hardened into a liberal-individualist normative bias. We first argue that the key difference between micro- and macroeconomics is less any ostensible concern for small- or large-scale processes than a value-laden emphasis on the priority of private or public interests. W…
Emotions Before Paradigms
Emotional forces shape not only market tendencies to ‘manias, panics and crashes’, but also policy debates as they predispose agents to definitions of state and societal interests. Nevertheless, IR scholars often downplay emotional influences, casting them as secondary to coalitional or cognitive forces. In this article, I address these limitations by disaggregating intersubjective understandings into popularly resonant traditions of thought and …
The benefits of norm ambiguity
Over the past two decades, International Relations scholars have highlighted the importance of efforts by hegemonic states and norm entrepreneurs to foster norm clarity when promoting the establishment, institutionalisation, and internalisation of norms. Yet, such analyses obscure the benefits of norm ambiguity in facilitating consensus, flexibility, and compliance. The authors offer a framework positing that hegemonic and institutional ambiguity…
Theory as a Factor and the Theorist as an Actor
In IR theory debates, there exists a recurring tendency to draw a distinction between problem-solving and critical theory. Whereas problem-solving theory ostensibly pertains to the short term, critical theory purportedly examines the evolution of more enduring social structures over the long term. In this essay, the argument is made that this distinction obscures the ongoing role—equally in the long and the short runs—of theory in the reconstitut…
The Keynesian Bases of a Constructivist Theory of the International Political Economy
In recent years, the development of a constructivist theory of international economic cooperation has been impeded by the persistent influence of classical assumptions that cast monetary structures as essentially material and treat state and societal interests in economic cooperation as exogenous to interaction. In this paper, I counter that a truly constructivist approach to the study of the international political economy must be based on more …
The Institutionalist Roots of Macroprudential Ideas
One consequence of the global financial crisis has been to prompt debate over macroprudential regulation – meant to limit private risk-taking that threatens systemic stability. In this paper, we stress the roots of macroprudential ideas in the Institutionalist economics of Veblen and Galbraith in a way that highlights both unrecognised policy possibilities and underappreciated impediments to policy effectiveness, arguing in particular that regula…
Economics are too important to leave to economists
Emotional forces shape not only market tendencies to 'manias, panics and crashes', but also policy debates as they predispose agents to definitions of state and societal interests. Nevertheless, IR scholars often downplay emotional influences, casting them as secondary to coalitional or cognitive forces. In this article, I address these limitations by disaggregating intersubjective understandings into popularly resonant traditions of thought and …
Australian foreign policy in political time
Over the past century, Australian foreign policy orders have been stabilised by the construction of ideas that have reduced uncertainty regarding national interests. Yet, such ideas have often evolved in ways that have engendered misplaced certainty, renewed instability, and crisis. To explain such shifts, I highlight the role of an Australian ‘pragmatic liberal tradition’, one which has enabled alternating tendencies to principled stability or t…
Differences Beyond Theory
Over the past two decades, one of the main themes in IR theory debates has been a concern for the interplay of agents, structures, and change. In this article, we engage with these debates as they pertain to “the state of the art” by highlighting in broad fashion three “constructivist turns” and their implications for efforts to explain the rise and demise of norms. More specifically, we offer a stylized history of a debate marked by shifting emp…
The Democratic Peace is What States Make of It
In 1971, the United States and India — the world’s two largest democracies — almost went to war in a ‘near-miss’ at odds with the hypothesis that democracies do not fight one another. In this article, I reformulate the democratic peace hypothesis by subsuming it under a broadened constructivist analysis, one that recognizes that institutional qualities do not ‘speak for themselves’ but rather that struggles over the meaning of democracy can engen…
International Political Economy meets the unexpected
Constructing monetary crises
Over the past two decades, monetary crises have played a key role in spurring increased monetary cooperation. From one, materialist, vantage, such crises appear as exogenous shocks, which matter primarily as they alter the material incentives to cooperation. However, such frameworks obscure the importance of debates over the meaning of crises, monetary understandings, and state interests themselves. I therefore offer a constructivist theory of cr…
Macroprudential Ideas and Contested Social Purpose
In response to Terrence Casey's argument that the emergence of macroprudential regulation since the financial crash can and should save neoliberalism we raise five objections. 1). The Debt-Driven Growth Hypothesis (DDG) and the Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH), as Casey terms them, are just as likely to be complementary as they are oppositional and they are by no means incompatible. 2) Casey's empirics are too thin and static, drawn from th…
Presidents, Prime Ministers and Policy Rhetoric
US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma — of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framework highlighting the tensions between ‘outside’ moral appeals which raise expectations and the ‘insid…
Where You Stand Depends on How You Think
I thank for their advice David Andrews, Jacqueline Best, Mark Blyth, David V. Edwards, James K. Galbraith, Francis Graham Lee, Leonard Seabrooke and Alexander Wendt. The usual disclaimers apply. Notes 1. The CEA is not, of course, the only agency responsible for wage and price guidelines. However, as the agency closest to the President, and given the importance of public leadership in securing consent, it often played the most prominent role in m…
Systemic Interpretations and the National Interest
In addressing the interplay of international forces and domestic policy, materialist frameworks such as neorealism and neoliberalism emphasize the influence of exogenously given systemic incentives on state and societal choices. However, these approaches are insufficient to the extent that material incentives must be interpreted and shifts in such interpretations may legitimate transformations of state and societal interests. In this article, we …
The Keynesian Bases of a Constructivist Theory of the International Political Economy
In recent years, the development of a constructivist theory of international economic cooperation has been impeded by the persistent influence of classical assumptions that cast monetary structures as essentially material and treat state and societal interests in economic cooperation as exogenous to interaction. In this paper, I counter that a truly constructivist approach to the study of the international political economy must be based on more …
Constructing monetary crises
Over the past two decades, monetary crises have played a key role in spurring increased monetary cooperation. From one, materialist, vantage, such crises appear as exogenous shocks, which matter primarily as they alter the material incentives to cooperation. However, such frameworks obscure the importance of debates over the meaning of crises, monetary understandings, and state interests themselves. I therefore offer a constructivist theory of cr…
Systemic Interpretations and the National Interest
In addressing the interplay of international forces and domestic policy, materialist frameworks such as neorealism and neoliberalism emphasize the influence of exogenously given systemic incentives on state and societal choices. However, these approaches are insufficient to the extent that material incentives must be interpreted and shifts in such interpretations may legitimate transformations of state and societal interests. In this article, we …
Theory as a Factor and the Theorist as an Actor
In IR theory debates, there exists a recurring tendency to draw a distinction between problem-solving and critical theory. Whereas problem-solving theory ostensibly pertains to the short term, critical theory purportedly examines the evolution of more enduring social structures over the long term. In this essay, the argument is made that this distinction obscures the ongoing role—equally in the long and the short runs—of theory in the reconstitut…
"The Social Construction of the "Impossible Trinity
Over the postwar period, states have shifted from cooperation in support of monetary guidelines, or standards for variation in wages, prices, and exchange rates, to the use of austerity as the primary means of maintaining monetary stability. In this article I offer a constructivist theory of international monetary relations in order to explain this shift, contrasting the effects of Keynesian and Neoclassical understandings on interests in coopera…
The Democratic Peace is What States Make of It
In 1971, the United States and India — the world’s two largest democracies — almost went to war in a ‘near-miss’ at odds with the hypothesis that democracies do not fight one another. In this article, I reformulate the democratic peace hypothesis by subsuming it under a broadened constructivist analysis, one that recognizes that institutional qualities do not ‘speak for themselves’ but rather that struggles over the meaning of democracy can engen…
Micro- or macro-moralities? Economic discourses and policy possibilities∗
This paper highlights the ethical implications of the distinction between micro- and macroeconomics, arguing that the methodological emphasis on establishing microfoundations has hardened into a liberal-individualist normative bias. We first argue that the key difference between micro- and macroeconomics is less any ostensible concern for small- or large-scale processes than a value-laden emphasis on the priority of private or public interests. W…
Systemic Pressures and the Intersubjective Bases of State Autonomy in Russia
Over the economic crises of the 1990s, global economic understandings shifted from the early classical orthodoxy of the 'Washington Consensus' to a later Keynesian support for demand stimulus and capital controls. However, Russian policy - particularly after the 1998 ruble crisis - partly deviated from these broader trends, combining Keynesian capital controls with classical budgetary restraint. In offering a 'constructivist-institutionalist' exp…
Where You Stand Depends on How You Think
I thank for their advice David Andrews, Jacqueline Best, Mark Blyth, David V. Edwards, James K. Galbraith, Francis Graham Lee, Leonard Seabrooke and Alexander Wendt. The usual disclaimers apply. Notes 1. The CEA is not, of course, the only agency responsible for wage and price guidelines. However, as the agency closest to the President, and given the importance of public leadership in securing consent, it often played the most prominent role in m…
Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises
This symposium addresses the role of wars and crises as mechanisms of international change. Over the past two decades, the international system has undergone a number of remarkable transformations, from the end of the Cold War to the emergence of an ongoing ''War on Terror,'' and from the collapse of statist development models to the emergence of a contested-if evolving-neoliberal ''Washington Consensus.'' This volatility exceeds any underlying s…
Constructing Foreign Policy Crises
Over the past century, crises have often driven shifts in U.S. foreign policy, as a liberal tradition has been permissive of varying tendencies to isolationism, pragmatism, or a crusading internationalism. While materialist analyses emphasize the impacts of crises on the capabilities of state and societal agents, they obscure the role of agents in interpreting crises. In this paper, I therefore offer a constructivist analysis, stressing the role …
Economics are too important to leave to economists
Emotional forces shape not only market tendencies to 'manias, panics and crashes', but also policy debates as they predispose agents to definitions of state and societal interests. Nevertheless, IR scholars often downplay emotional influences, casting them as secondary to coalitional or cognitive forces. In this article, I address these limitations by disaggregating intersubjective understandings into popularly resonant traditions of thought and …
Emotions Before Paradigms
Emotional forces shape not only market tendencies to ‘manias, panics and crashes’, but also policy debates as they predispose agents to definitions of state and societal interests. Nevertheless, IR scholars often downplay emotional influences, casting them as secondary to coalitional or cognitive forces. In this article, I address these limitations by disaggregating intersubjective understandings into popularly resonant traditions of thought and …
Differences Beyond Theory
Over the past two decades, one of the main themes in IR theory debates has been a concern for the interplay of agents, structures, and change. In this article, we engage with these debates as they pertain to “the state of the art” by highlighting in broad fashion three “constructivist turns” and their implications for efforts to explain the rise and demise of norms. More specifically, we offer a stylized history of a debate marked by shifting emp…
The Institutionalist Roots of Macroprudential Ideas
One consequence of the global financial crisis has been to prompt debate over macroprudential regulation – meant to limit private risk-taking that threatens systemic stability. In this paper, we stress the roots of macroprudential ideas in the Institutionalist economics of Veblen and Galbraith in a way that highlights both unrecognised policy possibilities and underappreciated impediments to policy effectiveness, arguing in particular that regula…
Macroprudential Ideas and Contested Social Purpose
In response to Terrence Casey's argument that the emergence of macroprudential regulation since the financial crash can and should save neoliberalism we raise five objections. 1). The Debt-Driven Growth Hypothesis (DDG) and the Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH), as Casey terms them, are just as likely to be complementary as they are oppositional and they are by no means incompatible. 2) Casey's empirics are too thin and static, drawn from th…
From Bretton Woods to the Global Financial Crisis
How do popular values shape constructions of crises and paradigmatic debates? In this paper, I offer a constructivist framework highlighting the popular bases of paradigmatic ideas and policy interests. In historical terms, I then trace the evolution of values, ideas, and polic]ies across three crises—the Bretton Woods-era inflation and currency crises of the 1960s, the South Korean and Long Term Capital Management crises of the 1990s, and the gl…
Presidential Rhetoric from Wilson to Obama
Over the past century, presidential constructions of foreign policy crises have legitimated recurring transformations of U.S. national interests"--Provided by publisher
When the fix isn’t in
Over recent decades, scholars and policymakers spanning an array of theoretical perspectives have stressed the scope for constructing beliefs and "fixing" expectations, in ways that can see shared ideas acquire the reflexive weight of self-fulfilling prophecies. In international relations theory debates, scholars argued that the "strategic social construction" of ideas and norms might in turn acquire the force of self-reinforcing taken for grante…
Reflexivity and International Relations
Lawyers, Gender, and Money
How did the interplay of intellectual overconfidence, gender, and professional socialization limit economic policy debate over the subprime boom and global financial crisis? In this article, I integrate historical institutionalist and feminist institutionalist insights to make sense of the interplay of gender and professional socialization in limiting the scope for precrisis regulation and postcrisis reform. First, drawing on historical instituti…
Presidents, Prime Ministers and Policy Rhetoric
US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma — of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framework highlighting the tensions between ‘outside’ moral appeals which raise expectations and the ‘insid…
The benefits of norm ambiguity
Over the past two decades, International Relations scholars have highlighted the importance of efforts by hegemonic states and norm entrepreneurs to foster norm clarity when promoting the establishment, institutionalisation, and internalisation of norms. Yet, such analyses obscure the benefits of norm ambiguity in facilitating consensus, flexibility, and compliance. The authors offer a framework positing that hegemonic and institutional ambiguity…
The power of economic ideas – through, over and in – political time
In recent years, scholarly concern for ‘great transformations’ has yielded to a stress on ‘gradual transitions'. In thiscontribution, I offer a discursive institutionalist model of the shifts in ideational power which drive order construction, consolidation and crisis. First, I argue that leaders exercise rhetorical power through ideas, employing communicative appeals to shape principled beliefs. Second, I argue that élites employ epistemic power…
Breaking promises and raising taxes
Where historical institutionalists have stressed the path-dependent efficiencies that stabilise policy orders, their rationalist assumptions have increasingly obscured the scope for instability. To redress such oversights, I integrate historical institutionalist insights regarding incremental change with discursive institutionalist analyses of interpretive tensions in a way that accords with Daniel Kahneman’s analyses of shifting ‘fast’/principle…
Political science (24 works) · Law (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Politics (19 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Positive economics (14 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (9 works)