Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T00:01:57.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Paradigm man vs. the bricoleur: bricolage as an alternative vision of agency in ideational change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2011

Martin B. Carstensen
Martin B. Carstensen*
Affiliation:
PhD Student, Department of Economics, Politics and Public Administration, Centre for Comparative Welfare Studies, Aalborg University, Fibigerstræde 1, Aalborg East, Denmark
*
* E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The status of ideational explanations in political science has been strengthened by the argument that institutionalized ideas structure actors’ identification of their interests as well as the interests of their political adversaries. Despite its utility, the focus on the institutionalization of ideas has had the unfortunate consequence that actors are often, implicitly or explicitly, believed to internalize ideas, making it difficult to understand how actors are able to change their ideas and institutions. Drawing on cultural sociology and ideational theory, the paper introduces the ‘bricoleur’ as an alternative vision of agency. It is argued, first, that actors cannot cognitively internalize highly structured symbolic systems, and ideas are thus ‘outside the minds of actors’. Second, using the cognitive schemas at their disposal, actors construct strategies of action based on pre-constructed ideational and political institutions. Third, actors must work actively and creatively with the ideas and institutions they use, because the structure within which actors work does not determine their response to new circumstances. Fourth, as a vast number of ideational studies have shown, actors face a complex array of challenges in getting their ideas to the top of the policy agenda, which makes it all the more important to act pragmatically, putting ideas together that may not be logically compatible but rather answer political and cultural logics. In sum, agency often takes the form of bricolage, where bits and pieces of the existing ideational and institutional legacy are put together in new forms leading to significant political transformation.

Keywords

ideasbricolageagencyinstitutionsparadigmschange
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , 25 February 2011 , pp. 147 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albrekt Larsen, C.Goul Andersen, J. (2009), ‘How new economic ideas changed the Danish welfare state’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions 22(2): 239–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, E.A. (2005), ‘From struggle to settlement: the crystallization of a field of lesbian/gay organizations in San Franscisco, 1969–1973’, in G.F. Davis, D. McAdam and W. Richard Scott (eds), Social Movements and Organization Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Art, D. (2006), The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Balkin, J. (1998), Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Béland, D. (2005), ‘Ideas and social policy: an institutionalist perspective’, Social Policy & Administration 39(1): 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Béland, D. (2009), ‘Ideas, institutions, and policy change’, Journal of European Public Policy 16(5): 701–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benford, R.D.Snow, D.A. (2000), ‘Framing processes and social movements: an overview and assessment’, Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, S. (1998), The Social Democratic Moment: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bevir, M. (1999), The Logic of the History of Ideas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bevir, M.Rhodes, R.A.W. (2003), Interpreting British Governance, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blyth, M. (1997), ‘ ‘Any more bright ideas?’ The ideational turn of comparative political economy’, Comparative Politics 29(1): 229–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blyth, M. (2002), Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blyth, M. (2003), ‘Structures do not come with an instruction sheet: interests, ideas, and progress in political science’, PS: Political Science and Politics 1(4): 695–706.Google Scholar
Campbell, J.L. (2004), Institutional Change and Globalization, Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, J.L. (2005), ‘Where do we stand? Common mechanisms in organizations and social movements’, in G.F. Davis, D. McAdam and W. Richard Scott (eds), Social Movements and Organization Theory, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 41–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, J.L. (2010), ‘Institutional reproduction and change’, in G. Morgan, J.L. Campbell, C. Crouch, O.K. Pedersen and R. Whitly (eds), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 87–115.Google Scholar
Campbell, J.L.Pedersen, O.K. (2010), ‘Knowledge regimes and comparative political economy’, in D. Béland and R.H. Cox (eds), Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 234–271.Google Scholar
Carstensen, M.B. (2010a), ‘Ideas are not as stable as political scientists want them to be: a theory of incremental ideational change’, Political Studies, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Carstensen, M.B. (2010b), ‘The nature of ideas and why political scientists should care: analysing the Danish Jobcentre reform from an ideational perspective’, Political Studies 58(5): 847–865.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carstensen, M.B. (n.a.), ‘Are small states regulatory price takers? The case of Denmark and the financial crisis’, (unpublished manuscript).Google Scholar
Cox, R.H. (2001), ‘The social construction of an imperative: why welfare reform happened in Denmark and The Netherlands but not in Germany’, World Politics 53(3): 463–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culpepper, P.D. (2008), ‘The politics of common knowledge: ideas and institutional change in wage bargaining’, International Organization 62(1): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, P. (1997), ‘Culture and cognition’, Annual Review of Sociology 23: 263–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, R. (2007), ‘Epistemologial bricolage: how practitioners make sense of learning’, Administration & Society 39(4): 476–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haas, P.M. (1992), ‘Epistemic communities and international policy coordination’, International Organization 46(1): 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacker, J. (2004), ‘Privatizing risk without privatizing the welfare state: the hidden politics of social policy retrenchment in the United States’, American Political Science Review 98: 243–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, P.A. (ed.) (1989), The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism Across Nations, Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, P. (1993), ‘Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: the case of economic policymaking in Britain’, Comparative Politics 25(3): 275–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, C. (2001), ‘The ‘crisis’ of Keynesianism and the rise of neoliberalism in Britain: an ideatinal institutionalist approach’, in J.L. Campbell and O.K. Pedersen (eds), The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 193–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, C. (2010), ‘The 2010 Leonard Shapiro lecture – pathology without crisis? The strange demise of the Anglo-liberal growth model’. Presented at the 60th Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association, Edinburgh, March 29 to April 1.Google Scholar
Hodson, D.Mabbott, D. (2009), ‘UK economic policy and the global financial crisis: paradigm lost’, Journal of Common Market Studies 47(5): 1041–1061.Google Scholar
Jabko, N. (2006), Playing the Market: A Political Strategy for Uniting Europe, 1985-2005, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, A.M. (2009), ‘How do ideas matter? Mental models and attention in German pension politics’, Comparative Political Studies 42(2): 252–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon, J.W. (1984), Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Kjær, P.Pedersen, O.K. (2001), ‘Translating liberalization: neoliberalism in the Danish negotiated economy’, in J.L. Campbell and O.K. Pedersen (eds), The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 219–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, T. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn., Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Legro, J.W. (2000), ‘The transformation of policy ideas’, American Journal of Political Science 44(3): 419–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi-Strauss, C. (1996 [1962]) The Savage Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, R.C. (2002), ‘Ideas, institutions, and political order: explaining political change’, American Political Science Review 96(4): 697–712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindblom, C. (1959), ‘The science of ‘muddling through’ ’, Public Administration Review 19(2): 79–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lizardo, O.Strand, M. (2010), ‘Skills, toolkits, contexts and institutions: clarifying the relationship between different approaches to cognition in cultural sociology’, Poetics 38(2): 205–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcussen, M. (2000), Ideas and Elites: The Social Construction of Economic and Monetary Union, Aalborg: Aalborg University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, J.L. (2010), ‘Life’s a beach but you’re and ant, and other unwelcome news for the sociology of culture’, Poetics 38(2): 229–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, D.Scott, W.R. (2005), ‘Organizations and movements’, in G.F. Davis, D. McAdam and W. Richard Scott (eds), Social Movements and Organization Theory, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 4–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehta, J. (2010), ‘From ‘whether’ to ‘how’: the varied role of ideas in politics’, in D. Béland and R.H. Cox (eds), Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 28–64, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Milner, A. (2007), ‘Bricolage’, in Ritzer, G. (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Blackwell Reference Online, Blackwell Publishing, Retrieved 27 October 2010 from http://www.sociologyencyclopedia.com/subscriber/tocnode?id=g9781405124331_chunk_g97814051243318_ss1-50.Google Scholar
Palier, B.Martin, C. (2007), ‘From ‘a frozen landscape’ to structural reforms: the sequential transformation of Bismarckian welfare systems’, Social Policy & Administration 41(6): 535–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palier, B.Thelen, K. (2010), ‘Institutionalizing dualism: complementarities and change in France and Germany’, Politics & Society 38(1): 119–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, C. (2003), A Certain Idea of Europe, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, C. (2007), How to Map Arguments in Political Science, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pierson, P. (1994), Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment, Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risse, T. (1994), ‘Ideas do not float freely: transnational coalitions, domestic structures, and the end of the cold war’, International Organization 48(2): 185–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabatier, P.A.Jenkins-Smith, H.C. (eds) (1993), Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (2002), The Futures of European Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (2007), ‘Trapped by their ideas: French elites’ discourses of European integration’, Journal of European Public Policy 14(4): 992–1009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (2008a), ‘From historical institutionalism to discursive Institutionalism: explaining change in comparative political economy’. Paper prepared for Presentation at the American Political Science Association Meetings, August 2008, Boston.Google Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (2008b), ‘Discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and discourse’, Annual Review of Political Science 11: 303–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (2009), ‘Comparative institutional analysis’, in T. Landman and N. Robinson (eds), Handbook of Comparative Politics, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 125–143.Google Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (n.a.), ‘Ideas and discourse in transformational political economic change in Europe’, in G. Skogstad (ed.) Internationalization and Policy Paradigms. Toronto University Press, in review.Google Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (2010b), ‘Reconciling ideas and institutions through discursive institutionalism’, in D. Béland and R.H. Cox (eds), Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 64–89, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Seabrooke, L. (2009), ‘Everyday legitimacy and institutional change’, in A. Gofas and C. Hay (eds), The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis: A Portrait of Contemporary Debates, London: Routledge, pp. 167–186.Google Scholar
Skocpol, T.Weir, M. (1985), ‘State structures and the possibilities for Keynesian responses to the depression in Sweden, Britain and the United States’, in P.B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107–163.Google Scholar
Skogstad, G. (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): 463–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinmo, S. (2003), ‘The evolution of policy ideas: tax policy in the 20th century’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5(2): 206–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strauss, C.Quinn, N. (1997), A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Streeck, W.Thelen, K. (2005), Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Swidler, A. (1986), ‘Culture in action: symbols and strategies’, American Sociological Review 51(2): 273–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swidler, A. (2000), ‘Out of our minds: where cognition and culture intersect’. Paper prepared for Sociology of Culture Mini-Conference Session on Culture and Cognition, August 11, George Mason University, p. 25.Google Scholar
Swidler, A. (2003), Talk of Love: How Culture Matters, Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Weir, M. (1989), ‘Ideas and politics: the acceptance of Keynesianism in Britain and the United States’, in P.A. Hall (ed.), The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 53–86.Google Scholar