TY - JOUR
T1 - Of Paradigms and Power
T2 - British Economic Policy Making since Thatcher
AU - Carstensen, Martin B.
AU - Matthijs, Matthias
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - How do ruling policy paradigms persist over time and why do they often undergo significant internal ideational changes? While the impact of Peter Hall's approach to policy paradigms on the study of governance has been immense, there is a burgeoning consensus that a “Kuhnian” understanding of paradigms makes punctuated equilibrium style shifts the only game in town. While Hall's approach can account for inter‐paradigm change with reference to exogenous shocks, it does not allow for significant ideational shifts to occur intra‐paradigm. To remedy this, we place ideational power dynamics at the heart of the study of policy paradigms. We demonstrate the general applicability of our approach by examining the evolution of British macroeconomic policy‐making since 1990. We show how key policy‐makers were able to employ their institutional and ideational power to reinterpret and redefine the dominant neoliberal understanding of the economy to match their own specific ideas and policy priorities.
AB - How do ruling policy paradigms persist over time and why do they often undergo significant internal ideational changes? While the impact of Peter Hall's approach to policy paradigms on the study of governance has been immense, there is a burgeoning consensus that a “Kuhnian” understanding of paradigms makes punctuated equilibrium style shifts the only game in town. While Hall's approach can account for inter‐paradigm change with reference to exogenous shocks, it does not allow for significant ideational shifts to occur intra‐paradigm. To remedy this, we place ideational power dynamics at the heart of the study of policy paradigms. We demonstrate the general applicability of our approach by examining the evolution of British macroeconomic policy‐making since 1990. We show how key policy‐makers were able to employ their institutional and ideational power to reinterpret and redefine the dominant neoliberal understanding of the economy to match their own specific ideas and policy priorities.
UR - https://sfx-45cbs.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/45cbs?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info:sid/sfxit.com:azlist&sfx.ignore_date_threshold=1&rft.object_id=954925574971
U2 - 10.1111/gove.12301
DO - 10.1111/gove.12301
M3 - Journal article
VL - 31
SP - 431
EP - 447
JO - Governance: An international journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions
JF - Governance: An international journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions
SN - 0952-1895
IS - 3
ER -