Ideas and Institution in Social Policy Research

SOCIAL POLICY & ADMINISTRATION ISSN 0144-5596
DOI: 10.1111/spol.12258
VOL. 50, NO. 6, November 2016, PP. 734–750
Ideas and Institutions in Social Policy Research

Daniel Béland
Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan,
Saskatchewan, Canada
Abstract
This special issue commemorates the 50 th anniversary of Social Policy & Administration. Much
has been written over the last two decades about the role of ideas in social policy, especially as they
relate to institutions. For instance, a decade ago in this journal, I published a now widely cited article
titled ‘Ideas and social policy: An institutionalist perspective’. The present contribution returns to
some of the issues raised in that 2005 article, while assessing the recent ideational scholarship,
with the goal of formulating a new research agenda for scholars in the field. Special attention
is paid to the need for clear analytical distinctions and rigorous empirical analysis to study the
explanatory role of ideas in social policy change, as they may interact with institutions. This article
concludes with a discussion about the meaning of institutionalism in ideational analysis and how to
concretely explore the interaction between ideas and institutions in the study of social policy stability
and change.
Keywords
Ideas; Ideational analysis; Institutions; Institutionalism; Social policy; Policy change
Introduction
Much has been written recently about the role of ideas in social policy and
how they relate to institutions.1 Although it is possible and even common to
study ideas and institutions separately, scholars such as John L. Campbell
(2004) and Vivien Schmidt (2002, 2011) have long argued that there is much
to be gained in studying ideas and institutions together. This is especially the
case when the time comes to study social policy change. A decade ago in Social
Policy & Administration, I published a now widely cited article that made a
similar argument about the role of ideas in social policy change and the
broader need to study the interaction among ideas and institutions (Béland
2005). More than a decade later, the present state-of-the-art article returns
to some of the issues raised in my 2005 contribution, while engaging with
Author Email: daniel.beland@usask.ca
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

SOCIAL POLICY & ADMINISTRATION, VOL. 50, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2016
recent scholarship on the role of ideas and institutions in social policy, with the
aim of formulating a new research agenda for scholars in the field. Special
attention is paid to the need for a clear analytical distinction between ideas
and institutions and the use of systematic empirical analysis to study the
explanatory role of ideas in social policy.
The article is divided into six main sections. After a brief discussion of
institutionalism and the issue of social policy stability and change, the second
section discusses potential definitions of ideas before illustrating the diversity
of ideational processes in social policy. Stressing this diversity, the third
section explores the role of ideas across the five main stages of the policy
process. Moving beyond such particular stages, the fourth section explores
the role of ideas in the shaping of coalitions and the construction of interests,
two related issues that point to the need for ideational scholars to directly
address power relations. The fifth section points to the need for these scholars
to address pressing methodological issues so as to more clearly explain how
ideas can impact policy stability and change. The final section brings
institutionalism back to the centre of the discussion by showing how
researchers could tackle the question of how ideas and institutions can inter-
act to shape social policy development. As argued, an appropriate way to
address this issue is to break down ideas and institutions into more specific
categories before analyzing how they interact over time, using process tracing
as a method of inquiry.
From Institutions to Ideas

Two of the most widely cited books on social policy published over the last
three decades are grounded in institutionalist assumptions that emphasize
stability over change.2 On one hand, in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism,
sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1990) explains how particular welfare
institutions crystalized in the post-Second World War era to create three
relatively stable and coherent regime clusters.3 Building on the work of
Richard M. Titmuss (1974), his account of the conservative, liberal and social
democratic regimes generated an imposing critical literature about issues
ranging from the actual number of such regimes to their gendered nature
(e.g. Ferrera 1996; Lewis 1992; O’Connor et al. 1999; Powell and Barrientos
2011; Rice 2013; Sainsbury 1999). On the other hand, in Dismantling the
Welfare State?, political scientist Paul Pierson (1994) explores the politics of
social policy retrenchment in the UK and the USA during the Thatcher
and Reagan years, to emphasize the institutional stickiness of the welfare
states created during the post-Second World War era. Using concepts such
as policy feedback and path dependency, Pierson (1994) shows that, over
time, social programmes created powerful policy legacies and vested interests
that have made it much harder for conservative politicians to dismantle or
downsize them. As with The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Pierson’s book
generated a large critical literature on stability and change in social policy
(e.g. Béland and Waddan 2012; Hacker 2004; Palier and Bonoli 1999;
Merrien 1997; Starke 2006; for a recent overview: Béland and Powell
2016).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 735
Within the institutionalist tradition, policy change only became a central

issue in the early 2000s. Perhaps the most influential authors within that
tradition who write about social policy are Jacob Hacker (2004) and Kathy
Thelen (2004; Mahoney and Thelen 2009; Streeck and Thelen 2005).
What these two authors and their many followers emphasize is the fact that
policy institutions are much less stable than was traditionally believed, as, with
time, slow-moving logics can gradually transform these institutions.4 Through
processes such as conversion (revising the goals of a policy without formally
replacing it), layering (adding new elements to existing policy legacies without
immediately displacing them) and policy drift (not adapting existing
programmes to a new context that alters their impact and meaning), policy
actors bring about change to existing policy legacies that gradually yet
profoundly alter them. This literature on incremental yet transformative
change is part of a broader debate within the institutionalist tradition about
the nature and scope of policy change in contemporary societies, which is
the starting point of much of the recent scholarship on the role of ideas in
politics and policy (e.g. Béland and Waddan 2012; Bhatia 2010; Boothe
2015; Kay 2007; Palier 2002; Wincott 2011). Before further exploring
the relationship between ideas and institutions in social policy, it is necessary
to say more about ideas themselves and how they can have a direct impact
on political and policy processes. Once this is done, it should be easier to
return to the ideas-institutions nexus and its meaning for the analysis of
social policy change.
What Ideas Are

One of the central claims of the contemporary literature on ideas is that,
because we now know that ‘ideas matter’, we should try to rigorously assess
how they matter (Béland 2005; Jacobs 2009; Mehta 2011). In order to do
that, scholars should first clearly define what they mean by ‘ideas’ (Berman
2013) and what type(s) of ideas they seek to study (Campbell 2004). This
is especially true because some academics remain reluctant to take ideas seri-
ously as a potential way to explain concrete policy outcomes. This reluctance
stems from both the domination of narrow forms of positivism in policy
research and the conceptual sloppiness of some ideational studies, which
remain vague about their core explanatory assumptions (Daigneault 2014).
There are different ways to define ideas. Although this is only one relevant
definition among others, in this article, we define ideas primarily as the chang-
ing and historically-constructed ‘causal beliefs’ of individual and collective
actors (Goldstein and Keohane 1993). Understood broadly, these beliefs
include the values and perceptions of actors (Béland and Cox 2011). This
actor-centric understanding of ideas (Smyrl and Genieys 2008) points to
how assumptions about the natural, social and political environment change
or remain stable over time, and how these ideational constructions shape
the decision-making process and the political fights over various social policy
issues. For ideas to be taken seriously, they should not be considered mere
epiphenomena but an aspect of reality that can shape human behaviour
and policy decisions in a direct way (Campbell 2004).
736 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Beyond specific definitions, another way to understand what ideas are is to

locate them within the realm of available explanations in social science and
policy research. Following Craig Parsons (2007; for a critical yet sympathetic
perspective, see Daigneault and Béland 2015), it is possible to identify four
main types of explanation: ideational, institutional, psychological and
structural. On the one hand, ideational and psychological explanations
belong to a logic-of-interpretation that ‘explains by showing that someone
arrives at an action only through one interpretation of what is possible and/
or desirable’ (Parsons 2007: 13). The key difference between ideational
and psychological explanations is that the former are contingent historical
constructions such as cultural beliefs and political ideologies, while the latter
are largely about hard-wired mental activity such as cognitive biases stem-
ming from how the brain works. On the other hand, structural and institu-
tional explanations are about a logic-of-position that ‘explains by detailing
the landscape around someone to show how an obstacle course of material
or man-made constraints and incentives channels her to certain actions’
(Parsons 2007: 13). Structural explanations point to economic and material
factors such as financial crises and natural disasters, while institutional expla-
nations concern historically-constructed yet embedded rules and norms such
as existing social policies and electoral systems.
When Parsons (2007) writes about ideational processes, he gives a broad
meaning to the term and refers to approaches centred on issues as different
as culture, framing, political ideology and policy paradigms. Although we
can use the term ‘ideas’ as a broad umbrella concept to refer to ideational
processes in general, empirically-minded scholars frequently break down ideas
into more specific sub-categories that are easier to operationalize empirically
(Daigneault 2015; Béland and Waddan 2015). This is precisely why scholars
have formulated typologies that spell out the different types of policy-related
ideas (e.g. Blyth 2001; Campbell 2004; Mehta 2011).
One of the most sophisticated ideational typologies available in the litera-
ture is the one John Campbell (2004) formulates in his book, Institutional
Change and Globalization (for a discussion, see Padamsee 2009). This typology
is based on the distinction among four types of ideas, two (policy paradigms
and public sentiments) located in the background and two (programmes and
frames) in the foreground of the policy process. Associated with the work of
Peter Hall (1993), the concept of policy paradigm refers to a set of structured
assumptions about existing policy problems and the instruments capable of
solving them (for critical perspectives and new developments, see Carstensen
2011; Daigneault 2014; Hogan and Howlett 2015; Skogstad 2011).
Although Hall (1993) focused on economic paradigms, the concept of para-
digm has long been used in social policy research, including in articles
published in this journal (e.g. Béland 2005; Ferge 1997; Holler 2016, forth-
coming). As for public sentiments, they point to widely shared perceptions and
assumptions, which are typically reflected in polling data. Yet, according to
Campbell (2004), public sentiments are a broader category than public opin-
ion in the strict sense of the term, as they may refer to embedded national cul-
tures and understandings (Dobbin 1994). In recent social policy research, the
work of Brian Steensland (2008) on cultural categories and the scholarship of
Birgit Pfau-Effinger (2005) on culture and the welfare state implicitly deal
with what Campbell (2004) calls public sentiments.
Unlike policy paradigms and public sentiments, programmes and frames
are located in the foreground of the policy debates (Campbell 2004). For
instance, programmes are ‘road maps’ (Goldstein and Keohane 1993) for
policymakers that help them ‘chart a clear and specific course of action’
(Campbell 2004: 94). As for frames, they are ‘symbols and concepts’ that
policy actors (Campbell 2004: 94) use to legitimize policy proposals and sell
them to the public and specific constituencies (on frames, see also Schön and
Rein 1994). From this angle, frames are strategic and political in nature, since
they allow policy actors to actively draw on existing cultural and ideological
repertoires to make convincing public statements about the policies they sup-
port or oppose, in a dialogical process that characterizes most policy battles
(Béland 2005; on dialogism, see Bakhtin 1981). In his book, Campbell
(2004) rightly associates the work of Vivien Schmidt (2002, 2011) on policy
discourse with framing, even if this concept is not explicitly at the centre of it.
This remark points to the fact that scholars frequently use different categories
to refer to similar ideational processes. Such a reality should not prevent us
from trying to break existing scholarly boundaries based on arbitrary
differences in terminology to create new dialogues and synergies among
formally distinct ideational approaches.
Although most useful, Campbell’s (2004) typology excludes significant
types of ideas present in the literature. For instance, broader constructions
such as political ideologies, which are distinct from public sentiments and
located in the foreground of policy debates, deserve specific attention (e.g.
Berman 2011; Freeden 2003). This is particularly the case in social policy
research, as struggles over social programmes involve battles among specific
ideological camps (Manning 2012; Taylor 2007). Simultaneously, problem
definitions are at least in part ideational constructions and scholars should
study them accordingly (Mehta 2011). For instance, in social policy research,
the ways in which social problems such as poverty and social exclusion are
defined deserve close attention, as they can shed light on welfare change
(Levitas 2005). Problem definition is closely associated with the agenda-
setting stage (Kingdon 1995), a situation that points to the fact that ideas
can play a particular roles at different moments of the policy cycle. This is
why, instead of simply defining ideas in abstract terms, we should look at their
potential impact across the policy cycle, something we do in the next section.
Ideas in the Policy Cycle

Scholars have long divided the policy cycle into different stages (Howlett et al.
2009). These stages may vary in number but they typically include agenda-
setting, formulation, decision-making, implementation and evaluation. In
practice, such stages do not always follow one another in strict temporal order
and the boundaries among them are sometimes fuzzy (Howlett et al. 2009).
Despite its limitations, the policy cycle approach allows us to break down
the policy process into distinct moments and to explore the role of ideas within
each of them.
First, during the agenda-setting stage, actors such as experts and journalists
define certain problems and push them in and out of the policy agenda (for a
recent, comparative discussion of agenda-setting, see Green-Pedersen and
Walgrave 2014). As a consequence, within the limits of the policy cycle, prob-
lem definition plays its most central role during the agenda-setting stage
(Howlett et al. 2009). This is something that students of agenda-setting such
as John W. Kingdon (1995) recognize. There is an extensive literature on
problem definition in social science research, much of which is ideational in
nature (e.g. Mehta 2011; Rochefort and Cobb 1994; Stone 1997; White
2002). Yet agenda-setting is not only about how problems are defined and
understood. Agenda-setting involves a competition for attention among differ-
ent actors and the problems they seek to move onto the policy agenda. This
‘politics of attention’ (Jones and Baumgartner 2005) is crucial across policy
areas because the number of issues policymakers can consider at one point in
time is necessarily limited (Kingdon 1995). Drawing attention to particular
problems is largely a discursive and ideational process, in which actors seek
to depict specific social problems as both pressing and requiring state interven-
tion, through the creation of new programmes or the expansion of existing
measures. Some of these social problems, such as the idea of ‘dependency’
(Fraser and Gordon 1994), can have a long history, and their meaning is likely
to have changed profoundly over time. This is partly why the history of key
social policy concepts such as ‘dependency’ is so helpful and relevant: it allows
scholars to grasp the changing perceptions of the issues and problems moving
in and out of the social policy agenda (Béland and Petersen 2014).
The second stage, policy formulation, is probably the stage the most tradi-
tionally associated with the role of ideas. This is the case because designing
policy solutions to address various economic and social problems often takes
the form of an explicit competition among particular ideas and proposals
(Kingdon 1995; Mehta 2011). Policy formulation involves the mobilization
of numerous actors, which range from academics and consultants to think
tanks and international organizations. These actors may draw on concrete
policy paradigms to legitimize and make sense of their policy proposals
(Daigneault 2014; Hall 1993). Simultaneously, these actors may become part
of ‘instrument constituencies’ that promote a specific policy instrument, such
as social insurance or personal savings accounts (Béland and Howlett 2016;
Voss and Simons 2014). Such instrument constituencies identify with a par-
ticular policy solution, which they adapt to emerging problems, a situation
consistent with the claim that sometimes solutions ‘chase problems’ (Kingdon
1995), rather than the other way around. For instance, over time, supporters
of pension privatization have tied this policy solution to different problems,
such as demographic ageing and financial sustainability, which were not
clearly on the radar screen when the idea of privatization first emerged in
economic and social policy circles (Béland and Howlett 2016, forthcoming).
Third, during the decision-making stage, elected officials, policy entrepre-
neurs (Kingdon 1995) and advocacy coalitions (Sabatier 1988) fight over
the enactment of concrete policy solutions. Here framing processes become
particularly relevant for the ‘construction of the need to reform’ (Cox
2001) and for bringing the general public and key constituencies on board
(Bhatia and Coleman 2003; Schmidt 2002). Framing battles over social pol-
icy are likely to involve broader political ideologies (Berman 2011; Freeden
2003), while drawing on existing cultural categories (Steensland 2008) and
public sentiments (Campbell 2004). To use Campbell’s (2004) terminology,
the analysis of decision-making can take into account ideas located in the fore-
ground of policy debates into account and, simultaneously, connect such ideas
with ideational realities located in the background of these debates. Such an
analysis can help explain why policy entrepreneurs gather support to pass or
prevent the enactment of major reforms but also, more generally, how
embedded beliefs located in the background of social policy debates may facil-
itate or stand in the way of change. This is exactly what Brian Steensland
(2008) does in his analysis of the failed efforts to reform federal social assis-
tance in the USA during the 1970s. For him, ‘welfare’ as a pejorative cultural
category made it harder for President Nixon to sell his reform initiative, which
created much misunderstanding and, ultimately, strong political opposition.
Two decades later, however, US conservatives used a two-century-old
rhetoric about the ‘perversity’ of state action to pave the way and gather
support for the radical 1995 federal social assistance reform (Somers and
Block 2005). This example suggests that the frames and narratives available
to promote or mobilize against concrete reforms can have a long political life,
a situation that once again calls for a historically-informed ideational analysis
(for another example of this, see Berman 2011).
Implementation, the fourth stage, is probably the most neglected of the
policy cycle as far as ideational research is concerned. This is a pity because
implementation is a crucial aspect of policy development, and has received
direct attention from policy scholars (e.g. Bardach 1977; Lipsky 2010; for
an overview, see Béland and Ridde 2016, forthcoming). The policy imple-
mentation literature suggests that what happens to a programme after its leg-
islative adoption is crucial in determining its success or failure on the ground.
For instance, street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 2010) can reshape policies as
they implement them. At the same time, particular constituencies, such as
labour unions and professional organizations, sometimes have the power to
shape the implementation of a policy. There is strong evidence that ideas
can play a direct role in implementation processes (Béland and Ridde
2016, forthcoming). For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, the existing belief
among medical doctors and other health practitioners that patients only value
care they pay for directly can weaken the support on the ground for policies
aiming at gradually lifting the user fees imposed several decades ago as part
of structural adjustment programmes (Béland and Ridde 2016, forthcoming).
More research is needed on the potential impact of different types of ideas on
policy implementation.
Lastly, in contrast to implementation, evaluation is a stage of the policy
process explicitly connected to ideational analysis. This is the case because,
although policy evaluation can take the form of rigorous and systematic anal-
ysis, contested interpretations of existing policy legacies are likely to emerge
during the evaluation process. Such interpretations are typically embedded
in the assumptions of actors about what constitutes good or bad policy. For
instance, progressive welfare actors strongly committed to equality are likely
to respond much more negatively to social programmes that increase poverty

than neoliberal experts who see inequality as the unavoidable outcome of
economic progress. In this context, it is not surprising that policy learning
and evaluation is central to the literature on paradigms, according to which
the lessons drawn from existing policies are shaped by the assumptions of
the actors drawing such lessons (Hall 1993). In a more general way, policy
learning is not a purely objective endeavour but a political reality that is not
without ideological and political struggles (Fischer 2003). This is the case
within a particular jurisdiction but also at the transnational level, as actors
draw lessons from other countries (Rose 1991). From this perspective, lesson
drawing is a significant aspect of the ideational processes through which policy
ideas travel from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, with the help of both interna-
tional organizations and domestic actors, who typically adapt them to local
context (Campbell 2004; Jenson 2010; Mahon 2009; Orenstein 2008).
Coalition Building and the Construction of Interests

As suggested in the previous section, reviewing the potential role of ideas
across the policy cycle is an appropriate way to map them and illustrate their
relevance at different policy stages. Across these different stages, political coa-
litions are key actors that are likely to shape policy outcomes. There is direct
evidence that shared policy beliefs help bring these coalitions together and
reproduce them over time (Sabatier 1988). Although shared beliefs can help
bring coalitions together, policy entrepreneurs (Kingdon 1995) are actively
involved in framing discourses aimed at bringing actors together over certain
problem definitions, policy solutions, or broad political and ideological objec-
tives. When trying to bring people together, actors can draw on the character-
istics of certain ideas and directly use them as ‘coalition magnets’ (Béland and
Cox 2016). These characteristics include ambiguity, because ideas that have
multiple meanings may appeal to more people, although for different reasons
(Palier 2005). Ideas with overly positive meaning such as social inclusion and
solidarity also stand a better chance of working as ‘coalition magnets’ in the
hands of skilful politicians and policy entrepreneurs (Béland and Cox 2016).
A key ideational aspect of coalition building and the politics of social policy
is the construction of interests (e.g. Blyth 2002; Hay 2011; Jenson 1989;
Schmidt 2011; Schön and Rein 1994; Stone 1997; Weir 1992). The claim
that interests are socially constructed does not necessarily mean that they have
nothing to do with actors’ social and economic position. Instead, it means two
actors who occupy the same basic socio-economic position can understand
their position and interests differently and, as a consequence, adopt distinct
policy preferences (King 1973). For example, in a debate over austerity and
social policy, two wealthy individuals may embrace opposite views on increas-
ing the tax burden on well-off citizens like them. Yet their preferences are
partly the outcome of a collective deliberative process through which elected
officials and policy entrepreneurs frame the issues at hand to build coalitions
and gather more support for the policies they promote.
From this perspective, ideational processes are central to power relations,
which are about collective political mobilization and, more specifically, the
capacity of actors to reach their goals (Morris 2006). As opposed to what

neo-Marxist authors such as Stephen Lukes (2005) believe, this understand-
ing of power as a capacity is distinct from domination, which is the oppression
or exclusion of particular groups in society (Morris 2006). Although power
(as capacity) can lead to domination (as exclusion), these two concepts remain
analytically distinct (Béland 2010). Power is now moving to the centre of the
literature on ideas and public policy (Béland et al. 2016, forthcoming), which
should allow for greater analytical clarity concerning the impact of ideas on
politics and public policy, including coalition building and the construction
of interests. Such clarity requires direct attention to both power and
domination, because they each impact the capacity and agency of actors.
Methodological Challenges
Beyond these theoretical remarks, some methodological considerations are in
order. This is especially true because too much empirical work on the role of
ideas is marred with analytical confusion (Daigneault 2014). To study the
explanatory role of ideas rigorously, researchers must first provide clear
definitions of the ideational factors they seek to explore while, simultaneously,
distinguishing them from other types of explanation, such as psychological,
institutional and psychological explanations (Parsons 2007). More specifi-
cally, when they explore issues such as paradigm shifts, researchers should
distinguish between ideas and policy institutions (Daigneault 2014; Skogstad
2011). As Pierre-Marc Daigneault (2014: 7) notes, too many scholars
‘neglect the actual (…) ideas of policy actors in favour of those revealed by the
adopted policies’. This analytical shift from the ideas carried by actors to
the ones embedded in policies is problematic because only the former may
effectively produce policy change, as the latter are simply the outcome of that
change. So what scholars should do here is to study how ideas existing prior to
the enactment of a reform shaped its actual content, instead of starting from
the ideas embedded in the reform after its adoption, and simply assuming that
they shaped its content beforehand. In other words, it is not enough to identify
new ideas as part of a social policy reform to claim these ideas produced that
reform in the first place (Daigneault 2014).
At the same time, scholars who seek to formulate ideational explanations of
social policy change should take the ‘dependent variable’ problem seriously
(Clasen and Siegel 2007). This is why scholars need to clearly define what
they seek to explain before they even start considering possible explanations.
Once this is done, scholars can compare and contrast different types of
explanation and use counterfactuals to test their claims. In other words, when
scholars seek to explain policy change, they first need to clearly define what
policy change means, before assessing potential explanatory factors that
may account for it (Béland and Waddan 2012).
When dealing with these potential explanations, including ideational expla-
nations, a useful method to assess causal impact is process tracing (Bennett
and Checkel 2015). As far as the ideational approach is concerned, process
tracing requires a detailed and rigorous analysis of how the ideas of key policy
actors evolve over time. This type of analysis involves a clear discussion of the
ideational mechanisms that may shape policy stability and change over time,
as well as a close look at the available empirical evidence best suited to trace
the development of ideas and explain how they matter concretely for policy
stability and change (for an excellent discussion of process tracing in ideational
research, see Jacobs 2015).
Although students of ideas and social policy mainly use qualitative methods
such as interviews and document analysis, nothing prevents scholars from
drawing on quantitative methods to assess ideational impact (Béland and
Cox 2011). For instance, scholars can measure the diffusion of ideas using
quantitative methods, as Jeffrey Chwieroth (2007) does when he studies the
rise of neoliberalism within the International Monetary Fund. Importantly,
because the study of public sentiments can involve the analysis of public
opinion data (Campbell 2004), looking at quantitative survey data is relevant
for empirical ideational analysis (Smith 2010). This means that a fruitful
dialogue is possible between ideational scholars and researches who empha-
size the role of public opinion in welfare state development (for a systematic
discussion of public opinion and social policy, see Brooks and Manza 2007).
Studying Ideas and Institutions

As suggested at the beginning of this article, a number of scholars interested in
policy stability and change have written extensively about both ideas and insti-
tutions (e.g. Béland and Waddan 2012; Campbell 2004; Lieberman 2002;
Orenstein 2008; Schmidt 2011; Walsh 2000; Weyland 2008). In this con-
text, many ideational scholars use the label of ‘institutionalism’ to refer to
their own work, meaning that terms such as ‘constructivist institutionalism’
(Hay 2011) and ‘discursive institutionalism’ (Schmidt 2011) are ever present
in the politics and social policy literature. Drawing on a recent contribution by
Jeremy Rayner (2015), however, it is possible to assert that the term ‘institu-
tionalism’ should only apply to approaches that define institutions as key
drivers of policy change. For example, simply taking into account formal
political institutions such as parliamentary versus presidential systems without
showing that they can directly shape welfare state development does not con-
stitute an institutionalist approach in the strict sense of the term (for a similar
perspective and more general examples, see Parsons 2007).
In a related manner, students of ideas who write about institutions should
draw a clear analytical line between these two types of explanation before
assessing how each of them has causal power on their own or in combination.
This approach is consistent with the methodological advice that Parsons (2007)
formulated in his seminal book on political explanations. For him, scholars
should first attempt to formulate simple explanations of the phenomenon they
seek to explain, starting from their preferred approach, if they have one.
In the case of institutionalist scholars who may not generally emphasize the
role of ideas in their work, they may want to assess whether a purely
institutionalist explanation can account for the social policy decisions and out-
comes they study. If they discover it cannot, they could consider other factors,
such as ideas, or attempt to explore interaction effects between different types
of explanation, such as ideas and institutions, which all leave room for human
agency (Parsons 2007). Another option is to simply assume that, under most
circumstances, both ideas and institutions matter as explanatory factors that
create constraints and opportunities for policy actors. In that case, we should
clearly define these two types of explanation and the way in which they inter-
act to influence the behaviour and decisions of these actors.
Regardless of the analytical strategy used, close attention should be paid to
the agency of actors and how existing ideas and institutions impact their
behaviour. More important, when the interaction between ideas and
institutions is concerned, it is generally useful to break down these umbrella
categories of ‘ideas’ and ‘institutions’ into more concrete empirical categories
such as ‘frame’ and ‘paradigm’, in the case of ideational processes, and
‘formal political institutions’ and ‘policy legacies’, in the case of institutional
processes. Then, the challenge for scholars becomes to show how particular
types of ideas and institutions interact over time to produce certain political
and policy outcomes (Béland and Waddan 2015).
Yet, following Parsons’ (2007) advice once again, even scholars who are
particularly interested in one or two types of explanation (in our case, ideas
and institutions) should not a priori exclude the other forms of explanation
available in the literature. Thus, scholars primarily focused on ideas and insti-
tutions should always keep in mind that, if these two types of explanation
show their limitations and are unable to solve particular empirical puzzles
on their own, it is appropriate to consider psychological or structural explana-
tions rigorously, on their own or as they interact among themselves or with
ideas and/or institutions (Parsons 2007).
We use particular explanations mainly to solve, or at least shed light on,
concrete empirical puzzles. In the end, how and if ideas and institutions
interact to shape outcomes is an empirical question that should be assessed
rigorously, by using clear analytical definitions and appropriate research
strategies to tackle well-defined research questions (Daigneault 2014;
Jacobs 2015).
The work of Mitchel Orenstein (2008) on the role of transnational actors
in pension reform around the world is an excellent example of a clear and
well-documented empirical study that explains how ideas and institutions
interact to influence the behaviour of concrete actors and produce social
policy change. This work also draws attention to how the study of ideas and
institutions can contribute to our understanding of globalization and policy
transfer (Orenstein 2008; on this issue, see also Campbell 2004; on the
concept of policy transfer, see Daguerre 2004; Dolowitz and Marsh
2000). This is only one example among others of rigorous ideational and
institutional scholarship.
Conclusion
Since the publication of my 2005 Social Policy & Administration article (Béland
2005), much has been written about the role of ideas and institutions in social
policy. This means that the study of ideas in social policy is much more com-
mon than before, and that many scholars see them as interacting with institu-
tions. Despite the profusion of this recent scholarship, which this review only
alludes to, studying the role of ideas and institutions in social policy remains a
challenging task. This is especially the case in the context of an institutionalist
debate about social policy stability and change in which definitional and
methodological issues abound, even before we bring ideas in. Considering
the challenges inherent to both the study of ideas and the analysis of social
policy change, this article has offered some thoughts about how to move
forward the institutionalist agenda about the role of ideas. Beyond adopting
clear definitions and rigorous methodologies such as process tracing to solve
concrete empirical puzzles regarding policy stability and change, researchers
should keep in mind that ideational analysis must take the agency of actors
seriously, despite the multiple constraints they face. From this perspective,
the study of ideas as they interact with institutions is the study of actors as they
struggle to give meaning to their actions and find appropriate strategies to
reach their goals, goals that change over time and are informed by interests
that are not purely objective, but located at the intersection of actors’ socio-
economic and institutional position and their interpretations of such position
and the world around it. When scholars take seriously both agency and the
significant definitional and methodological challenges associated with idea-
tional and institutional analysis, they are likely to make a stronger contribution
to the explanatory analysis of social policy stability and change, especially as
it relates to the interaction among different types of ideas and institutions.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Robert Henry Cox, Pierre-Marc Daigneault, Rachel
Hatcher, Martin Powell and the anonymous reviewers for their comments
and suggestions. He also acknowledges support from the Canada Research
Chairs Program.
Notes
1. The list of publications on ideas and social policy is increasingly long and these are
only some representative examples: Anderson 2013; Cox 2001; Hansen and
King 2001; Fleckenstein 2011; Gilbert 2002; Jenson 2010; Humpage 2010;
Kangas et al. 2014; Larsen and Andersen, 2009; Merrien 1997; Miura, 2012;
Padamsee 2009; Rice and Prince 2013; Schmidt 2002; Seeleib-Kaiser and
Fleckenstein 2007; Weyland 2008; White 2002. For recent overviews of the
ideas literature in political and policy research, see Béland and Cox 2011;
Genieys and Smyrl 2008; Gofas and Hay 2010. As for the relationship between
ideas and institutions, see Béland, 2005; Béland and Waddan, 2015; Campbell,
2004; Hattam, 1993; Lieberman, 2002; Orenstein, 2008; Schmidt 2002;
Schmidt, 2011; Walsh 2000.
2. As of January 2016, according to Google Scholar, Pierson (1994) has been cited
more than 3,860 times; as for Esping-Andersen (1990), it is the most cited book
in the field by far, with more than 23,620 citations.
3. The author would like to thank Rianne Mahon for her insight about this issue.
4. This recent work is consistent with the earlier scholarship of Giuliano Bonoli and
Bruno Palier (1998) on the limits of the path dependency perspective.

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SOCIAL POLICY & ADMINISTRATION ISSN 0144-5596

Ideas and Institutions in Social Policy Research

Author Email: daniel.beland@usask.ca

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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