Contemporary articles citing Hall P (1993) Comp Polit

institutional, policy, policymaking, ideas, role, yet, explain, actors, framing, outcomes

Avent-Holt, Dustin. 2012. "The Political Dynamics of Market Organization: Cultural Framing, Neoliberalism, and the Case of Airline Deregulation." Sociological Theory. 30:4 283-302. Link

Sociologists have argued that markets are politically constituted, yet we lack an understanding of the causal mechanisms through which political mobilization organizes and reorganizes markets over time. In this article I show how the concept of cultural framing-already widely used by economic sociologists-can be further developed to explain how mobilization reproduces markets in some moments while reorganizing them in others. Specifically, I link the concept of cultural framing to rent-seeking mobilization within markets to better explain when political contestation will lead to new market institutions and when it will fail to do so. I illustrate the value of this approach through an analysis of deregulation in the U. S. airline industry and conclude by discussing the consequences of the model and empirical case for the politics of markets, the rise of neoliberalism, and economic policymaking.

Wiener, A. 1997. "Making Sense of the New Geography of Citizenship: Fragmented Citizenship in the European Union." Theory and Society. 26:4 529-560. Link

Liu, TL. 1998. "Policy Shifts and State Agencies: Britain and Germany, 1918-1933." Theory and Society. 27:1 43-82. Link

Campbell, JL. 1998. "Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy." Theory and Society. 27:3 377-409. Link

Krippner, Greta. 2007. "The Making of Us Monetary Policy: Central Bank Transparency and the Neoliberal Dilemma." Theory and Society. 36:6 477-513. Link

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve's shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policyrnaking. I argue that the evolution of US monetary policy represents a specific instance of what I term the ``neoliberal dilemma.'' In the context of generally deteriorating. economic conditions, policymakers are anxious to escape responsibility for economic outcomes, and yet markets require regulation to function in capitalist economies (Polanyi 2001). How policymakers negotiate these contradictory imperatives involves a continual process of institutional innovation in which functions are transferred to markets, but under the close control of the state. Thus, under transparency, Federal Reserve officials discovered innovations in the policy process that enabled ``markets to do the Fed's work for it.'' These innovations enlisted market mechanisms, but did not represent a retreat from the state's active role in managing the economy.

Anderson, Elisabeth. 2008. "Experts, Ideas, and Policy Change: the Russell Sage Foundation and Small Loan Reform, 1909-1941." Theory and Society. 37:3 271-310. Link

Between 1909 and 1941, the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) was actively involved in crafting and lobbying for policy solutions to the pervasive problem of predatory lending. Using a rich assortment of archival records, I build upon political learning theory by demonstrating how institutional conditions and political pressures - in addition to new knowledge gained through scientific study and practical experience - all contributed to the emergence and development of RSF experts' policy ideas over the course of this 30-year period. In light of these findings, I suggest that policy ideas and political interests are mutually constitutive, and that the notion that ideas must be shown to operate independent of interests in order to ``prove'' that they matter in policymaking is misguided. Furthermore, I discuss the implications of the remarkable success of RSF's policy proposals for current understandings of institutional change. In particular, I argue that the passage of RSF's controversial Uniform Small Loan Law in 34 states suggests that political actors' collective agency can produce significant policy reforms in a context of normal policymaking without the intervention of major destabilizing events.

Anderson, Elisabeth. 2013. "Ideas in Action: the Politics of Prussian Child Labor Reform, 1817-1839." Theory and Society. 42:1 81-119. Link

This article explains the political origins of an 1839 law regulating the factory employment of children in Prussia. The article has two aims. First, it seeks to explain why Prussia adopted the particular law that it did. Existing historical explanations of this particular policy change are not correct, largely because they fail to take into account the actual motivations and intentions of key reformers. Second, the article contributes to theories of the role of ideas in public policymaking. Ideas interact with institutional and political factors to serve as motivators and as resources for policy change. As motivators, they drive political action and shape the content of policy programs; as resources, they enable political actors to recruit supporters and forge alliances. I offer a theory of the relationship between ideas, motivation, and political action, and I develop a methodological framework for assessing the reliability of political actors' expressed motivations. Further, I explain how political actors use ideas as resources by deploying three specific ideational strategies: framing, borrowing, and citing. By tracing how different understandings of the child labor problem motivated and were embodied in two competing child labor policy proposals, I show how the ideas underlying reform had significant consequences for policy outcomes.