Britain-out and Trump-in: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the British referendum on the EU and the US presidential election

Abstract

Adding discursive institutionalism to the political science toolkit is key to understanding the victory of the forces pushing the UK to exit from the EU and for Trump's election in the US. The contextualized analysis of the substantive content of agents' ideas enables us to explore the ideational root causes of discontent, including economic neo-liberalism, social liberalism, and political mistrust. The examination of the discursive dynamics of policy coordination and political communication calls attention to agents' rhetorical strategies, the circulation of ideas in discursive communities, and the role of ideational leaders along with that of the public and the media in a post-truth era. Discursive institutionalism also lends insight into questions of power, including how ideational agents have been able to use their persuasive power through ideas to channel people's anger while challenging experts' power over ideas as they upended the long-standing power in ideas of the liberal order.

Full text

Published in: Review of International Political Economy vol 24, no. 2 (2017): 248-269
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/10.1080/09692290.2017.1304974
BRITAIN-OUT AND TRUMP-IN: A DISCURSIVE INSTITUTIONALIST ANALYSIS OF THE
BRITISH REFERENDUM ON THE EU AND THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
VIVIEN A. SCHMIDT
Abstract:
Adding discursive institutionalism to the political science toolkit is key to understanding
the victory of the forces pushing the UK to exit from the EU and for Trump’s election in
the US. The contextualized analysis of the substantive content of agents’ ideas enables
us to explore the ideational root causes of discontent, including economic neo-liberalism,
social liberalism, and political mistrust. The examination of the discursive dynamics of
policy coordination and political communication calls attention to agents’ rhetorical
strategies, the circulation of ideas in discursive communities, and the role of ideational
leaders along with that of the public and the media in a post-truth era. Discursive
institutionalism also lends insight into questions of power, including how ideational
agents have been able to use their persuasive power through ideas to channel people’s
anger while challenging experts’ power over ideas as they upended the long-standing
power in ideas of the liberal order.
Keywords: Brexit, Trump, populism, discursive institutionalism, ideas, discourse,
rhetorical strategies
What do the British referendum vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s winning of the
US Presidential election have in common? In a world in which citizens have become
increasingly dissatisfied with economics, politics, and society, populist politicians have
been able to find the words to channel their anger. Using rhetorical strategies and
‘uncivil’ language in a ‘post-truth’ environment that rejects experts and the mainstream
media, they have reshaped the political landscape by framing the debates in new ways
while using new and old media to their advantage as they upend conventional politics.
Their victory raises a number of questions: First, how could this happen in Britain and the
US of all places, the world’s two oldest democracies? Why were mainstream politicians
unable to stop the upsurge of populist anger, or to channel it in productive ways? And
why were political scientists caught unaware, their predictive models and polling
methods unable to capture what was happening. Up to and beyond the very last minute,
everyone—or at least pollsters and elites—failed to anticipate that the British electorate
would vote for the country to get out of the European Union (Britain-out) while the

!
2!
American electorate would vote to put Trump in the White House (Trump-in).
To be fair, political scientists had already identified a number of the potential causes of
the malaise that led to Britain-out and Trump-in. These include the increase of inequality
and of those ‘left behind’, the growth of a socio-cultural politics of identity
uncomfortable with the changing ‘faces’ of the nation, and the hollowing out of
mainstream political institutions and party politics. But although these analyses help
explain the sources of citizens’ underlying anger, they do not address the central puzzles:
Why now, in this way, with this kind of populism? Part of the problem lies with political
scientists’ own frameworks for analysis, with their focus on political actors whose
choices are limited by incentive structures, bound by culture and identity, or constrained
by institutional path-dependencies. Such neo-institutionalist frameworks ensure that
although political scientists are very good at capturing continuities over the long term,
they have difficulty explaining the dynamics of change at critical junctures as well as
over time. This is not just because their analytic tools are more focused on institutional
stability but also because they tend not to take political agents’ ideas seriously enough, let
alone to pay attention to their discourse, their powers of persuasion, and how they interact
with the ‘people.’
In this essay, I argue that in order to understand the electoral results along with the
potential tsunami of change related to Britain-out and Trump-in, in addition to the
economic, social, and political factors, we need to engage in a contextualized analysis of
the substantive content of agents’ ideas and their interactive processes of discourse. Such
an approach is what I call ‘discursive institutionalism’ (Schmidt 2002, 2008, 2010),
which adds to the methodological toolkit another neo-institutionalism (alongside rational
choice, historical, and sociological institutionalism). In what follows, I begin with a brief
definitional overview of discursive institutionalism and then show how it helps us better
to explain Britain-out and Trump-in. To analyze the substantive content of the ideas and
discourse, I consider first the ideational sources of these recent events, including
economic neo-liberalism, social liberalism, and political mistrust, and how they play out
in the discourse, including in the slogans, narratives, stories, and frames on different sides
of the campaign debates in both countries. For the discursive interactions, I then examine
the discursive dynamics through which political agents have used their ideas and
discourse in policy coordination and political communication, from agents’ rhetorical
strategies to the circulation of ideas in discursive communities, their articulation by
ideational leaders, along with public and media responses (new as well as old) in a post-
truth era. In this short essay, I don’t attempt to offer a complete explanation of what
happened or why in the British and US cases. Rather, I suggest avenues of investigation
by pointing to some of the many different ways scholars may analyze the contextualized
ideas and discursive interactions to help explain what happened and why.

!
3!
Discursive Institutionalism
Discursive institutionalism serves as an umbrella concept for the wide range of
approaches in the social sciences, going from the ‘ideational turn’ in comparative politics
and political economy (Blyth 1997; Béland and Cox 2010) and the ‘agenda-setting’ of
policy analysis (Baumgartner and Jones 1993) to the constructivist turn in international
relations (Wendt 1999; Finnemore 1996) and the discourse analysis of post-modernism
(Foucault 2000; Bourdieu 1990; Howarth et al., 2000). In discursive institutionalism,
ideas and discourse may appear in different forms, be articulated through different kinds
of arguments, come at different levels of generality, and change at different rates.
Moreover, such ideas and discourse may be generated, articulated, and contested by
‘sentient’ (thinking, speaking and acting) agents through interactive processes of policy
coordination and political communication in different institutional contexts (Schmidt
2008, 2011, 2012).
Ideas and discourse may take a variety of forms, including frames that provide guideposts
for action (Rein and Schön 1994), narratives that shape understandings of events (e.g.,
Roe l994), storytelling to clarify practical rationality (Forester 1993), ‘frames of
reference’ that orient entire policy sectors (Jobert 1989; Muller 2015); and discursive
“practices” or fields of ideas that define the range of imaginable action (Bourdieu 1994;
Howarth et al. 2000). They may also be supported by different types of arguments:
cognitive arguments that justify in terms of expert knowledge and logics of causation
(Jobert 1989; Hall 1993) and normative arguments that legitimate through appeal to
societal values and logics of appropriateness (March and Olsen 1996; Finnemore 1996).
Ideas and discourse may also come at different levels of generality, including policies,
programs, and philosophies, which change at different rates, whether slowly and
incrementally or very rapidly through revolutionary shifts (Schmidt 2008, 2011). Policy
ideas are most likely to change frequently, in particular when ‘windows of opportunity’
open in the face of events, and as old policies no longer solve the problems or fit the
politics for which they were designed (Kingdon 1984). Programmatic ideas, which
generally combine ideas about policies with ideas about methods, instruments, goals, and
objectives into a cohesive program, often take longer to change, whether via gradual
transformations over time (Berman 1998) or abruptly, at moments of ‘great
transformation’ in periods of uncertainty (Blyth 2002), of economic crisis (Matthijs 2011)
or of revolutionary shifts in ‘paradigm’ (Hall 1993). Philosophical ideas which frame the
policies and programs through appeal to a deeper core of organizing ideas and principles
are the slowest to change, whether they are defined as ‘public philosophies’ (Campbell
1998), worldviews, ideologies (Berman 1998), or discourse (Foucault 2000)— although
they too, at moments of major crisis, can appear to be overturned very quickly.

!
4!
Discursive interactions involve policy actors engaged in a ‘coordinative’ discourse of
policy construction and political actors engaged with the public in a ‘communicative’
discourse of deliberation, contestation, and legitimization. (Schmidt 2000, 2002, 2006,
2008). In the coordinative discourse, the agents of change may be individuals acting as
policy ‘entrepreneurs’ (Kingdon 1984) or ‘norm entrepreneurs’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998)
and/or groups of individuals in discursive communities, whether in loosely connected
‘epistemic communities’ that share cognitive and normative ideas about a common policy
enterprise (Haas 1992); closely connected ‘advocacy coalitions’ that share ideas and
access to policymaking (Sabatier 1993); ‘discourse coalitions’ that share ideas over
extended periods of time (Lehmbruch 2001; Hajer 2003); and expert networks of actors
who share ideas and technical expertise (Seabrooke 2014).
In the communicative discourse, political agents generally translate the ideas developed
in the coordinative discourse into language accessible to the general public. Such agents
may be political leaders, elected officials, party members, policymakers, spin-doctors,
and the like who act as ‘political entrepreneurs’ as they attempt to form mass public
opinion (Zaller 1992) or engage the public in debates about the policies they favor (Mutz
et al. 1996). Such agents also include the media, interest groups acting in the specialized
‘policy forums’ of organized interests (e.g., Rein and Schön 1994), public intellectuals,
opinion makers, social movements, and even ordinary people through their ‘everyday talk’
(Mansbridge 1999). The directional arrows of these discursive interactions may be top to
top among political and/or technical elites, top down through the influence of elites, or
bottom up via civil society, social movement activists, or ordinary people (Schmidt 2000,
2002, 2006, 2014).
Discursive institutionalism is constructivist in outlook, but it can nevertheless be seen as
complementary to other neo-institutionalist frameworks of analysis. This is because
discursive institutionalism defines institutional context in two ways. First, institutional
context embodies the structures and constructs of meaning internal to agents whose
“background ideational abilities” enable them to create (and maintain) institutions
(following Searle, Bourdieu, Foucault, and others) while their “foreground discursive
abilities” enable them to communicate critically about them so as to change (or maintain)
them (following Habermas, Gramsci, and others). Second, institutional context can also
represent the formal and informal institutions external to actors that may be seen to
constrain (or empower) them via the neo-institutionalist logics of rationalist incentive
structures, historically established path dependent rules, or the frames of culturally
imposed practices and identity (Schmidt 2008, 2010, 2012). With its dual definition of
institutions, discursive institutionalism can be seen as complementary to other neo-
institutionalist analyses, whether it uses them as unproblematic background information
for insights into the material (and not so material) realities affecting agents’ ideas,

!
5!
discourse, and actions, or critiques them, by treating their conclusions as issues to be
investigated via ideational and discursive institutionalist analysis (e.g., about the bases of
preference formation, the (re)shaping of institutional rules, and the (re)framing of cultural
practices).
Discursive institutionalism can also help lend insight into the power of ideas and
discourse. Instead of either ignoring ideas or subsuming them under the classic
understandings of power as coercive, structural, institutional, and productive (e.g.,
Barnett and Duvall 2005: 43, 49; Dahl 1958), discursive institutionalism separates out
ideational and discursive power in order to highlight its distinctive attributes. This power
is conceptualized in three ways: persuasive power through ideas and discourse, coercive
power over ideas and discourse, and structural/institutional power in ideas and discourse
(Carstensen and Schmidt 2016). Most common in discursive institutionalism is power
through ideas, which occurs when actors have the capacity to persuade other actors of the
cognitive validity and/or normative value of their worldview through the use of ideational
elements via their discourse. Power over ideas is the capacity of actors to control and
dominate the meaning of ideas through discourse. This may occur directly, say, by elite
actors’ coercive power to impose their ideas by monopolizing public discourse and action
(often as an addition to their material resources for coercion), or indirectly, by actors
shaming opponents into conformity (e.g., when social movements push elites to adopt
their ideas and discourse) or by resisting alternative interpretations (e.g., when neo-liberal
economists shut out neo-Keynesian alternatives). Finally, power in ideas is found where
certain discourses serve to structure thought (as in analyses following Foucault, Bourdieu,
or Gramsci) or where particular ideas are institutionalized at the expense of others by
being embedded in the rules or frames (as in historical or sociological institutionalist
approaches to ideas) (Carstensen and Schmidt 2016).
To illustrate the advantages of analysis focusing on ideas and discursive interaction, we
now turn to the cases of the Britain-out and Trump-in. We first compare ideas and
discourse about economics, culture and identity, and politics, followed by the discursive
dynamics of change of in terms of agents’ rhetorical strategies as well as their
coordinative and communicative interactions.
Ideas and Discourse as Forces for Change
To explain why the British voted to get out of the EU and the Americans voted Trump
into the Presidency, we first need to consider the ideational root causes. These include the
neo-liberal economic ideas based in a philosophy that promoted the policy ideas and
programs that have led to today’s socio-economic problems of inequality and insecurity;
the liberal socio-political ideas that promoted the cosmopolitan and multicultural political

!
6!
and social values that have led to cultural backlash; and the rise in political distrust that
may also be a by-product of neo-liberal ideas and their consequences.
Ideas and Discourse on Economics
As a philosophy, neo-liberalism can be defined in many ways (Schmidt 2016a). It is seen
as an ideology (Freeden 2003), a worldview, or a ‘discourse’ (Foucault 2004). It is
delineated as a set of free-market oriented economic principles and political economic
practices promoted by a loose agglomeration of ‘true believers’ (Mirowski and Plehwe
2009; Gamble 2009). And it is described as having at its core a particular idea about
governance, in which neo-liberal principles and practices are deployed to liberalize,
privatize, deregulate, and rationalize existing markets (Steger and Roy 2010; Peck 2010).
For both the US and the UK, this neo-liberal philosophy has been resilient since the
1980s. This can not only be explained as due to the force of institutions in the embedding
of neo-liberal ideas (power in ideas) or of interests in the strategic use of such ideas for
their own material gain (power over ideas), important as these were. It can equally be
attributed to the substantive content of the ideas themselves, in particular the flexibility
and mutability of neo-liberalism’s core principles (power through ideas). These went
from the conservative rollback of the state to free up the markets in the 1980s to the
social-democratic rollout of the state to enhance the markets in the 1990s, and then on to
the ramp up of the state in the economic crisis beginning in 2008. An added factor has
been the gap between neo-liberal rhetoric and reality – as neo-liberal agents promised
what they couldn’t deliver, such as to radically reduce the welfare state or cut taxes –
which then served the next generation of neo-liberal politicians as a rallying cry. The
final factor has been the strength of neo-liberal discourse in debates (or the weakness of
alternatives) in which neo-liberalism may win in the political battle of ideas despite
proving economically disastrous—as in its role in the run-up to the financial crisis or in
the on-going eurozone crisis (Schmidt and Thatcher 2013; Carstensen and Schmidt 2016).
These resilient neo-liberal ideas, which began with policy programs focused on global
free trade and market liberalization in the 1980s and ended with the triumph of financial
capitalism and ‘hyper-globalization’, are responsible for the deep socio-economic
problems at the roots of contemporary discontent (Stiglitz 2002, 2016; Rodrik 2011;
Mirowski 2013). The economic crisis that began in 2007/2008, far from changing
direction, also demonstrates the resilience of such neo-liberal ideas (Blyth 2013;
Schmidt/Thatcher 2013). Notably, the EU’s ‘ordo-liberal’ ideas that promoted austerity
policies have had particularly deleterious consequences in Eurozone countries, including
low growth, high unemployment (in particular in Southern Europe), and rising poverty
and inequality (Scharpf 2014; Matthijs and Blyth 2015). The more pragmatic policies of
the US and the UK, which had a mix of neo-liberal and neo-Keynesian ideas, allowed

!
7!
these countries to benefit from a more robust recovery with lower unemployment and
better job growth. But neither the US nor the UK have done much to alter their ideas
about the benefits of a finance-driven ‘Anglo-liberal growth model’ of capitalism (Hay
and Smith 2013), regressive taxation systems, or cost-cutting social policies, all of which
have contributed to rising poverty and inequality (Hacker 2006; Hemerijck 2013).
Moreover, neo-liberal ideas promoting the opening of borders to trade through
globalization have led to uneven development and significant economic disruptions, in
particular the shift of manufacturing from advanced to developing countries that have left
more and more people being and/or feeling ‘left behind’ (Gilpin 2000; Eberstadt 2016).
These problems have arguably hit the US and the UK harder than continental Europe,
since the former introduced more radical neo-liberal reforms earlier and have long had
less generous welfare states (Scharpf and Schmidt 2000), with fewer and less effective
labor market activation programs (Martin and Swank 2012).
Given these neo-liberal ideas and their effects, most interesting is the fact that the
discourse of the UK referendum campaign on Britain out of the EU had very little
discussion of neo-liberal economic ideas, in great contrast to the US presidential
campaign. In the UK, neo-liberalism, as a major contributor to the anger that lent support
to the Brexit camp, was remarkable for its absence (Schmidt 2016b). The anger of
working and middle class people against the worsening of their life chances due to
stagnant wages, growing inequality, and the increasing difficulty for the young to get a
foot on the real estate ladder, or a steady well-paying job, much as the revolt against the
political parties, the rejection of the experts, and the distrust of the elites more
generally—all of this has to do with neo-liberalism. And yet the real cause of these
concerns was never addressed in campaign discourse. Instead, the EU and immigration
were blamed for all of Britain’s ills. Neo-liberalism has been so resilient in the UK that it
receives barely a mention in the mainstream press or in public debates. It is so pervasive
that it is hardly recognized as a major source of the disenchantment that lends support to
the Leave campaign. Better to blame the outsiders (i.e., immigrants and Eurocrats) than
to recognize that the problem comes from the inside, from the policies of British
governments. Although neo-liberalism was not in focus, economics was. It was at the
core of the Remain camp’s campaign strategy, which centered almost exclusively on the
negative economic impact of leaving the EU. In response, the Leave campaign insisted
that no one knew what that economic impact could be, and accused the Remain campaign
of engaging in scare tactics and buying into the establishment views of EU-funded
international organizations (Guardian May 28, 2016). The Remain argument was
strengthened following a poll commissioned by the Observer and carried out by IPSOS
MORI that found that 88% of economists said that exit from the EU and the single

!
8!
market would most likely damage Britain’s real GDP growth over the next five years.1
The Leave camp’s response, by Conservative Leave campaign co-leader Michael Gove in
a question and answer session on Sky News, was: ‘people in this country have had
enough of experts’ (Financial Times, June 3, 2016).
In the US presidential campaign, by contrast with the UK referendum, neo-liberal ideas
were explicitly under attack by Donald Trump, with his discourse questioning how well
the US had actually done, and whether globalization was good for the economy. While
Hillary Clinton emphasized the country’s job-related recovery under President Obama,
Trump kept repeating that the US had not done well economically for the workers, whose
manufacturing jobs were being shipped overseas, and that he was going to remedy this by
bringing jobs back home, even if it meant imposing higher taxes and tariffs on US firms.
To quote Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania: ‘We are going to bring back the jobs and the
wealth that have been stolen from us. The economic policies of Bill and Hillary Clinton
have bled Pennsylvania dry’ (Danner 2016, p.8). Trump also exploited concerns about
the dangers of finance for the real economy (and hard-working Americans), by conjuring
up conspiracy theories about his opponent, stating at a rally in West Palm Beach, Florida
that: ‘Hillary meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US
sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends,
and her donors… (Danner 2016, p. 12). Trump’s frontal attacks on trade deals, moreover,
were clearly designed to oppose the neo-liberal dogma that sees free trade as always
beneficial. He scored points against Hillary by pointing out her reversal of position on
the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), and promised that he would cancel the deal if
elected (which he did, in one of his first pronouncements after the election). Note that
on the Democratic side in the primaries, Bernie Sanders was the only candidate who also
attacked neo-liberalism, with a more left-leaning discourse that also spoke directly to
working people, opposing globalization and attacking rising inequality.
Ideas and Discourse on Culture and Identity
The social sources of dissatisfaction do not only come from reactions to the consequences
of neo-liberal economic ideas, however. They derive equally from ideas linked to culture
and identity, with the populist backlash fueled by another aspect of neo-liberal
globalization: cross-border mobility and the increases in immigration. Although there is
nothing new about anti-immigrant sentiment, it has arguably not reached such a fevered
pitch since the early 20th century. Nostalgia for a lost past together with fear of the ‘other’
have increased massively, along with the targeting of immigrant groups (Hochschild and
Mollenkopt 2009). Fear of terrorism naturally also plays a role, but it does not explain
why this has led to such hysteria.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3739/Economists-Views-on-
Brexit.aspx

!
9!
Immigration was central to the debate in the UK. The Leave campaign was relentless in
its narratives about the problems of immigration in Britain, in particular by UKIP, where
opposition took on racist overtones as party leaders claimed foreigners were taking jobs
and overburdening the social services (despite evidence to the contrary). Most notorious
was UKIP’s poster depicting long lines of Syrian refugees, falsely labeled as ‘immigrants’
trying to get into the UK. UKIP leader Nigel Farage time and again made statements
suggesting that immigration was out of control in the UK, that the EU was to blame for it,
and that the UK would additionally be overwhelmed by refugees and vulnerable to
terrorists (ignoring the fact that Britain had opted out of the second stage of the Dublin
agreement, and had in fact taken in very few refugees). More subtle was the message
from the leader of the Conservative party’s Leave campaigners, Boris Johnson, who
claimed to be open to immigration, in particular from the Commonwealth (thus appealing
to British of Asian origin), and who focused on the encroachments of the EU on ‘the
most basic power of the state—to decide who has the right to live and work in your
country’.2 Immigration played into concerns not only about jobs and state control but
also about English national identity. For decades after World War II, the English
remained ‘proud to be British’ and tended not to minimize that identity by embracing
‘Englishness.’ But with the 1990s devolution of powers to the UK’s three other nations
(Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Britishness versus Englishness became an issue.
The referendum results demonstrated that the more electors identified as English, the
more in favour they were of Leave, as well as the reverse, the more electors identified as
British, the more they voted Remain (Kenny 2016).
The US Presidential campaign was also focused on immigration as a problem for identity,
in addition to threats to jobs and to security. Trump’s most extreme statements, that came
to be mantras repeated at every campaign stop and were often picked up as a chant by the
crowd listening, were to build a ‘beautiful and impenetrable wall’ to stop Mexican
migrants because many were ‘bad hombres’, to ban Muslims from entering the country
on the assumption that they were all potential terrorists, as well as to create a registry of
Muslims. Trump repeatedly broke every rule of political correctness in his speeches —on
race, ethnicity, and gender—while his message was a clear rejection of multiculturalism
and cosmopolitanism. His speeches went much farther to the extreme right than UKIP
with its pronounced hatred of the ‘Other’ along with the anti-immigrant racism that
depicted illegal immigrants as rapists and murderers ‘pouring over our borders’, and
Mexicans and Chinese as stealing American workers’ jobs (Danner 2016, p. 12). The
implicit racism was also evident in his appeal to African Americans, urging them to vote
for him because ‘you have nothing more to lose.’ Social discontent has not only been
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 http://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2016/05/boris-johnsons-speech-on-the-eu-referendum-full-
text.html

!
10!
related to immigration, however. Social liberalism has also been of concern. Socially
liberal ideas are represented by the rise of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, which
have generated a cultural backlash by people angry that ‘others’—immigrants, non-
whites, women—are ‘cutting in the line’, as the perceived beneficiaries of affirmative
action and social welfare programs (Hochschild 2016). The ideas that explain the
populist backlash, then, are as much about social liberal ideas as about neo-liberal
economic ideas. Put another way, the controversy is not only about the consequences of
the economic philosophies of Hayek or Friedman but also about Rawls’ theory of social
justice.3 The supporters of the Trump campaign in the US were not only the economic
left-behinds affected by neo-liberal economic ideas, they were also those unhappy with
social-liberal political ideas. These are people who may be well off financially, but
subscribe to socially conservative philosophies and/or oppose the socially liberal policy
programs (Inglehart and Norris 2016).
Ideas and Discourse on Politics
Political ideas also played an important role in the discontent. Citizens generally have
developed a growing distrust of governing elites and a loss of faith in their national
democracies as well as in the EU (Pew and Eurobarometer polls, 2008-2016). The votes
in the UK and the US attest to strong desires to register protest against the sitting parties,
the elites, and the establishment. The votes were also a protest against citizens’ growing
sense of loss of control as a result of the removal of more and more decisions from the
national to supranational level, whether to international institutions because of increasing
globalization in the case of the US, or to the EU because of increasing Europeanization in
the case of the UK. As I have written elsewhere, in the EU, the problem for member-
state democracy is that it has increasingly become the domain of ‘politics without policy’,
as more and more policies are removed to the EU level for decision. In contrast, ‘policy
without politics’ predominates at the EU level (however political the policies are in
reality), with debates that are highly technocratic and therefore not recognizable and/or
acceptable to the citizens, who expect more normative arguments based on the left/right
divide (Schmidt 2006). As a result, no wonder that the slogan ‘Take back control’
resonated so much in the UK, and ‘Make America Great Again’ in the US. Both slogans
could be and were interpreted in a number of different ways, making them highly
successful as ‘empty signifiers’, to use the term of post-structuralist critical discourse
analysis (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Howarth et al. 2000).
In the UK, the Leave campaign’s slogan of ‘Take Back Control’ meant different things to
different people. Some British citizens rallying to the Leave campaign’s cry to ‘Take
back control’ may very well have been racists or nationalists, nostalgic for ‘Little
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3 Comment by Paul Tucker at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University conference on the
future of Europe, November 14, 2016

!
11!
England’. But others voted for Brexit in protest at a freedom of movement that they
believed overtaxes the welfare state, undermines labor standards, or limits the number of
non-EU immigrants from Commonwealth countries. Yet others complained of a remote
EU that regulates at a distance, without paying sufficient attention to national preferences.
And many more decried an un-elected EU that seems to impose policies that elected
national politicians cannot (or do not) challenge. Political ideas, and not just ideas about
economics or culture and identity, were central to the Leave campaign’s appeal, in
particular for those who viscerally rejected UKIP’s anti-immigrant, implicitly racist
discourse. Rescuing British democracy was the main focus of Boris Johnson, whose
narrative described a EU that was ‘becoming ever more centralizing, interfering and anti-
democratic’. He put the choice as between ‘a dynamic liberal cosmopolitan open global
free-trading prosperous Britain, or a Britain where we remain subject to a undemocratic
system devised in the 1950s that is now actively responsible for low growth and in some
cases economic despair’.4 The Remain side’s cognitive arguments were not nearly as
eloquent, nor as broadly defined. And it lacked an effective ‘empty signifier’ for a slogan.
As Peter Mandelson (2016) explained, ‘Taking back control’ is a simple statement
suggesting the empowerment of people whereas putting the benefits of the Single Market
at the core of the Remain argument bypassed the majority of voters, in particular because
‘the majority of voters did not know what it was.’ This helps explain why the ‘Stronger
In’ campaign of Cameron therefore decided to focus ‘on the fiscal dangers Brexit posed
to the National Health Service and public services, alongside stories about the threat to
pensions, mortgages and house prices.’ But this, Mandelson admitted, backfired, since
while the Leave campaign focused on a single number of £350m a week that they
(falsely) claimed would go to the NHS if the UK left the EU, ‘we presented voters with a
succession of different figures which bounced off them and did not cohere into a single,
overarching economic narrative.’
In the US, Trump’s slogan, ‘Make American Great Again’, was an equally successful
empty signifier because it, too, could mean so many different things to so many people.
In addition to the clear statement that America was no longer great and required
economic rebuilding, the slogan contained a tacit message to whites that this meant
opposing multiculturalism along with immigration because the US was a white Christian
country. Contrast this versatility with Hillary’s ‘Stronger Together’, which according to
hacked emails from campaign chair John Podesta’s account became the campaign slogan
only after 84 other potential slogans were rejected (CNN Oct 19, 2016).5 Trump’s
repeated attacks not only on ‘crooked Hillary’s’ integrity but also his indictment of US
elites of both parties and his promises to ‘drain the swamp’, also tapped into Americans’
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4 http://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2016/05/boris-johnsons-speech-on-the-eu-referendum-full-
text.html
5 www.cnn.com/2016/10/19/.../wikileaks-hillary-clinton-campaign-slogans-ranked/

!
12!
increasing distrust of the political establishment and concerns that US institutions were
not serving ‘the people’.
Discursive Dynamics of Change
Although the focus on ideas and discourse—mainstream and critical—is essential to
understanding the sources of ideational change (and continuity) as well as their effects,
we still have difficulty explaining the dynamics of change (or continuity). We still can’t
explain why now, and in this way, without also considering the discourse of ideational
leaders and their supporters, including the spin-doctors in the campaign, populist
coalitions, and social movements, that helped convince the electorate to move farther and
farther away from centrist ideas focused on politics as usual. For the dynamics,
discursive institutionalism investigates the processes of ideational adoption,
dissemination, or adaptation; the agents who may engage in processes of persuasion via
discussion, deliberation, or contestation; and the processes of persuasion themselves,
whether via a coordinative discourse of policy construction and/or a communicative
discourse of political legitimation. For communication itself, moreover, language,
rhetorical strategies, and other communicative devices, such as emotion or empathy, also
need to be considered, as do the changing mechanisms of the media of communication.
Rhetorical Strategies in the Dynamics of Persuasion
In myriad ways, the earlier discussion of the economic, social, and political discourse of
political leaders in the UK referendum and the US presidential contest has already
highlighted issues related to the changing language of politics. The content of the
discourse has blurred the lines between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, while
blatantly violating the rules of political correctness through intolerant language, in
particular in the United States. All of this points to the rise of a new ‘uncivil’ language of
politics connected to new rhetorical strategies that challenge traditional mainstream
political discourse and use language in ways that can play on the unconscious and the
emotions in ways that serve to reframe the debate. Such rhetorical strategies can take us
all the way back to Aristotle, whose Rhetoric has served to provide clues to the many
different ways in which orators seek to influence their audience not only through the
force of their reasoning (dialectic) and the persuasive power of their argument (logos) but
also their presence as orators (ethos) and their appeals to emotion (pathos) (Thompson
2016, pp. 24-25). They can be investigated through the many different contemporary
approaches to critical discourse analysis (e.g., Wodak 2009; Laclau and Mouffe 1985;
Howarth et al., 2000). But we can equally learn from the work of psychologists who
focus on the ways in which framing and heuristics can affect peoples’ perceptions
(Kahneman 2011).

!
13!
The UK Leave and the US Trump campaigns in particular violated the tenets of
mainstream political discourse when they used slander, lying, and verbal bullying to
make their case. For the Leave campaign in the UK, lying was used not only to get a
persuasive (but false) idea across to the citizens, it also served to push the opposition off
(their) topic. A prominent member of the Leave campaign, Paul Stephenson (2016),
explained that ‘Of course, our campaign claim of the now infamous £350 million a week
that Britain sends to the EU was not completely accurate’, but it ‘was an extremely
persuasive economic argument’ since it also ‘ran with the grain of public psychology on
the EU.’ The Trump campaign’s rhetorical strategy was, if anything, more deliberately
provocative than the Brexiteers’, using slander and verbal bullying as its daily bread.
These included the constant accusations about ‘crooked Hillary’ and ‘lock her up’, and
the suggestions that all immigrants were illegal, and all ‘illegals’ were criminals—which
also served as a de-humanizing strategy.
Trump himself freely admitted that he engaged in ‘exaggerating’ in his own favor. As he
put it, ‘People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by
those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that
something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful
hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of
promotion’ (Danner 2016, p. 12). In Kahneman’s psychological approach, this is can be
seen as ‘anchoring’, as when Trump alleged that Hillary had received ‘millions’ of illegal
votes, without any proof, which leaves the impression in the listener’s mind that a large
number was involved, even if not that high. Another such psychological strategy would
see Trump’s use of vivid information—dropping the name of a celebrity, or describing
gruesome Isis executions or murders by undocumented immigrants—as a way of taking
advantage of the ‘availability’ heuristic (discussion by Michael Lewis in Financial Times
Dec. 9, 2016). Even Trump’s speech patterns, such as the incomplete sentences and
repetitions, served as effective discursive mechanisms to reinforce his message. The
incomplete sentences enabled his audiences to complete them in their heads in many
different ways while creating a sense of intimacy because they were in on the narrative.
The repetitions, along with ‘Believe me’ or ‘Many people say,’ appeal to unconscious
cognitive mechanisms that serve to reinforce peoples’ acceptance of what is said, even
(or especially) when they are lies and exaggerations (Lackoff 2016).
Ideas and discourse, then, when activated through a range of rhetorical strategies, may
convey a persuasive message not only directly, through the content of the message, but
also subliminally, through linguistic and psychological mechanisms. Whatever the
strategy, however, the discourse itself serves to bring people interested in a given set of
ideas together. This is important, because it suggests that what may hold interest groups
together or create new coalitions is not just ‘interest’—as many political scientists

!
14!
assume—but ideas that serve as the basis for group adhesion and cohesion. One way of
thinking about this would be to see ideas as ‘coalition magnets’, with ambiguous or
polysemic characteristics that make it attractive to groups that might otherwise have
different interests, with policy entrepreneurs gaining power by employing such ideas in
their coalition-building (Béland and Cox 2016). Another way is to think of ideas as
‘frames of reference’ (réferentiels) that naturally draw people together by the common
understandings that form the basis for common action (Jobert 1989; Muller 2015), and
that also can be seen as the power in ideas to structure the political limits of action, such
as laissez-faire, neo-keynesianism, and neo-liberalism (Muller 2015, p. 184-5). Ideas that
serve as empty signifiers can also be ways of bringing disparate people together in a
common cause—as we have already seen with the slogans for Britain-out and Trump-in.
Agents and the Interactive Dynamics of Discourse
But who deploys the rhetorical strategies with the ideas that act as coalition magnets or
frames of reference, or attract adherents through empty signifiers? What are the processes
through which agents are able to translate their discourse into action? Activation of ideas
through discourse first of all depends on their construction and dissemination by policy
entrepreneurs in national and international settings, generally through policy coordination
with discursive communities of policy actors and experts. But this also requires
convincing political elites and winning elections, for which political communication is
needed by political entrepreneurs able to translate the ideas developed in the coordinative
discourse into language that resonates normatively as well as cognitively with the public,
so as to persuade them to vote in their favor.
The story of the spread of neo-liberal ideas, for example, is one that began with
coordinative discourses among economists in academia, experts in think tanks, and policy
actors in and out of government (Schmidt and Thatcher 2013). But for such ideas to take
hold, political entrepreneurs were needed to persuade voters that these were the ideas to
adopt. For the US and the UK, Wes Widmaier (2016a, 2016b) shows that the building of
a new political economic order depends upon the communicative discourse of a
‘rhetorical leader’ who exercises rhetorical power through ideas, commanding authority
and public trust by employing communicative appeals to shape principled beliefs—in
terms of neo-liberalism, these were Reagan and Thatcher, Clinton and Blair. That idea is
then extended by technocratic elites (mainly economists) whose coordinative discourse of
technical fine-tuning involves epistemic power over ideas to consolidate intellectual
consensus. But once that consensus is achieved, the structural power in ideas takes on a
life of its own. This ultimately leads technocratic elites to an increasing overconfidence
that creates the very conditions that lead to the order’s destruction, as a result of more
bottom-up contestation against the imposition of ideas, thereby opening the way to the
eventual rise of a new political economic order brought by a new rhetorical leader.

!
15!
It is also important to note that ideas—as philosophies and programs—generally take
time to take root. ‘Critical ideational developments’ often take a decade or more, as in the
shift in the US to ‘illiberal’ politics on race and immigration, where a diverse set of actors
was able to organize around a set of ideas and coordinative and communicative
discourses that helped them avoid accusations of racism while working against more
progressive forces (King and Smith 2014). Moreover, successful ideas—whether
introduced through a critical ideational development in illiberal politics or as a new
political economic order—can also evolve over time. Often we think about this
communicative process as top down, as political parties designate rhetorical leaders able
to communicate their ideas in ways that resonate with the larger public. But such top-
down logics of elite coalition formation, coordination, and communication to the public is
just one of the ways in which ideas are institutionalized. Ideational change is just as
likely to result from non-elite coalitions of non-governmental actors (Keck and Sikkink
1998). Social movements in bottom-up mobilization around non-mainstream ideas have
become more active and successful either in creating parties of their own, such as the UK
Independence Party (UKIP), or in taking over mainstream parties to push their own
agenda, as in the case of the Tea Party pushing the transformation of the Republican
Party (see Skocpol/Williamson 2012).
Related to this bottom-up discursive power is the increasing difficulty for the elite to
control communication and thereby to maintain power over ideas and discourse. Such
difficulties have been compounded by the rapid, radical change in the means and
transmission mechanisms of communication. Long gone are the days when the print
newspapers had the monopoly of intermediation, so much so that Hegel could refer to
modern man’s reading of the morning newspaper as a substitute for communal morning
prayers. The competition for the public’s attention now comes not just from print
newspapers or radio and television, including cable, but also from social media such as
Facebook and Twitter. To take one example, twitter on its own has altered the
communicative dynamics between ideational leaders and their followers, with its means
of instant communication in 140 characters. This has provided ideational leaders who
master the art with tremendous power through ideas to reach their followers with
unprecedented immediacy, at the same time that the impact of their tweets is amplified
massively by traditional news media reporting on the tweets and social media resending
them. In the UK, a sentiment analysis of Brexit-related tweets showed that by summer of
2015, the mood was shifting away from Remain to Leave in response to the refugee crisis,
and subsequently stayed there (Porcaro and Müller 2016). In the US, Trump was the
champion of Twitter, gaining free media publicity throughout his campaign with his
provocative, politically incorrect tweets that became instant news. Trump’s tweeting
served to reinforce the direct connection that charismatic populist leaders typically seek

!
16!
to establish with their followers, without the mediation of traditional media or the filter of
other institutions.6
Conclusion
The rise of populism, in particular on the extreme right, constitutes a challenge to
political stability and democracy not seen since the 1920s and 1930s (Mudde and
Kaltwasser 2012; Müller 2016; Judis 2016). The victories of Trump in the US and
Britain out of the EU have given populist leaders of extremist parties throughout Europe
hope to emulate Britain in leaving the EU and Trump in gaining power, including Marine
Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Beppe Grillo in Italy. They also
raise a number of questions: Is this a moment of great transformation, in which a new
paradigm will emerge out of the ashes of the liberal order, with neo-liberal economics
and social liberalism succumbing to the closing of borders to immigrants, rising
protectionism, and social conservatism? Will Trump and May be the rhetorical leaders to
construct such a new political order? Or will neo-liberalism be ever resilient?
For the moment, we can’t know. What we do know is that President Trump’s policy-
related tweets don’t seem to make for a cohesive policy program, given the contradictory
underlying philosophies that include a socially conservative ideology, an ‘America First’
worldview, and a neo-Keynesian economic philosophy of infrastructure investment
combined with a neo-liberal one on taxes. Moreover, Trump’s appointment of
billionaires with close ties to finance to top economic positions might suggest that
although his rhetoric is anti-liberal, his government’s policies may remain neo-liberal, at
the same time they already belie his promise to ‘drain the swamp’. Prime Minister May’s
pronouncements on Brexit also suggest a preference for patriotism and social
conservatism against politically correct multiculturalism, as illustrated by her jibe during
her speech at the Conservative Party Conference that: ‘If you believe you are a citizen of
the world, you are a citizen of nowhere,’ and her insistence that ‘change has got to come’
in response to a ‘once in a generation’ revolt by millions of ignored citizens sick of
immigration, sick of footloose elites, sick of the laissez-faire consensus’ (Economist Oct.
8, 2016). The problems for May will come if and when a favorable deal on Brexit deal is
not forthcoming, economic growth plummets, or the integrity of the UK is at risk, via
Scottish independence or Northern Ireland uniting with the Irish Republic.
Social scientific explanations of these phenomena through investigation of the
background institutional problems—whether focused on the economic, social, or political
issues, using rationalist, historical, or sociological institutionalist approaches—are
necessary but not sufficient to understanding what is happening. We also need to
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6 Adding to such problems is the increase in misinformation, with false news populating the social media in
what has now been called the era of ‘post-truth’ politics, something which exceeds the scope of this paper.

!
17!
investigate the ideational sources of the problems along with the coordinative and
communicative discourses of entrepreneurial agents. This would help us analyze how
such agents have been able to use their persuasive power through ideas to channel
people’s anger to their own electoral advantage while challenging experts’ power over
ideas as they upend the long-standing power in ideas of the current liberal order. Only by
taking ideas and the interactive processes of discourse seriously can we begin not just to
understand how we got to this dangerous moment for liberal democracy but also to try to
find new ideas and discourse able to channel the anger in more positive directions, to get
us beyond this possibly pivotal moment in history. And for all of this, discursive
institutionalist analysis serves as an indispensible tool in political scientists’
methodological toolkit.

!
18!
References
Barnett, Michael and Duvall, Raymond (2005) ‘Power in International Politics’,
International Organization 59 (4): 39-75
Baumgartner, Frank and Jones, Bryan (1993) Agendas and Instability in American
Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Béland, Daniel and Cox, Robert, eds. (2010) Ideas and Politics in Social Science
Research New York: Oxford University Press
Béland, Daniel and Cox, Robert (2016) Ideas as coalition magnets: coalition building,
policy entrepreneurs, and power relations Journal of European Public Policy 23 (3):
428-445
Berman, S. (1998) The Social Democratic Movement: Ideas and Politics in the Making of
Interwar Europe Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Blyth, Mark M. (1997) “`Any More Bright Ideas?’ The Ideational Turn in Comparative
Political Economy.” Comparative Politics 29 (2): 229-50.
Blyth, Mark M. (2002) Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change
in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press
Blyth, Mark (2013) Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea New York: Oxford
University Press
Bourdieu, Pierre (1994) Raisons Pratiques. Paris: Le Seuil
Campbell, J. L., 1998. ‘Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy,’
Theory and Society, 27: 377–409
Carstensen, Martin and Schmidt, Vivien (2016) ‘Power through, over and in ideas:
Conceptualizing ideational power in discursive institutionalism.’ Journal of
European Public Policy vol. 23, no. 3 (2016): 318-337.
Dahl, Robert A. (1968) ‘Power’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol
12, New York: Free Press.
Danner, Mark (2016) ‘The Real Trump’ New York Review of Books 63, 20 (Dec. 22)
Eberstadt, Nicholas (2016) Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis West
Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Press
Finnemore, Martha (1996) “Norms, Culture, and World Politics: Insights from
Sociology’s Institutionalism.” International Organization 50(2): 325–47
Forester, John. 1993. "Learning from Practice Stories: The Priority of Practical
Judgment" in The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, eds. Frank
Fischer and John Forester. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Foucault, Michel (2000) Power. Vol. 3 of Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984.
Edited by J. D. Faubion. New York: New Press.
Foucault, Michel (2004) Naissance de la Biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France,
1978-1979 (Paris: Hautes Études/Gallimard/Seuil).

!
19!
Freeden, M. (2003) Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University
Press).
Gamble, A. (2009) The Spectre at the Feast (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Gilpin, Robert (2000) The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the
21st Century Princeton: Princeton University Press
Haas, P. M. (1992) ‘Introduction: Epistemic communities and international policy
coordination’, International Organization 46, 1–35
Hacker, Jacob (2006) The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families,
Health Care, and Retirement, and How You Can Fight Back New York: Oxford
Hajer, Maarten (1993) “Discourse Coalitions in Practice: The Case of Acid Rain in Great
Britain” in The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, eds. Frank
Fischer and John Forester. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Hall, Peter A. (1993) ‘Policy paradigms, social learning and the State: The case of
economic policy-making in britain’, Comparative Politics 25: 275–96.
Hay, Colin and Smith, Nicola (2013) ‘The Resilience of Anglo-Liberalism in the
Absence of Growth,’ in V. A. Schmidt and M. Thatcher (eds.), Resilient Liberalism
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press)
Hemeriijck, Anton (2013) Changing Welfare States Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2016) Strangers in their Own Land New York: New Press
Hochschild, Jennifer and Mollenkopt, John H. Bringing (2009) Outsiders In:
TransAtlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation Ithaca: Cornell.
Howarth, D., A. J. Norval, and Y. Stavrakakis, eds. 2000. Discourse Theory and Political
Analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Inglehart, Ronald and Norris, Pippa (2016) ‘Trump, Brexit and the Rise of Populism:
Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash.’ Paper prepared for the Annual meeting
of the American Political Science Association (Philadelphia, Sept. 1-4).
Jobert, Bruno (1989) “The Normative Frameworks of Public Policy.” Political Studies
37:376-86.
Judis, John B. (2016) The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed
American and European Politics New York: Columbia Global Reports
Kahneman, Daniel (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. (1998) Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy
Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kenny, Michael (2016) ‘The Genesis of English Nationalism’, Political Insight,
September.
King, Desmond and Smith, Rogers M. (2014) ‘‘Without Regard to Race’: Critical
Ideational Development in Modern America’, Journal of Politics 76 (4): 958-971
Kingdon, John. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. New York: Longman
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a
Radical Democratic Politics. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.

!
20!
Lackoff, George (2016) ‘Understanding Trump’s Use of Language’, Social Europe Aug.
23, 2016.
Lehmbruch, Gerhard (2001) “Institutional Embedding of Market Economies: The
German Model and Its Impact on Japan.” In The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism,
eds. W. Streeck and K. Yamamura. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Mandelson, Peter (2016) ‘How the Struggle for Europe was Lost’ July 2
https://www.ft.com/content/98619e5c-3f70-11e6-8716-a4a71e8140b0
Mansbridge, Jane (1999) “Everyday Talk in the Deliberative System” in Deliberative
Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement ed. Stephen Macedo. Oxford:
Oxford University Press
March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1989. Rediscovering Institutions. New York: Free
Press
Martin, Cathie and Swank, Duane (2012) The Political Construction of Business Interests
New York: Cambridge University Press
Matthijs, Matthias (2011), Ideas and Economic Crises in Britain from Attlee to Blair
(1945-2005), New York: Routledge
Matthijs, Matthias and Mark Blyth, eds. (2015), The Future of the Euro, New York:
Oxford University Press
Mirowski, P. and Plehwe, D. (2009) The Road from Mont Pélerin: The Making of the
Neoliberal Thought Collective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Mirowski, Philip (2013) Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste: How Neoliberalism
survived the Financial Crisis London: Verso
Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira (2012) Populism in Europe and the
Americas: Threat or Corrective to Democracy Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Muller, Pierre (2015) La société de l’efficacité globale. Comment les sociétés modernes
se pensent et agissent sur elles-mêmes (Paris: PUF).
Müller, Jan-Werner (2016) What is Populism? Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press
Mutz, Diana C., Paul M. Sniderman, and Richard A. Brody (1996) Political Persuasion
and Attitude Change. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Peck, J. (2010) Constructions of Neo-Liberal Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Porcaro, Giuseppe and Müller, Henrik (2016) ‘Tweeting Brexit: Narrative Building and
Sentiment Analysis’, Bruegel Blog Post (Nov. 16).
Rein, Martin, and Schon, D. A. (1994) Frame Reflection New York: Basic Books
Rodrik, Dani (2011) The Globalization Paradox New York: Norton
Roe, E. (1994) Narrative Policy Analysis: Theory and Practice. Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press

!
21!
Sabatier, Paul (1993) ‘Policy change over a decade or more’, in H. C. Jenkins-Smith and
P. Sabatier, Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview).
Scharpf, Fritz W. (2014). ‘Political Legitimacy in a Non-optimal Currency Area.’ In Olaf
Cramme, and Sara B. Hobolt, eds. Democratic Politics in a European Union under
Stress. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scharpf, Fritz W. and Schmidt, Vivien A., eds. (2000) Welfare and Work in the Open
Economy, 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2000) ‘Values and Discourse in the Politics of Adjustment’ in
Welfare and Work in the Open Economy, vol. 1 eds. F. W. Scharpf and V. Schmidt,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2006) Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2008) ‘Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas
and Discourse.’ Annual Review of Political Science 11:303-26.
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2010) ‘Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously: Explaining Change
through Discursive Institutionalism as the Fourth New Institutionalism.’ European
Political Science Review 2(1): 1-25.
Schmidt, V. A. (2011) ‘Speaking of Change: Why Discourse Is Key to the Dynamics of
Policy Transformation,’ Critical Policy Studies 5: 2, 106-126
Schmidt, V. A. (2012) “Discursive Institutionalism: Scope, Dynamics, and Philosophical
Underpinnings” in F. Fischer and H. Gottweis (eds.) The Argumentative Turn
Revised (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2014) ‘Speaking to the Markets or to the People? A Discursive
Institutionalist Analysis of EU Leaders’ Discourse during the Eurozone Crisis’,
British Journal of Politics and International Relations 16: 1, 188-209
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2016a) ‘The roots of neo-liberal resilience: Explaining continuity
and change in background ideas in Europe’s political economy’, British Journal of
Politics and International Relations 18 (2): 318-334.
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2016b) ‘The Issue Remarkable for its Absence in the Brexit Debate:
The Resilience of Neoliberalism in Europe.’ Blog for Cambridge University Press
(June 22) http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2016/06/the-issue-remarkable-for-its-
absence-the-resilience-of-neo-liberalism
Schmidt, Vivien A. and Thatcher, Mark (2013) ‘Introduction: The Resilience of Neo-
Liberal Ideas’ in Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy eds., V.
Schmidt and M. Thatcher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seabrooke, Leonard (2014) ‘Epistemic arbitrage: transnational professional knowledge in
action’, Journal of Professions and Organization 1(1): 49–64.

!
22!
Skocpol, Theda and Williamson, Vanessa (2012) The Tea Party and the Remaking of
American Conservatism New York: Oxford University Press
Steger, M. B. and Roy, R. K. (2010) Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
Stephenson, Paul (2016) ‘How to win a Referendum’, Politico Dec. 9.
http://www.politico.eu/article/how-to-win-a-referendum-brexit-inside-story-vote-
leave-campaign/
Stiglitz, Joseph (2002) Globalization and its Discontent New York: Norton
Stiglitz, Joseph (2016) How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe New
York: Norton
Thompson, Mark (2016) Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of
Politics? New York: St. Martin’s Press
Wendt, Alexander (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Widmaier, Wesley W. (2016a) Economic Ideas in Political Time: The Construction,
Conversion and Crisis of Economic Orders from the Progressive Era to the Global
Financial Crisis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Widmaier, Wesley W. (2016b) ‘The power of economic ideas – through, over and in –
political time: the construction, conversion and crisis of the neoliberal order in the US
and UK’, Journal of European Public Policy 23 (3): 338-356
Wodak, Ruth. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action. Houndmills, Basingstoke, U.K.:
Palgrave.
Zaller J. (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge
University Press.