No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Understanding Change in Political Science: On the Need to Bring Space into Theoretical Positions and Empirical Analyses
Abstract
In recent times, issues surrounding change have become increasingly important in the study of political analysis. This is especially true within strains of new institutionalism such as historical institutionalism and the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ approach. However, although this has led to a sensitising towards the temporal dimension, the spatial dimension has been relatively ignored. This is arguably problematic, as a fuller understanding of space and the spatiality of social and political relations would lead to more coherent and accurate analyses of political phenomena that currently characterise historical institutionalism. Indeed at an ontological level, drawing on work within the natural sciences and geography, it is impossible to talk of time without reference to spatiality and of space without reference to temporality. This short article reviews some of the more prominent historical institutionalist literature that deals with change and renders explicit the problematic conceptualisation of space, and consequently time, which underpins their analyses. Drawing on Massey and Sayer, it proceeds to outline briefly a relational conception of space and the difference that space makes to political analyses.
... Although according to Hay, change is 'invariably the result of a multiplicity of factors ' (2002:136), his analysis of it is concerned only with the notion of time (Bates and Smith 2008); however, this limited approach to change is not unusual within institutionalist theory. Seeking to avoid 'preempting empirical answers through theoretical models' (Bates and Smith 2008:194), for the P Po ol li it ti ic ca al l A An na al ly ys si is s 3 purpose of this essay, it is not necessary engage with Hay's more complex 'punctuated equilibrium/evolution' paradigm. ...
... Bates and Smith's proposition of time-space dimensions of change. Articulated this way, change takes different trajectories that can lead to the creation or transformation of spatiality (policy space, ideological space, cultural space [see Bates and Smith 2008;Middell and Naumann 2010:169]). These spatialities can themselves be characterised by their own temporalities. ...
This brief seeks to illustrate how, and the extent to which, the decision taken by the current Home Secretary to derecognise the UK Border Agency and replace it with two new departments (Travis 2013c) can lead to substantive change for the immigration system. The essay starts by illustrating the potential of Historical Institutionalism (henceforth 'HI') to explain the complexity of practices of the UKBA over the past year. It will be noted that HI has much explanatory potential visa -vis the contingencies which frame the nature of the Agency and (subsequently) the possibility of path-dependence of the two new departments. However, it cannot provide insightful enough explanations over how the dynamics of ideas within and external to the Agency, can-or cannot-produce institutional change. For this reason, placed in temporal and spatial contexts, the ideational-material relationship will be of significant use to understand the possible future outcomes of the critical juncture which has emerged within this political context. Theoretical framework First, it is important to consider the theoretical and methodological frameworks of Historical Institutionalism. As a caveat, it should be noted that there is a need to concentrate also on the dynamic aspect of ideas and the distinction between material and ideational factors which have played a crucial role in the Agency's performance. By doing this, I attempt to challenge the relative reductionism of HI (Lieberman 2002:698) by agreeing with Hay that 'ideas provide the point of mediation between actors and their environment' (2002:209-210; emphasis in original). With the use of HI, two important institutional processes can be addressed: change during a critical juncture and the path-dependence of the two newly established departments.
... Taken together, the above-explored sovereignty and performance nexus contributes to the growing spatial perspective in social and human sciences, which critiques the conceptualization of space as a pre-defined territorial entity. In this sense, a new spatial perspective moves beyond the traditional understanding, which depoliticizes a space by confining it to physicality and location (Massey 1992(Massey , 2005Bates and Smith 2008). They instead place space in the centre of political life and elucidate the ways in which spatial practices shape political processes and political identities (Carter et al. 2009). ...
Throughout its history, Hagia Sophia has been used as an Orthodox church, a Roman Catholic church, a mosque, and a museum. After a controversial decision in 2020, Hagia Sophia was converted back into a mosque. This article shows that Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque is more than a juridical action. By adopting a performative approach, it is argued that, through the conversion, the ruling Justice and Development Party seeks to achieve its two-fold agenda. Firstly, while reflecting the party’s Islamic political vision that situates religion as an integral part of everyday life, this move reaffirms the JDP’s position as the ultimate political authority that shapes Turkey’s sovereign space. Secondly, the conversion fits into and perpetuates the JDP’s instrumentalization of religion as a political tool to increase its power in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in line with its neo-Ottomanist agenda.
... The aim to achieve SDGs is also that situations tend to be contextual. The political situation and background in one country may be different from other countries (Bates & Smith, 2008), so the SDGs 2030 Agenda is sensitive to countries differences. Thus, it is interesting to look at promising practices and challenges of SDGs. ...
... With this idea of learning space, we turn to Bates and Smith's (2008) second advisory: treat time and space as interwoven. We know the impact of space can be viewed as a function of time. ...
This article explores how policy learning can improve comparative policy analysis by focusing on causality in learning processes. After summarizing the comparative credentials of the policy learning literature, the article outlines a framework of four learning modes, relating it to three approaches of causality: deterministic, probabilistic, and set-theoretic. It then builds on this to explore different approaches to causation and learning in relation to: policy change, political contexts, and, finally, the temporal and spatial dimensions of comparative policy analysis. The article concludes by showing how these challenges are addressed and suggesting implications for further research.
... This dimension is, however, critical to the effective coproduction of WSS services. In addition, the public management and governance literature fails to fully acknowledge the growing interest for physical space as both an output and a determinant of socio-political configurations evident in the social and political sciences (Bates & Smith, 2008;Pugh, 2009). Space should be regarded as an essential dimension of co-production, especially in the context of Global South cities where spatial differentiations are very significant from ecological, social and political perspectives. ...
Co-production of water and sanitation services has become a widely discussed option for equitable and efficient service delivery, especially for cities of the Global South. Theoretical conceptualizations of service co-production mainly refer to the public management and governance dimension, while the techno-environmental and spatial dimensions are often disregarded in the literature. This article proposes a comprehensive framework for analyzing water and sanitation co-production based on cross-cutting literature, from public service management/governance to urban, socio-ecological and socio-technical fields. The proposed framework highlights the categories and factors to be considered when analyzing the background conditions and outcomes of unorthodox service delivery.
The issue of time, most associated with intergenerational justice, is an integral component of the sustainable development agenda. And yet, research in this area from a governance perspective remains strangely cross‐sectional in nature. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of time by analysing the impact of transformative events across the development of governance practices. Sustainable development is conceptualized in this paper as a serious challenge for governance structures and processes in nation states over time. Global and European agreements have placed the inclusion of civil society actors in policy‐making at the heart of the sustainability agenda. In contrast, there is a clear mismatch between these principles of civil society inclusion and policy‐making in France. This paper assesses the implementation of sustainable development as civil society inclusion with reference to the French experience in dealing with genetically modified organisms policy. It is argued that ‘sustainable governance’ must embrace a more comprehensive understanding of ‘change over time’. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
One notable absence in much current critical IPE theorizing is spatial considerations. There is an incipient, though unacknowledged, nation-state centrism in much contemporary critical IPE focused on the immutability of the nation-state and inter-state system often conflating nation and state. This reifies the nation-state, while simultaneously sustaining the dualisms of national and global, political and economic. This article emphasizes the importance of space through highlighting the internal relation of space to the unfolding of capitalist social relations – what we term a scalar-relational approach. The concepts of space and scale, and particularly the politics of scale, have much to offer to help IPE to understand global order and disorder. Put simply, what appears as order at one scale may seem like disorder at another.
The article argues that critical International Political Economy can benefit from a trans-disciplinary approach to the role of cities as socio-economic actors in the global political economy. The constitution and exercise of agency is far from an automatic response to the global restructuring of capitalist social relations, but the product of historically and context-specific economic and extra-economic social processes and social struggles. Cities (re)emerge as subjects and objects of governance and intervention and seek to become (dis)embedded in multi-scalar networks of economic and symbolic power. In this process, they become active co-producers of the global political economy, in ways that cut across spatial scales and narrow geographical imaginations.
Stability and change are key issues for policy analysts, but the literature on the relationship between the two is limited in both senses of the term. This article examines that literature, placing in it firmly against discussions about how to conceptualize time and arguing that the relationship between stability and change is best viewed as a duality, not a dualism. As such, the article strongly critiques the concept of punctuated evolution and defends a historical institutionalist position, against a constructivist institutionalist one.
The literatures on globalization and regionalization on the one hand, and on the institutional distinctiveness of national capitalisms on the other, seem to pull in very different directions. Nonetheless, an increasing number of international and comparative political economists sensitive to the institutional and cultural variability of contemporary capitalism identify tendencies towards convergence-often towards an Angle-US model of deregulated neoliberal capitalism. In this article I critically review the literature on convergence, difference and divergence in the global political economy, differentiating between neoclassical and institutionalist perspectives. Resisting arguments which posit a natural selection process initiated by untrammelled free market competition and free capital mobility, I identify the contingent, political and frequently coercive nature of the convergence process. This is illustrated through a discussion of regional selection mechanisms in the context of European Monetary Union and the East Asian financial crisis. In so far as evolutionary selection mechanisms can be identified in the European context, selecting for a more residual social model, these are more a product of the contingent process of European economic integration than they are a necessary consequence of globalization. Moreover, in so far as similarly convergent processes can be identified in contemporary East Asia, they are less a product of globalization than of the 'predatory neoliberalism' of a beleagured Washington Consensus.
The growing interconnectedness of national economies and an expanding awareness of global interdependence in the 1990s have generated lively debate over the future of national governance. In a world of mobile capital, are states vital to the social and economic wellbeing of their citizens? A number of changes in the state's domestic and international environment - ranging from regulatory reforms and welfare state restructuring to the proliferation of intergovernmental agreements - have promoted the view that globalisation has a negative impact, compromising state capacities to govern domestically. This book challenges the 'constraints thesis'. Covering vital areas of state activity (welfare, taxation, industrial strategy, and regulatory reform), the contributors focus on a range of issues (finance, trade, technology) faced by both developed and developing countries. The contributors argue that globalisation can enable as well as constrain, and they seek to specify the institutional conditions which sharpen or neutralise the pressures of interdependence.
Political Analysis provides an accessible and engaging yet original introduction and distinctive contribution, to the analysis of political structures, institutions, ideas and behaviours, and above all, to the political processes through which they are constantly made and remade. Following an innovative introduction to the main approaches and concepts in political analysis, the text focuses thematically on the key issues which currently concern and divide political analysts, including the boundaries of the political; the question of structure, agency and power; the dynamics of political change; the relative significance of ideas and material factors; and the challenge posed by postmodernism which the author argues the discipline can strengthen itself by addressing without allowing it to become a recipe for paralysis.
Applying the new economics of organization and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross‐national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterize the ‘varieties of capitalism’ found among the developed economies. Building on a distinction between ‘liberal market economies’ and ‘coordinated market economies’, it explores the impact of these variations on economic performance and many spheres of policy‐making, including macroeconomic policy, social policy, vocational training, legal decision‐making, and international economic negotiations. The volume examines the institutional complementarities across spheres of the political economy, including labour markets, markets for corporate finance, the system of skill formation, and inter‐firm collaboration on research and development that reinforce national equilibria and give rise to comparative institutional advantages, notably in the sphere of innovation where LMEs are better placed to sponsor radical innovation and CMEs to sponsor incremental innovation. By linking managerial strategy to national institutions, the volume builds a firm‐centred comparative political economy that can be used to assess the response of firms and governments to the pressures associated with globalization. Its new perspectives on the welfare state emphasize the role of business interests and of economic systems built on general or specific skills in the development of social policy. It explores the relationship between national legal systems, as well as systems of standards setting, and the political economy. The analysis has many implications for economic policy‐making, at national and international levels, in the global age.
It is now becoming common to argue that one considerable deficiency of much of the contemporary social sciences is their neglect of time and space. Social analyses are held to be curiously negligent of the spatio-temporal location and structuring of the phenomena under investigation.1 This is by obvious contrast with physical science where, for instance, Whitehead claimed that ‘It is hardly more than a pardonable exaggeration to say that the determination of the meaning of nature reduces itself principally to the discussion of the character of time and the character of space.’2 However, there are very considerable problems in seeing how space and time can be built into the examination of social relations. I will make a number of points of clarification to begin here.
Provides a thumbnail sketch of the evolution of modern human geography, distinguishing those approaches in which generalisations about spatial patterns of events are the diagnostic criterion of scientific status from those which understand scientific inquiry as the identification of 'necessary' and 'contingent' relations within (social) structures constituted in both space and time. This distinction between events and structures is an ontological one; it means that science involves the description of those structures whose 'causal powers' contingently generate particular sets of events in specifiable space-time settings. -from Editors
This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics, and greatly improve the theories and methods that we use to explain them. Politics in Time opens a new window on the temporal aspects of the social world. It explores a range of important features and implications of evolving social processes: the variety of processes that unfold over significant periods of time, the circumstances under which such different processes are likely to occur, and above all, the significance of these temporal dimensions of social life for our understanding of important political and social outcomes. Ranging widely across the social sciences, Pierson's analysis reveals the high price social science pays when it becomes ahistorical. And it provides a wealth of ideas for restoring our sense of historical process. By placing politics back in time, Pierson's book is destined to have a resounding and enduring impact on the work of scholars and students in fields from political science, history, and sociology to economics and policy analysis.
Change is central to critical realism yet there has been little theoretical explication on the temporal dimension. It is shown that this oversight results in Archer's morphogenetic approach employing an ontological dualism of cyclical and linear temporalities similar to that contained within Giddens’ structuration theory. Consequently, neither Archer nor Giddens is able to explain change and the transition between different epochs in a persuasive manner. In order to minimize these problems, Adam's concept of circadiantime is adopted.This allows for a diachronic analysis that synchronically incorporates both continuity and change. Accordingly, it is able to transcend the temporal dualism of repetition and transformation.This temporal conceptualization is then incorporated within a critical realist framework. It is suggested that employing a double helix analogy allows for the integration of the notion of a stratified social ontology with a non-dichotomous temporal conceptualization.
Globalization is widely held to circumscribe the parameters of political and economic choice in contemporary Europe, just as it has come to circumscribe the parameters of debate on the future of European models of capitalism. Yet opinions on the question of convergence nonetheless vary markedly, with proponents of the hyperglobalization thesis pointing to a simple and inexorable process of neoliberal convergence while an increasingly influential school of neo-institutionalists point to a rather more complex process of ‘dual’ or ‘co-convergence’, reinforcing the distinctiveness of liberal and coordinated market economies. In both accounts, the exhibited pattern of convergence (dual or otherwise) is seen to be driven by globalization. In this paper I provide a theoretical and empirical critique of this important literature, challenging the contextualization of the question of convergence with respect to globalization which both perspectives share. I advance a distinctive variant of the new institutionalism which emphasizes: (i) the contingency of any process of convergence observed; (ii) the frequently political as opposed to economic nature of convergent tendencies; (iii) the counter-tendencies which might be mobilized to such tendencies; and (iv) the invariably far greater significance, in the establishment of common trajectories, of regional rather than genuinely global processes of integration. Though common trajectories are discernible within contemporary Europe, associated in particular with the institutional architecture of EMU and an accelerating process of European economic integration, they have been embraced more or less enthusiastically and at variable paces, leading not to convergent but to divergent outcomes.
Geoffrey Garrett challenges the conventional wisdom about the domestic effects of the globalization of markets in the industrial democracies: the erosion of national autonomy and the demise of leftist alternatives to the free market. He demonstrates that globalization has strengthened the relationship between the political power of the left and organized labour and economic policies that reduce market-generated inequalities of risk and wealth. Moreover, macroeconomic outcomes in the era of global markets have been as good or better in strong left-labour regimes ('social democratic corporatism') as in other industrial countries. Pessimistic visions of the inexorable dominance of capital over labour or radical autarkic and nationalist backlashes against markets are significantly overstated. Electoral politics have not been dwarfed by market dynamics as social forces. Globalized markets have not rendered immutable the efficiency-equality trade-off.
The winter of discontent continues to exert a powerful hold over the British political imaginary. It acts as a discursive key to a collective mythology seemingly appealed to, and conjured, in each wave of industrial unrest, in each hint of political turmoil and, until recently, whenever the election of a Labour Government looked credible. In this paper I consider the rhetorical strategies and linguistic devices deployed by the tabloid media in the narration of the events of the winter of 1978-79. I argue for an interpretation of the winter of discontent as a moment of state crisis. By crisis however I do not refer to the mere accumulation of contradictions but rather to a moment of transition, a moment of decisive intervention. Within such a framework, the winter of discontent emerges as a strategic moment in the transformation of the British state, and perhaps the key moment in the pre-history of Thatcherism. For, as I hope to demonstrate, the initial appeal of the New Right was premised upon its ability to offer a convincing construction of the winter of discontent as symptomatic of a more fundamental crisis of the state. In such a moment of crisis, a particular type of decisive intervention was called for. In this discursive construction of crisis the New Right proved itself capable of changing, if not the hearts and minds of the electorate, then certainly the predominant perceptions of the political context. It recruited subjects to its vision of the necessary response to the crisis of a monolithic state besieged by the trade unions. This was perhaps the only truly hegemonic moment of Thatcherism. It occurred well before Mrs Thatcher entered Number 10. It is thus not surprising that one of the most enduring and distinctive legacies of Thatcherism has been the new political lexicon of crisis, siege and subterfuge born of the winter of discontent.
This article examines the model of social learning often believed to confirm the autonomy of the state from social pressures, tests it against recent cases of change in British economic policies, and offers a fuller analysis of the role of ideas in policymaking, based on the concept of policy paradigms. A conventional model of social learning is found to fit some types of changes in policy well but not the movement from Keynesian to monetarist modes of policymaking. In cases of paradigm shift, policy responds to a wider social debate bound up with electoral competition that demands a reformulation of traditional conceptions of state-society relations.
In what sense does space make a difference? How important is it and how should space and its supposed effects be understood? Can there be a general theory of space and society? What are the implications of space for social theory and practice? I shall try to answer these questions by using concepts from realist philosophy. I shall argue that despite the considerable growth of interest in space, the difference it makes and its possible implications for social theory are still widely misunderstood, largely because of a failure to distinguish abstract from concrete research. Yet even when clarified, space still presents both social research and actual practice with considerable difficulties, and these are discussed in the final section.
Many perceive the clash between those advocating rational choice theory
and their critics to be the dominant cleavage in contemporary political science.
At least as fundamental, if much less widely discussed, is the divide over the
role of historical analysis (or the investigation of temporal processes). Most
social scientists take a “snapshot” view of political life. How does
the distribution of public opinion affect policy outcomes? How do individual
social characteristics influence propensities to vote? How do electoral rules
affect the structure of party systems? Disputes among competing theories center
on which factors (“variables”) in the current environment generate
important political outcomes. Variable-centered analy- ses are based, however,
on some questionable assump- tions about how the social world works. 1 The
significance of such variables is frequently distorted when they are ripped from
their temporal context. There is often a strong case to be made for shifting
from snapshots to moving pictures. Placing politics in time systematically
situating particular moments (including the present) in a temporal sequence of
events and processes can greatly enrich our understanding of complex social
dynamics.
Evolutionary theorising has a long history in social scientists’ attempts to interrogate processes of change. However, for many years evolutionary theory has been damaged by its association with teleological and reductionist reasoning. Nevertheless in the past two decades, a new breed of neo-evolutionary perspective has emerged within a variety of social science sub-disciplines. This recent literature has attempted to revise the theory in order to emphasise that change is a contingent process which can take multiple paths and is underpinned by a constant interplay between agents and their environment. Although much of this literature has failed largely to impact upon the work of political scientists, recent years have also seen various attempts to apply an evolutionary conception of change to both the state and political change in general. This review article examines some of the key themes to have emerged from the renewed interest in evolutionary theorising, whilst particular attention is paid to attempts to develop the concept of political evolution.
This article develops an evolutionary theory to account for how policies change. As an extension of Kingdon's policy streams approach and Baumgartner and Jones' punctuated equilibrium model, the article sets out the mechanisms which select certain ideas as policy choices, both in the policy formulation and implementation stages of public decision-making. After responding to the likely criticisms of the uses of evolutionary models in politics, the article sets out five conditions for the theory to apply in practice. The empirical section examines the turbulent period of policy for British local government finance, which culminated in the selection in 1990, and then abolition in 1993, of the community charge or poll tax. The conclusion is that evolutionary theory offers more of an understanding of policy change in the poll tax case than other explanations and that researchers may wish to extend these insights to other examples.
This article engages with debates about the trajectory of contemporary European political economies, emphasising in particular the need to map processes of policy change over time (by placing contemporary developments in historical perspective) and space (by considering a variety of policy areas). The article then explores these issues with respect to the Irish case. Placing more recent developments within historical perspective, it argues that the trajectory of the Irish state is not best characterised in terms of a shift from one state form (the ‘activist state’) to another (‘the competition state’). Rather, the path of Irish economic and social policy has been both highly complex and (at times) contradictory, so that change is best characterised in terms of the ebb and flow of tendencies and counter-tendencies rather than in terms of a shift between state forms.
‘Crisis’ is one of the most underdeveloped concepts in state theory and, indeed, in social and political theory more generally. In this article I suggest one way in which this persistent oversight might be rectified, making a distinctive case for rethinking the process of social and political change in terms of the transformation of the state, and for rethinking state crisis in this ‘restating of social and political change’ (see also Hay 1996a). I return to the etymology of the term and (re-)conceptualise ‘crisis’ as a moment of decisive intervention and not merely a moment of fragmentation, dislocation or destruction. This reformulation suggests the need to give far greater emphasis to the essential narrativity of crisis, and the relationship between discourses of crisis and the contradictions that they narrate. The result is an analysis of crisis as a moment of transformation—a moment in which it is recognised that a decisive intervention can, and indeed must, be made. It is argued that during such moments of crisis a new trajectory is imposed upon the state. The intense and condensed temporality of crisis thus emerges as a strategic moment in the structural transformation of the state. Within this theoretical account crises are thus revealed as ‘epoch-making’ moments marking the transition between phases of historical–political time. They are thus suggestive of a periodisation of the development of the state.