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Ideas, Constructivism, And Complentarity In Insititutionalism, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

Colin Crouch recently chided the proliferation of institutionalisms (e.g., historical, normative, ideational, discursive, constructivist) as a growing cottage industry more focused on creating intellectual fiefdoms than extending political theory. In this vein, we can assess the recent constructivist institutionalism developed by Colin Hay out of the ideational and discursive institutionalism efforts of himself, Mark Blyth,Vivian Schmidt, J.L. Campbell and Ove Pedersen. This constructivism reproduces all of the weaknesses of the sociology of knowledge without heeding the contributions of critical theory, poststructuralism, interpretivism (e.g., Mark Bevir), polycontexturality (e.g., Gunther Teubner) or recent economic theory. We are challenged to represent a polycontextural …