Ideas, Institutions and Streams of Politics: A Synthetic Approach to the Study of Policy Change

Recent years have seen a resurgence in scholarship on the role of ideas in politics and policy. Much of this work has been dedicated to the proposition that ideas, in addition to interests, institutions and culture, matter. Ideational scholars have certainly yielded a deeper understanding of the dynamics of policy change. However, the task remains far from finished. The next challenge for scholars of ideas will be to demonstrate how ideas matter in relation to other, previously identified variables, and to situate ideas within broader theories of policy development. This paper attempts to show scholars may better consider the interplay between ideas, the political actors holding them, and institutional constraints, when considering examples of policy change. To do so, it synthesises elements from scholarship on ideas, such as the recent work of Vivien Schmidt, historical institutionalism and theories of the policy process, in particular John Kingdon’s ‘Multiple Streams’ approach.