chapter 4
...................................................................................................................................................CONSTRUCTIVIST
INSTITUTIONALISM
...................................................................................................................................................colin hay
The proliferation of new institutionalist scholarship has, perhaps unremarkably,
led to a corresponding proliferation in the adjectives used to characterize its
variants. In 1984 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen spoke quite comfortably of
the new institutionalism in the singular. By 1996 Peter A. Hall and Rosemary Taylor
eventually settled on three new institutionalisms (having toyed, in earlier iterations
of the same now classic article, with four). And by 1998 B. Guy Peters identiWed no
less than seven new institutionalisms. Yet none of these authors made any reference
to constructivism, far less to a distinctive constructivist variant of institutionalism
in its own right. 1 Indeed, until very recently, there has been very little if any
reference to what is now variously described as an ideational, discursive, or as
here,constructivistinstitutionalism. This is for three very good reasons—construct-
ivist institutionalism is by far the most recent addition to the family of
institutionalisms, it arises out of an engagement with the limitations of the others,
and, as a consequence and in contrast the others, it is still very much in its
- I am greatly indebted to Mark Blyth and to the editors for encouraging and perceptive comments on
an earlier version of this chapter. Alas, I must bear sole responsibility for the errors of substance and
interpretation.
1 TheWrst published references that I can discern to a discursive and/or ideational institutionalism
are in John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen’s ( 2001 ) edited collection onThe Rise of Neoliberalism
and Institutional Analysis.