A Discursive Institutionalist Approach to Understanding the Changes to the Irish Social Partnership Policy After 2008.

Abstract: Employing the critical juncture theory (CJT), a discursive institutionalist approach, this paper examines the nature of the changes to social partnership policy at the end of the decade of the 2000s. Did these changes constitute a transformation in social partnership policy, or were they a continuation of a previously established policy pathway? The CJT consists of three elements--economic crisis, ideational change, and the nature of the policy change--that must be identified for us to be able to declare with some certainty if the changes to social partnership policy constituted a critical juncture. In this context, ideational change is very important, constituting the intermediating factor between a crisis and the subsequent nature of the policy change. Our findings will help explain the nature of the changes to social partnership policy at this time. Keywords: Crisis; critical juncture; ideas; social partnership; policy. JELs: E61, E65, H12 1. INTRODUCTION This paper examines the nature of the changes to social partnership policy after 2008. Social partnership itself can be seen from a wide variety of perspectives, giving rise of a range of different definitions. For us, in the interest of simplicity, we see social partnership as comprising 'co-operation between key players in the making of economic and social policy' (Casey & Gold, 2000, p. 9) and, as such, social partnership constitutes a neo-corporatist model for social concertation (Roche & Cradden 2003, p. 75). The economy, after years of stagnation during the 1980s, performed exceptionally well in the following decades, particularly during 1997-2007, what Timoney (2010) refers to as the peak of the Celtic Tiger. However, this prosperity ended in 2008, leading to a questioning of extant policies, including social partnership. Sudden policy discontinuities are often attributed, in a cause and effect manner, to economic crises (see punctuated equilibrium (Jones, 2001)). However, crises are often followed by policy continuity, not change. Thus, it is important to acknowledge that policy change is a complex process and that to understand it we need to take account of political circumstances, recognising that crises can be a necessary, but insufficient, condition for policy change. The CJT has been used to examine a range of policy changes (see Hogan & Cavatorta, 2013; Hogan & Doyle, 2007). According to Hogan's (2006) CJT, a critical juncture is a multi stage event. A crisis can create a situation where extant policies and associated ideas are called into question by change agents. Subsequent displacement of the extant paradigm, by the consolidation of a new set of ideas on how policy should operate, can lead to radical policy change. But, without ideational change, policy change will likely be first or second order, not third order (paradigmatic) change. (1) The presence, or absence, of ideational change links a crisis to the subsequent nature of the policy change. Here we use the CJT to investigate the nature of the changes to social partnership policy after 2008. 2. THE CRITICAL JUNCTURE THEORY According to Hogan and Doyle (2007), a critical juncture consists of discreet, but interconnected elements: crisis, ideational change (extant ideational collapse, new ideational consolidation) and radical policy change (see Figure 1). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Thus, CJT uses ideas in a form of "discursive institutionalism" to overcome the limitations of "traditional" new institutionalist approaches, particularly historical institutionalism, in explaining policy change--specifically their static and overly determinist nature (Schmidt, 2010). Historical institutionalism has followed March and Olsen's (1984) suggestion about de-emphasizing micro processes and focuses on explaining complex processes and inefficient histories. Of particular importance to historical institutionalism is macro processes of path dependency (Pierson, 2000), a concept that borrows heavily from economic history (see Arthur, 1994; David, 1985; North, 1990). …