Discursive Institutionalist Approaches to APD: Ideas, Identities, Institutions

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Scholarship of American Political Development (APD) is broadly concerned with evaluating the durability of governing authority and political institutions over time. Though heterodox in its methodology, APD’s institutional focus creates incentives for research that is siloed according to the specific fields of analysis, leaving larger questions about the ideological conditions of institutional change largely unanswered. Though it has brought history and institutions to the center of political analysis, APD has often neglected adequate definitions of institutions or thorough examinations of their discursive production. This results in taking for granted underlying concepts such as family, identity, and the environment, concepts that are in a state of flux themselves. This panel addresses this shortcoming by centering discursive production within the study APD.

Vivien Schmidt’s concept of “discursive institutionalism” anchors the analysis of the four papers on the panel. Each of these studies is united by its engagement with Schmidt’s work on coordinative and communicative discourse (2008). Discursive institutionalism allows for the robust examination of ideas and discourse in the development of an array of “policies, programs, and philosophies” that span the field of American politics (Schmidt, 2008). Bringing together a seemingly disparate array of research, this panel seeks to explore the way in which the common application of discursive institutionalism can help us to break out of our issue-specific silos.

The papers on this panel use discursive institutionalism as means of engaging with a wide range of issues that include immigrant rights, right-wing coalition building, fatherhood, and climate change. H. Howell Williams uses this framework to explore the evolution of fatherhood as a site for welfare state policy intervention. Chelsea Ebin investigates how the discursive production of a Christian identity centered on white, Christian victimhood was central to the development of the Religious Right. Ricky Price uses this framework to explore the discursive politics of environmental policymaking in his examination of New York programs to eliminate Harmful Algae Blooms. Finally, Jackie Vimo examines the discourse of federal driver’s license policy, tracing the discourse development from the “drinking-driver” of the twentieth century to the REAL ID Act of 2005 and contemporary debates over driving privileges for undocumented immigrants to shed light on how federal licensing policies serve as proxies for broader political struggles.

This panel aims to open up a space for dialogue across APD studies by identifying commonalities and new insights into American politics that arise from the application of a shared approach to interrogating how discourse informs the production, maintenance, and transformation of institutions.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• The Production of Religious Right Discourses, 1965-1985 - Chelsea Ebin, Centre College

• New York's Invasive Cultures: From the Sullivan Campaign to Harmful Algae Blooms - J. Ricky Price, St. John Fisher College

• Licensing Terror and Illegality: Driver’s License Discourse—1903 to REAL ID - Jackie Vimo, New School for Social Research

• The Discursive Production of Fatherhood in Public Policy - H. Howell Williams, Western Connecticut State University

Chair

• Jennifer Leonor Erkulwater University of Richmond

Discussant

• Vivien A. Schmidt Boston University