The newest 'new institutionalism,' discursive institutionalism, lends insight into the role of ideas and discourse in politics while providing a more dynamic approach to institutional change than the older three new institutionalisms. Ideas, as the substantive content of discourse, consists of three levels-policies, programs, and philosophies-and two types-cognitive and normative. Discourse, as the interactive process of conveying ideas, comes in two forms-the coordinative discourse among policy actors and the communicative discourse between political actors and the public. Both ideas and discourse are situated in institutional context, understood in terms of the background information provided by the three older new institutionalisms as well as in more specific 'meaning' contexts. The institutions of discursive institutionalism, moreover, rather than external rule-following structures, are simultaneously structures and constructs internal to agents whose 'background ideational abilities' within a given 'meaning context' explains how institutions are created and exist and whose 'foreground discursive abilities' following a 'logic of communication' explains how institutions change or persist. Finally, interests are subjective ideas which are neither 'objective' nor 'material' although they are real while norms are dynamic, intersubjective constructs rather than static structures.

All three of the traditionally recognized new institutionalisms-rational choice, historical, and sociological-have increasingly sought to 'endogenize' change, which has often meant a turn to ideas and discourse. This article shows that the approaches of scholars coming out of each of these three institutionalist traditions who take ideas and discourse seriously can best be classified as part of a fourth 'new institutionalism'-discursive institutionalism (DI)-which is concerned with both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse in institutional context. It argues that this newest of the 'new institutionalisms' has the greatest potential for providing insights into the dynamics of institutional change by explaining the actual preferences, strategies, and normative orientations of actors. The article identifies the wide range of approaches that fit this analytic framework, illustrating the ways in which scholars of DI have gone beyond the limits of the traditional institutionalisms on questions of interests and uncertainty, critical junctures and incremental change, norms and culture. It defines institutions dynamically-in contrast to the older neoinstitutionalisms' more static external rule-following structures of incentives, pathdependencies, and cultural framing-as structures and constructs of meaning internal to agents whose 'background ideational abilities' enable them to create (and maintain) institutions while their 'foreground discursive abilities' enable them to communicate critically about them, to change (or maintain) them. But the article also points to areas for improvement in DI, including the theoretical analysis of processes of ideational change, the use of the older neo-institutionalisms for background information, and the incorporation of the power of interests and position into accounts of the power of ideas and discourse.

Scholars of the European Union have analyzed the EU's legitimacy mainly in terms of two normative criteria: output effectiveness for the people and input participation by the people. This article argues that missing from this theorization is what goes on in the 'black box' of governance between input and output, or 'throughput'. Throughput consists of governance processes with the people, analyzed in terms of their efficacy, accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness to interest consultation. This article defines and discusses this third normative criterion as well as the interaction effects of all three normative criteria. It does so by considering EU scholars' institutional and constructivist analyses of EU legitimacy as well as empirical cases of and proposed solutions to the EU's democracy problems. The article also suggests that unlike input and output, which affect public perceptions of legitimacy both when they are increased or decreased, throughput tends to be most salient when negative, because oppressive, incompetent, corrupt or biased practices throw not just throughput but also input and output into question.Is the European Union democratically legitimate? This question has been hotly debated at least since the early 1990s (e.

With regard to changes in policies, the book concludes that while countries have internationalized at different rates to varying degrees in different ways—with ‘internationalization’ rather than ‘globalization’, the better word to describe the process—Europeanization is a much stronger process, leading to much greater similarities in policies, even though differences remain. Moreover, Europeanization affects not only economic policies but also practices. Although nationally based varieties of capitalism continue to predominate today, in the future industrial sector‐based varieties reflecting the most internationally competitive of national varieties are more likely in an increasingly integrated Europe. As for discourse, these are certain to remain distinct even as they may serve to legitimate policies that are more and more similar and practices that are increasingly differentiated in terms of industrial sectors rather than national varieties of capitalism.

Owing to the tendency of discursive institutionalists to conflate the notion that 'ideas matter' for policy-making with the 'power of ideas', little has been done to explicitly theorize ideational power. To fill this lacuna, the contribution defines ideational power as the capacity of actors (whether individual or collective) to influence other actors' normative and cognitive beliefs through the use of ideational elements, and -based on insights from the discursive institutionalist literature -suggests three different types of ideational power: power through ideas, understood as the capacity of actors to persuade other actors to accept and adopt their views through the use of ideational elements; power over ideas, meaning the imposition of ideas and the power to resist the inclusion of alternative ideas into the policymaking arena; and power in ideas, which takes place through the establishing of hegemony or institutions imposing constraints on what ideas are considered.