SEMINAR: Political Science and International Relations Seminar Series - Power, Interests, and the 'Ideational Turn' in Political Science: Professor Graham Brown

The recent 'ideational turn' in political science has seen some scholars working with positivist and rational choice approaches taking the role of ideas more seriously in their analytical frameworks. While this openness to considering the role of ideas in political processes is an important advance, the empirical scope and theoretical sophistication of this ideational turn remains, to date, quite limited. Empirically, the emerging consensus within this field is that ideas matter only at times of institutional crisis. Theoretically, this field has not engaged with the substantive analysis of ideas themselves, rather than their instrumental usage. This paper seeks to contribute to this turn by bringing insights from the field of comparative ideology to the literature on the 'ideational turn'. Our main contention is that a central element that is missing from the ideational turn is an understanding of the relationship between ideas and political power and that careful study of the conceptual constellation of ideas can illuminate this relationship and show how ideas matter not just at times of institutional crisis. We illustrate this example with an analysis of discourses of affirmative action and group rights in Malaysia.