How Ideas and Institutions Shape the Politics of Public Policy

• 1. Introduction; 2. Ideas and institutions as explanatory factors; 3. Institutionalisms and institutions; 4. Political institutions and public policy; 5. Policy feedback; 6. From historical institutionalism to ideational analysis; 7. Mapping ideas: policy paradigms and beyond; 8. Ideas, actors, and the policy cycle; 9. Reconsidering theories of the policy process – ideas, institutions, and actors; 10. Ideas, political institutions, and transnational actors; 11. Ideas, institutions, and identities; 12. Ideas, power, and interests; 13. Institutions and the production of expertise; 14. Mechanisms of policy change; 15. Structural and psychological factors; 16. Conclusion.

'He [Béland] provides the systematic treatment of ideational institutionalism, drawing on his own comprehensive contributions to the field, as well as contemporary research. In his Element, public policies are dependent variables, and ideas and institutions (in turn, interacting between them) operate as independent variables.' Claudio M. Radaelli, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice