The Historical Dynamics of Economic and Social Policymaking.

A large literature in the social sciences deals with the way in which advanced democracies respond to structural economic (and social) change. We focus on processes of institutional change, and we start from the assumption that any new, or reformed, institutional set-up must be coherent. The requirement of coherence is the reason for one important aspect of the process of reform: there is competition between epistemic communities that propose different solutions to policy problems in different policy areas. This competition turns experts into ideological advocates, as experts in one area attempt to influence policies in other areas. We demonstrate the relevance of our argument through an analysis of Swedish economic and social policymaking in the post-war period. Our argument has two important implications: studying periods of transition and change is potentially more important than studying periods of equilibrium and stability, and soft variables–ideas, knowledge and norms–have effects on hard variables, such as economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]