The Historical Construction of Meaning Constellations

Jörg Broschek

Canada Research Chair in Comparative Federalism and Multilevel Governance Wilfrid Laurier University

Department of Political Science Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3C5

jbroschek@wlu.ca

Abstract

When convergent trends in the world society encounter regional filters or countervailing forces, political or social dynamics result in local patterns of adaptation or even stimulate resilience. This paper suggests that meaning constellations represent an important mediating factor in the world society, responsible for the translation of global influences in national settings. Most generally, meaning constellations can be conceived as a set of historically constructed mental and ideational schemes or cognitive frames providing institutional architectures with sense, importance and, ultimately, legitimacy. Because institutional rules are often fraught with considerable ambiguity, such meaning constellations are crucial as they provide political agents with powerful resources to either challenge or stabilize an established political order. Moreover, when certain sets of beliefs about the purpose and legitimacy of institutional orders become dominant early in a historical sequence, it is difficult to de-construct such seemingly “given truths” at later points in time. The contingencies entailed in the historical construction of meaning constellations, therefore, are important to understand how universal (political) ideas and rationalizing models find their expression in a variety of concrete institutional forms and developmental patterns. Keywords: meaning constellations; historical institutionalism; discursive institutionalism; American Political Development (APD); path dependence; negative feedback; institutional dynamics; framing; diffusion

April 3, 2014

Final revised version published as: The Historical Construction of Social Order: Ideas, Institutions, and Meaning Constellations” in: Schriewer, Jürgen (ed.): World Culture Re-

Contextualized. Meaning Constellations and Path-dependencies in Comparative and International Education Research. Abingdon/New York: Routledge 2016, 161-180.

The Historical Construction of Meaning Constellations

1. Introduction

Inspired by neo-institutionalist theory, the world society perspective has begun to turn its

attention to the question of how global trends yield local patterns of adaptation. Rather than

focusing exclusively on uniform developments that generate similarities across geographically

bounded entities, the recent literature appears to show a greater awareness of the

interconnectedness of convergent and divergent trends in the world society, or what Jürgen

Schriewer has called the “gobal/local problematique” (Schriewer 2012: 414). On the one hand,

the obvious starting point for any approach anchored within the world society perspective is to

understand the behaviour of states or collective actors as a reaction to a common, external

source. This perspective emphasizes the compelling force of universalist movements, the

“rationalizing myths” of certain models of reality that prompt convergent dynamics through

diffusion as well as other forms of norm and knowledge dissemination (Ramirez 2012).

Acknowledging the importance of convergence in the world society, therefore, requires to

critically re-consider the methodological nationalism that still inherently permeates our analytical

repertoire in the social sciences (Wimmer and Schiller 2002; Jeffrey and Wincott 2010). On the

other hand, social and territorial boundaries still matter. While autopoetic system theory, for

example, clearly disregards the importance of physical boundaries, assuming an ongoing

evolution of the world society driven by functional differentiation and auto-referential

communication, a world society approach inspired by neo-institutionalism claims that general

trends translate into different patterns of adjustment across spatial units. In other words, neo-

institutionalism seeks to illuminate the more nuanced patterns of divergence within convergence.

Convergent forces thus often encounter countervailing pressures that generate dialectical or

reactive responses. Such countervailing forces, or filters at least, are manifold. They might be

informed by a distinct set of values that predominates within a spatial unit, the domestic political

institutional architecture or the legacy of past policies (Hoberg 2000: 45). On a more abstract

level, this article suggests that the concept of meaning constellations can be a useful starting

point to analyse divergent trends resulting from the spatial and historical embeddedness of

collective actors within the world society. Meaning constellations can broadly be conceived as a

set of mental or ideational schemes, scripts and cognitive frames providing institutions with

sense, importance and, ultimately, legitimacy (Schriewer 2012). The main concern here,

however, is not to explain how exactly such meaning constellations translate universalist

impulses emanating from the world society realm into different adaptive responses. Rather, the

article sets out to inquire into the historically constructed nature of meaning constellations

themselves by drawing on different literatures that have more recently emerged under the

umbrella of one distinct variant of neo-institutionalism: historical institutionalism.

In recent years, the social sciences have witnessed a renewed attention to history, institutions and

ideas (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003; Schmidt 2010). Although it might be somewhat

misplaced to posit a general “historical” or even “ideational” turn, it is hardly contested that

concepts and theories emphasizing the historical construction of political order through

institutional arrangements and legitimizing ideas have regained importance vis-à-vis rather

ahistorical approaches such as rational choice or functionalism. As a consequence, a plethora of

new (and refined traditional) concepts and analytical tools have been developed in order to

explore how and why history matters for a better understanding of contemporary problems in the

political and social world.

The theoretical focal point of this disciplinary reorientation, historical institutionalism, was for

quite some time primarily associated with two analytically intertwined concepts: critical

junctures and path dependence. Both represent the standard model of historical causation, a

distinct explanation consisting of types of mechanisms: Mechanisms of production, which bring

an outcome into existence, and mechanisms of reproduction, which are responsible for its

persistence over time (Stinchcombe 1968). Accordingly, a critical juncture demarcates a brief

period of rupture and far-reaching change, which is succeeded by a period of long lasting

continuity due to path dependence. Meanwhile, this theoretical genre has become much more

“messy”, suggesting a variety of conceptual ideas to explore exogenous and endogenous sources

of change, mechanisms of continuity and change as well as evolutionary patterns of change.

Approaches such as “discursive institutionalism”, American Political Development (APD) or

more recent efforts to establish theories of gradual institutional change all claiming, in essence,

that history matters. However, they highlight different aspects of ideational and institutional

dynamics, thereby moving beyond the standard model of historical causation (Lecours 2005;

Lieberman 2002; Orren and Skowronek 1994; 2004; Pierson 2004; Sanders 2006; Schmidt

2010).

Appreciating this rich, burgeoning theoretical literature, this article inquires into the historical

origins and dynamics of meaning constellations. Using illustrative evidence from research on

comparative federalism, it suggests that meaning constellations are not necessarily

“equilibrated”, uncontested and path-dependent entities. Rather, they are assumed to consist of

multiple ideational “layers” that often have different historical origins. Accordingly, this article

suggests, first, that meaning constellations vary in terms of their internal coherence. While some

meaning constellations have successfully resolved internal contradictions over time, others are

marked through ongoing tensions and frictions. Second, it is argued that meaning constellations

are inherently tied to institutions. Institutions establish authority relationships and, therefore

depend on ideas that furnish them with sense and legitimacy. As such, meaning constellations

can either stabilize institutions as long as ideas and institutions display some degree of

complementarity, or open up opportunities to de-construct the legitimacy of institutionalized

authority relationships. Finally, as the relationship between meaning constellations and

institutions is reciprocal, institutional architectures also shape the dynamic evolutions of meaning

constellations. Institutional characteristics, most notably the degree of institutional coupling,

variously affects continuity and change within and of meaning constellations.

The article is divided into three sections. The first section introduces the concept of a multi-

layered political order to analytically locate the concept of meaning constellations as a

historically constructed set of ideational layers that provide institutions with sense and

legitimacy. The second and the third section introduce different conceptual tools gleaned from

the burgeoning historical-institutionalist literature to show how this theoretical genre can

contribute to analyse the dynamic evolution of meaning constellations.

2. Institutions, Ideas, and Meaning Constellations

Institutions and ideas are fundamental and complementary elements of political (and social)

order. Institutions are commonly defined as formal rules and rather informal, but routinized

operating procedures that shape the behaviour of individual and collective actors (Hall 1986;

North 1990). Unlike rather exogenous, material structures like geography, institutions are

historically constructed and “man-made”. They structure human behaviour as they juxtapose

constraints and opportunities, and they are a consequence of earlier decisions and “resolved

contingencies” (Parsons 2007). Because institutions create order by establishing authority

relationships, they are always, to varying degrees, potentially contested. Institutions unevenly

distribute material resources, thereby favouring some collective actors over others (Mahoney and

Thelen 2010; Orren and Skowronek 2004). An instructive example is the allocation of

competences in federal systems. Institutional frameworks differently enable the federal level and

constituent units (e.g. states, provinces, Lander, or cantons) to act in certain policy fields and

furnish them with the right to extract fiscal resources. While some federal systems assign the

federal level with important jurisdictions, creating a more centralized federal architecture, others

provide for more regional autonomy and decentralization. In doing so, institutionalized authority

relationships between territorially defined tiers of government inherently generate a potential for

conflict and contestation.

These power distributional consequences make the effectiveness and durability of institutions

dependent on legitimizing ideas that promote their acceptance and generate a deeper meaning

(Olsen 2009). In other words, institutional settings rests on a “contingent consent” (Levi 1997)

that is expressed in ideas. Institutions and ideas are, therefore, inexorably linked. While

institutions position individual and collective actors within a structured setting of rules of

constraining and enabling incentives, ideas create an interpretative framework consisting of

affective and cognitive elements into which institutional arrangements are embedded. Ideas thus

provide for the spatial and temporal contextualization of institutions.

Moreover, ideas establish and underpin meaning constellations. Meaning constellations not only

influence how actors interpret the world around them, but also animate their actions. They are

constructed and maintained through communication and discursive processes (Schmidt 2010).

The notion “constellation” indicates the multidimensionality and complexity of such ideational

frameworks (Schriewer 2012). Essentially, ideas inform our beliefs about “what is and what

ought to be” on different levels of abstraction (Schmidt 2010: 3). They take effect on an

ontological level as big normative or ideological belief systems or philosophical ideas (Kuhn

1962), generate collective identities, or “imagined communities”, such as nations (Anderson

1983), evolve as programmatic paradigms like Keynesianism or the “politics of austerity” (Blyth

2002; 2013; Hall 1986, 1993), emerge on a more individual level as cognitive ideas or interest-

based logics and can, finally, inform the evolution of public policies (Kingdon 1984; Sabatier

1988). Depending on the issue at stake, therefore, meaning constellations consist of ideational

components residing on different scales.

A meaning constellation does not necessarily constitute an entirely coherent ideational setup.

Rather, it seems more reasonable to assume that ideational elements often produce

contradictions, inconsistencies and contested assumptions. Empirically, therefore, meaning

constellations vary with respect to the degree of coherence they entail. One reason for this is the

historically constructed and inherently dynamic nature of institutional and ideational components

that constitute social and political orders. One particular current within the broader framework of

historical institutionalism, the American Political Development literature (APD), has highlighted

this feature of political dynamics by suggesting to think about political order as a multi-layered

phenomenon. The notion of layers indicates the multidimensionality of political order. Any

political order is conceived as consisting of different ideational and institutional layers. Because

such layers usually originate from different historical origins, they co-evolve in an asynchronous

pattern (Lieberman 2002; Falleti and Lynch 2009; Orren and Skowronek 1994; 2004; Sheingate

2014).

The relationship between meaning constellations and institutions is mutually interactive and

reciprocal. Just as institutions, ideas and meaning constellations are man-made and historically

constructed. They necessarily coincide with processes of institutionalization and re-

institutionalization, and are an essential feature of institutional dynamics. As interpretative

frameworks, meaning constellations contribute to the creation of institutions. As well, they

animate patterns of institutional dynamics. Consider, again, the example of federalism. Federal

systems establish two tiers of government on a constitutionally entrenched basis. Accordingly,

federalism or, more precisely, the notion of a federation, is frequently conceived of as an

institutional setting, expressed in constitutional provisions that outline the roles and

responsibilities of the federal level and the constituent units. Institutional layers variously

connect the federal government and the constituent units through an allocation of competences,

fiscal arrangements, intergovernmental bodies and a second chamber. They promote either unity

through mechanisms of shared-rule or territorial diversity (and autonomy) through mechanisms

of self-rule. Federal orders that tilt more towards the pole of shared-rule are characterized

through a tightly coupled institutional architecture. Like in Germany, for example, the allocation

of competences is functional rather than dual: While the federal level assumes the responsibility

for legislation in most areas, the main function of constituent units is to implement legislation. At

the same time, constituent units are firmly entrenched into the decision-making process at the

centre, most notably through a strong second chamber and a strongly institutionalized web of

intergovernmental bodies. In contrast, federal orders that lean more towards the pole of self-rule

tend to loosely couple both governmental tiers. Most importantly, they afford the federal level

and the level of constituent units with sufficient legal and fiscal resources to act rather

independently of each other in many areas.

However, the institutional architecture is only one manifestation of a more encompassing

phenomenon that has also an ideational dimension. As indicated in Figure 1, it is therefore

possible to analytically grasp federalism as a multi-layered order (Benz and Broschek 2013;

Broschek 2010). The ideational foundation of federal systems is expressed in meaning

constellations. They represent the foreground and background ideas, schemas or cultural scripts

that inform political discourse in the federal arena. Meaning constellations can be analytically

disaggregated into more fine-grained ideational layers, indicating what federalism is supposed to

mean in a given context and what goals and purposes it should serve. They become relevant, for

example, on the level of constitutional politics whenever supreme courts decide on how certain

provisions have to be interpreted, but also in epistemic communities1, in cultural attitudes on the

1 Canada is among those federations that have an increasing number of think tanks and academic networks that variously promote new directions of federal reform such as the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations (Queen’s University), the Canada West Foundation (Alberta), the Mowat Centre (Ontario) or Idéé Fédérale (Québec). The

level of political and bureaucratic elites as well as in the population. On a more general level,

meaning constellations in federal orders are characterized through the dialectic tension between

unity and territorial diversity (Elazar 1987). This tension permeates all federal systems and in

essence revolves around the question what federalism is and what it ought to be in a given

context. While some federal systems tend to give priority to rather uniform solutions, such as

Germany, Austria or Australia, others emphasize the need to maintain territorial diversity like in

the case of Belgium, Switzerland or Canada.

Figure 1: Federalism as a Multi-Layered Political Order

Source: Adapted from Broschek 2010: 4

As will be shown in the next section, the configuration of ideas that underpins institutional

arrangements can foster institutional continuity and institutional change. Meaning constellations

can become a creative element that yields innovation and variation, but they can also reinforce

institutional reproduction. More generally, they perform as a selection mechanism that

determines what appears as a viable solution in particular contexts, and what does not (Lewis and

Canadian federal government has also been the initiator of an important global think tank to promote the federal idea worldwide, the Forum of Federations.

Ideational layer

Institutional layer

Unity

Shared-rule

Self-rule

Territorial diversity

Steinmo 2012). At the same time, the Janus-faced character of institutions as constraining and

enabling entities shapes the evolution of meaning constellations. Institutions can contribute to

crystallize and cement meaning constellations, and they variously promote or hinder ideational

change.

3. The Dynamic Evolution of Meaning Constellations

3.1 Continuity and Change in Historical Institutionalism

Historical institutionalism has been criticized for being primarily preoccupied with explaining

continuity. When it comes to the question of change, critics contend that historical

institutionalists tend to evoke the force of exogenous “shocks”. Such shocks might open up brief

critical junctures during which “anything goes” and usher in a new “lock-in”, that is a new

institutional or ideational outcome which becomes again perpetuated and stabilized in the long

run. True, rigid conceptualizations of path dependence tend to conform to this standard model of

historical causation. The mechanisms of reproduction are self-reinforcing and generate path

dependent dynamics: Once an effect has come into being, it triggers some kind of positive

feedback effect and becomes a cause itself (Mahoney 2000, Pierson 2004). Accordingly,

concepts that firmly stick to this causal logic might overemphasize continuity while ignoring

patterns of change in the absence of critical junctures. However, this criticism seems to be

misdirected as it ignores the conceptual richness and plurality of concepts within historical

institutionalism.

In fact, historical institutionalism offers a broad palette of concepts acknowledging the deeper

meaning of dynamics. The notion of dynamics captures the time-dependent behaviour of

institutional arrangements or meaning constellations. To sustain order in a changing environment

and to cope with endogenously generated sources of change, institutional development always

comprises patterns of continuity and change. While it is unlikely that we observe either a state of

pure stasis or a state during which every component of an order is in a mode of change,

continuity and change can variously interact over the course of time (Benz and Broschek 2013).

There are episodes where continuity prevails and change takes place only at the margins

(“change within continuity”). Within an overarching path dependent trajectory, it is thus possible

to identify different patterns of gradual institutional and/or ideational change. Any democratic

constitution, for example, confronts exactly this challenge: To provide long term continuity

through the entrenchment of checks or “safeguards” while allowing, at the same time, for rather

gradual constitutional adjustments and innovation (Bednar 2009; 2013). At other times,

however, change becomes a more dominant mode and continuity performs more as a background

condition (“continuity within change”). Caused by an exogenous shock or by accumulating

endogenous pressures, institutional arrangements then might become subject to far reaching,

transformative change.

Ideas and, ultimately, meaning constellations are crucial to understand such differential

dynamics as they represent an important source for both, continuity and change. At times,

meaning constellations have successfully resolved internal contradictions and become a source

for institutional and ideational continuity. If it is possible to firmly entrench a coherent set of

ideational layers early in a historical sequence, and to erase disturbing frames early on, meaning

constellations evolve in rather coherent way, often even appearing as seemingly “given truths”.

Others meaning constellations, however, are marked through ongoing tensions and frictions.

Sometimes ideational layers with different historical start- and endpoints are rather incompatible.

Moreover, ideas and institutions can, as Robert C. Lieberman (2002: 702) has put it, “collide and

chafe” and generate “frictions”. Under such circumstances, ideas become an important source

and mechanism of institutional change. In the following two sections, I discuss different

conceptual tools gleaned from the historical institutionalist literature to demonstrate how this

approach is well equipped to illuminate various forms of historical dynamics.

3.2 Dynamics of Continuity

If it is true that history matters, theorizing the historical evolution of meaning constellations

requires attention to formative processes that make ideational layers self-reinforcing. According

to James Mahoney institutions are reproduced because they correspond with widely shared

orientations and beliefs about what is appropriate or morally correct (Mahoney 2000: 523).

Sequencing and timing provide that actors usually adopt a new institutional layer in a contingent

selection process. Once such a decision has been made, legitimation-based mechanisms promote

the long-term survival of an institutional layer, even if other (but not adopted) institutional

solutions would previously have been considered as more legitimate.

Analysing the historical construction of meaning constellations thus requires to identify starting

points of individual ideational layers. Before a distinct ideational frame, or scheme, becomes

self-reinforcing, a rather broad range of contingent alternatives is conceivable. Once an

alternative has been adopted, the formation and long term stabilization of a meaning

constellation (or some of its constitutive layers at least) gains momentum. Self-reinforcing

ideational layers emerge as a powerful force because they shape the way how actors

intersubjectively interpret the world in different situations and prompt corresponding actions. If

successfully established as a largely coherent set of ideational layers, meaning constellations

unleash a “logic of appropriateness” which is often taken for granted and barely brought into

question (March and Olsen 1984). Identification and the internalization of widely accepted rules

and routines, historically passed on from one generation to the other through socialization,

provide for the endurance of meaning constellations and their institutional environment.

The question of whether or not such meaning constellations evolve on a rather coherent pathway

largely depends on dynamics that happen early in the historical sequence. Considering that

meaning constellations are unlikely to unfold after “clean slates” or in a historical vacuum, but

include layers with different starting points, new ideational layers need to display some

compatibility with already established ones. In addition, there need to be complementarities

between ideational and institutional layers. The historical-institutionalist literature suggests

different mechanisms that generate such dynamics of long-term continuity. First, drawing on

economic models of path dependence, Paul Pierson (2004: 39) has emphasized the role of

adaptive expectations for the formation of belief systems. Adaptive expectations can trigger a

logic of self-fulfilment when actors act in accordance with how they expect others to act. This

process involves individual and social learning, the reduction of cognitive dissonances through

filtering out disconfirming information, and the effective “storage” of collective experiences and

memories. Socially shared ideas therefore, become stabilized in an interactive, self-reinforcing

process that is, in some cases, deliberately reproduced while in other cases it unfolds in a rather

passive and unconscious way.2

A second concept that captures the continuity of ideational components within meaning

constellations is framing. Framing, or frame alignment, is deployed by political elites or social

activists to mobilize support for a policy by showing how it fits within and resonates with the

broader cultural repertoire of a society (Beland 2009; Snow et al. 1986). In doing so, activists

shape the subjective beliefs about appropriate or desirable solutions and, at the same time,

reinforce more general cultural understandings. This is achieved, for example, through frame

bridging or frame extension. Ideologically congruent, but so far disconnected ideational layers

are deliberately linked in public discourse. Moreover, framing can generate a dynamic of value

amplification, that is the “identification, idealization, and elevation of one or more values

presumed basic to prospective constituents but which have not inspired collective action for any

number of reasons” (Snow et al. 1986: 469). This further empowers already existing but

“dormant” ideational layers through intense framing efforts.

The evolution of Germany’s multi-layered federal order is a case in point. While historians have

convincingly demonstrated that ideational frames emphasizing territorial diversity had a long

tradition, these ideational traits – or layers – largely got lost after the first modern federation was

founded in 1871 and gave way to frames more unitary in nature. Territorial diversity was an

important feature of political order in the Holy Roman Empire, and continued to inform political

discourse well into the nineteenth century (Green 2001; 2003; Langewiesche 2000; Sheehan 2 As Pierson (2004: 39) has nicely put it: “Every time we shake hands, the strength of that norm is reinforced”.

1981; Umbach 2002). However, after the critical juncture of 1871 led to the adoption of an

institutional architecture more in line with shared-rule, the unitary ideational frame finally

became dominant. This frame did not only resonate well with the emergence of nationalism and

Prussian hegemony, but was also reminiscent of certain practices that had informed the

behaviour of political elites in the Holy Roman Empire (Lehmbruch 2002).

As a consequence, those older ideational traits stressing diversity ultimately got lost and

disappeared almost entirely from political discourse. It allowed for the emergence of a

comparatively coherent meaning constellation over the course of time, highly compatible with

basic features of the institutional layer of Germany’s federal order. Adaptive expectations

produced positive feedback effects: For example, political parties and party systems have

developed in a pattern that corresponds to the institutional layer by directing the main focus of

partisan competition on the national arena rather than on the level of the Länder (Lehmbruch

1998). Party organizations, moreover, became highly integrated, especially if compared with

other federations. Overall and except for the period between 1933 and 1949, the unitary

federalism in Germany turned out to emerge as a highly resilient, self-reinforcing arrangement

even in the wake of two order-shattering critical junctures (1918 and 1949). Regionalist

orientations within the larger realm of society weakened over the course of the twentieth century,

and Germany further turned into a federation without pronounced federalist values.

The historical construction of meaning constellations not only depends on the nature of

ideational self-reinforcement. As indicated above, ideational layers interact with institutional

layers. To become stabilized, therefore, ideas need to be embedded within an institutional

environment that allows them to flourish and become self-reinforcing (Lecours 2005a).

Individual institutional environments can be more or less favourable towards certain ideas than

others. For example, a federal organization might contribute to and foster the rise of substate

nationalism like in Canada, Spain or Belgium because it provides for an institutionalized arena

and material resources for nationalist parties and movements to promote their cause. Moreover,

institutional arrangements vary in the extent to which they embody rigidities. As a consequence,

some institutional settings are generally more conducive to ideational change than others. Rather

rigid institutional environments can contribute to protect meaning constellations once they have

been successfully established. For example, the difficulty of re-activating alternative frames was

particularly felt on those actors in Germany who attempted to redirect the federal order towards

“Wettbewerbsföderalismus” during the 1990s. As a result of the general ideational shift inspired

by neoliberalism, as well as a growing appetite for more policy autonomy on behalf of fiscally

strong Länder like Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, Germany witnessed an intense debate over

the reform of its federal order. “Frictions” between the ideational and institutional layers,

therefore, became more prevalent. However, the tightly coupled institutional architecture

allowed the majority of small and fiscally weak Länder to repel any serious attacks on the

established order (Broschek 2010; 2012; Ziblatt 2002).

Finally, early self-reinforcement of ideational layers might be threatened because status quo

defending actors attempt to fend off change. Apart from the restoration of the status quo ante,

this can either lead to a “reactive sequence”, that is a sequential, but non-repeating sequence of

events (Mahoney 2000), or a “cyclical sequence” where the outcome is switching back and forth

between two alternatives (Bennett and Elman 2006). In both cases, the historical construction of

a meaning constellation remains caught in a state of flux with no stable long ideational pathway

emerging. Alternatively, however, the sequence of events might also ultimately switch onto a

more stable path due to “negative feedback effects”. In that case, it is the reaction against a new

ideational layer that becomes amplified in the long run.

The meaning constellation of Canadian federalism, for instance, has always been much more

contested and in flux than the one in Germany. Unlike in Germany, the federal order in Canada

has been evolving on institutional pillars stressing self-rule rather than shared-rule. The “Fathers

of the Confederation” who negotiated the terms of the federal order between 1864 and 1867 were

deeply divided over the question of how the new Canadian state should be designed. Some, most

notably conservatives from English-speaking colonies of the center, favoured a unitary system

similar to that of Great Britain, while French-speaking elites, alongside the representatives of

rather peripheralized colonies advocated a federal system. The former finally accepted the

federal compromise on the premise that they thought they had established a highly centralized

federal order. Self-rule was expected to contribute to stabilize a strong federal government

capable of launching national policies without encountering provincial resistance. Advocates for

strong provinces accepted this institutional architecture revolving around the ideal of self-rule

because they assumed it would furnish them with sufficient protection to maintain provincial

autonomy. Thus, the highly ambiguous outcome of the British North America Act was a delicate

attempt to institutionally reconcile both visions (Smith 1988; Vipond 1989).

Despite of, or even because of this ambiguous compromise, the institutional layer of Canada’s

federal order evolved in a path-dependent manner. However, path dependence of the institutional

layer has never been accompanied by a similar, self-reinforcing dynamic on the ideational layer.

Rather, the overall dynamic of Canada’s federal order represents a case of a reactive sequence

(Figure 2). Early on, the meaning constellation in Canada was in flux, permeated by different,

often contradictory schemes and frames. Since the late nineteenth century, there has been an

ongoing evolution and reactivation of competitive frames and myths that attach different

meanings to Canadian federalism in order to provide for a distinct legitimatory foundation. A

pan-Canadian approach has advocated a strong federal government that would be necessary to

cope with internal contradictions. As a reaction, provinces actively cultivated the myth of two

“compact theories” between the 1880s and 1900. The first compact theory contends that Canada

was created in a deliberate act by equal provinces. The second compact theory, which was

framed by leading politicians from Quebec around the turn of the century, insisted that state

formation was, in fact, a compact between two nations, the English and the French (Romney

1999). More recently, Aboriginal peoples have begun to fundamentally challenge these

narratives as well as they self-consciously evoke their treaty rights, many of which predating

Canada as a state. They demand recognition either within the confines of the federal order or

even as entirely separate, sovereign entities on a “nation-to-nation basis” (Bakvis et al. 2009).

Figure 2: Canada: A Rather Incoherent Meaning Constellation

3.3 Dynamics of Change

The historical-institutionalist literature basically offers two conceptual ways to analyse dynamics

of change. First, some approaches highlight the role of critical junctures as a trigger of change.

Such formative developments are not only the starting point for the stabilization of newly

entrenched meaning constellations, but can also perform as an endpoint for a historical legacy.

Second, other approaches stress the importance of gradual modes of change. In both respects,

continuity and change are often two sides of the same coin (Lindner 2003).

Capoccia and Kelemen (2007: 348) define critical junctures as “…relatively short periods of

time during which there is a substantially heightened probability that agents’ choices will affect

English Canada

French Canada

Indigenous Canada

Confederation as pact among equal provinces

Treaty Federalism: Historical treaties between

the sovereignties: a continuous nation-to-nation

relationship

Confederation as pact among two nations

1860s 1880s 1900 1945 1960s 1980s

the outcome of interest”. The reason for this is that the critical juncture softens structural

constraints that are otherwise in place. James Mahoney offers one of the most rigid

conceptualizations of critical junctures. Mahoney (2000: 514) analytically divides this formative

sequence into three “slices”: a period of initial conditions, the critical juncture and a subsequent

period of self-reinforcement. Under a given set of initial conditions, a comparatively broad

range of options is available to alter the status quo. As long as there is no selection from this

menu, far reaching change comprising a variety of possible directions is to be expected. With the

arrival of a critical juncture, however, this state of historical openness comes to an end. The

critical juncture mediates between the menu of choices initially available and the long term

historical outcome since it provides that one option, which is stochastically related to these initial

conditions, is selected and, then, stably reproduced while other options which had been available

before are no longer viable alternatives.

While it is often suggested that critical junctures are triggered by highly contingent, non-

predictable exogenous shocks such as wars and economic crisis, more recent efforts have sought

to refine this concept. From this point of view, critical junctures appear less as mechanisms of

change that occur in a historical vacuum like deus ex machina, but are themselves

contextualized. In fact, a critical juncture might likely transform one or several ideational or

institutional layers of a political order but, at the same time, leaves others unaffected (see also

Falleti and Lynch 2009). Soifer (2012), for example, argues that a critical juncture opens up due

to the existence of what he calls permissive conditions. Permissive conditions may or may not be

short, and they may or may not generate far reaching change. However, they create a temporal

sequence during which actors are more likely to succeed in introducing ideational or institutional

change with long term consequences. The question of change, however, is contingent upon the

simultaneous presence of what he calls productive conditions. Productive conditions are defined

as “the aspects of a critical juncture that shape the initial outcomes that diverge across cases”

(Soifer 2012: 1575). Permissive and productive conditions are both, temporally nested but

logically distinct causes that can be used to distinguish critical junctures form other historical

constellations (Soifer 2012: 1579-81).

Critical junctures are thus essential for many periodization strategies in historically oriented

social research. They help to delineate the starting point of a historical sequence, and, in doing

so, they contribute to shed light on constitutive elements of historical causation: the things that

take place early in a sequence, which become amplified, and, therefore, are “remembered”

(Pierson 2000). In particular, critical junctures are crucial for identifying those moments in time

during which several constitutive layers of a political order might become subject to change

whereas only a small number remains unaffected. Most modern federations are a product of

nation-state formation and came into existence under conditions that qualify as a critical

juncture: The world’s oldest modern federation, the United States, was created in the aftermath

of the American Revolution. Likewise, federalism in Switzerland was a consequence of the

Sonderbund war (1848) and in Germany of the three (Unification Wars) between 1864 and 1871.

In all those cases, it is possible to trace certain patterns of institutional continuity occurring

within a period of order-shattering change.

Under the widely shared perception of a fundamental crisis, established meaning constellations

might be replaced with new ones. For example, Peter Hall has demonstrated how

macroeconomic policy making in the UK has undergone a paradigmatic shift between 1970 and

1989. Accordingly, the coincidence of - in Soifer’s language - permissive and productive

conditions allowed for a “third order change” through which the Keynesian meaning

constellation was replaced with a monetarist one. In a similar vein, Mark Blyth (2002) highlights

the role of economic ideas as powerful “weapons” that essentially produce divergent pathways of

reform in situations of crisis. From this point of view, timing matters a great deal in the

construction of meaning constellations. At least when it comes to the question of when far-

reaching, paradigmatic ideational change might take hold, windows of opportunity opened up by

critical junctures seem to matter. In contrast, if occurring at some later point within a historical

sequence, paradigm shifts are rather unlikely to happen.

While critical junctures represent an important element of historical causation, a burgeoning

literature additionally tackled the question of how change evolves in the absence of rather

exceptional conditions. Indeed, leading scholars have even raised doubts on the usefulness of the

critical juncture approach. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, for example, caution against

too rigid periodization schemes that tend to cut history into neatly ordered slices. In their

framework, which laid the theoretical groundwork for the APD-approach within political

science, any given moment in time is formative in its own right. They emphasize that

“[p]olitical institutions are typically created by other political institutions. As such, they carry

forward incongruities and asymmetries already structured into the status quo. Even in so-called

founding and revolutionary periods, where institutions are (arguably) not created by other

institutions, they will be constructed against the background of their predecssors” (Orren and

Skowronek 1994: 328).

In a similar vein, Kathleen Thelen and Sebastian Karcher (2013) have argued that institutions

can display remarkable resilience during a critical juncture, but reveal significant, slow moving

change afterwards. The basic institutional features of the German Bundesrat, a core element of

Germany’s federal institutional architecture, have remained in place during the critical junctures

of 1918-19 and 1949. Neither was the Bundesrat replaced with a second chamber more in line

with the senate model, an option that has loomed large during the second critical juncture, nor

has it been abolished after World War I. However, the Bundesrat experienced an important

institutional shift between the 1950s and 1970s, when it was furnished with new powers and

became increasingly an instrument of partisan competition. As a consequence, and, at least in

part motivated by growing dissatisfaction with all too simplistic arguments evoking exogenous

shocks and critical junctures as sources of institutional change, this current within the historical-

institutionalist literature has produced a broad array of concepts capturing different patterns of

“change within continuity”.

Moreover, the literature on gradual institutional change has shifted attention from rather

exogenous triggers of change to endogenous sources of change. Instead, frictions among

ideational layers as well as between ideational and institutional layers within a political order are

suggested to generate a demand for change (Smith 1993; Lieberman 2002). Such frictions

resulting from incompatibilities can drive long term change as an attempt to bring political

realties more in line with general norms that certain institutions embody. From that point of

view, democratization, for instance, does not primarily appear as an outcome of an abrupt critical

juncture, but as an ongoing process. While it is true that revolutionary events can bring about

radical shifts, it usually takes an extended period of time until ideas embodied within new

regimes effectively unfold. Hence, the republican revolution in the United States led to the

formation of the first modern constitutional democracy. However, a majority of the population

did not enjoy the democratic principles of the constitution of 1787. As a consequence, mismatch

between the normative aspirations emanating from ideational layers within the newly emerging

meaning constellation on the one, political realities on the other hand animated an ongoing

process of democratization. Frictions were an important driving force for ideational and

institutional change until the present, spurring the gradual elimination of existing discrepancies

that had prevented marginalized groups from enjoying the benefits of full-fledged citizenship

rights (King et al. 2009).

Frictions, therefore, express asynchronies underpinning meaning constellations and

institutionalized political realities that call for resolution. They represent an endogenous

contradictory potential that is, to varying degrees, essentially inherent to every ordering

arrangement. At the same time, however, frictions variously translate into ideational and/or

institutional change. The literature suggests different mechanisms that perform as more

proximate causes mediating between a demand for change (stimulated by exogenous or

endogenous sources) on the one hand, a distinct pattern of change on the other hand. One such

mechanism of change can be found in interactive processes of discourse (Schmidt 2010: 15).

Implicit meaning constellations become explicit and visible through discourse. Discursive

processes are important carriers of ideas providing for the generation, deliberation,

legitimatization and de-legitimatization of institutional layers. According to Schmidt (2010: 16),

“…discursive abilities are essential to explaining institutional change, because they refer to

peoples’ ability to think outside the institutions in which they continue to act, to talk about such

institutions in a critical way, to communicate and deliberate about them, to persuade themselves

as well as others to change their minds about their institutions, and then to take action to change

them, whether by building ‘discursive coalitions’ for reform against entrenched interests in the

coordinative policy sphere or informing and orienting the public in the communicative political

sphere.”

Within an institutionalized public discursive setting, certain mechanisms can, therefore, unleash

a transformative dynamic through deliberation. Such mechanisms then prompt individual and

collective actors to switch to a modus of communicative action (Elster 1998; Habermas 1992).

Discursive processes, moreover, can act as a transmission belt for dynamics of change through

diffusion (Bromely and Suárez forthcoming; Clemens and Cook 1999). Ideas are then replicated

across different places over time. This process can ultimately develop a more transformative

potential if innovative ideas incrementally replace previously established ones on a larger scale.

A closely related mechanism is social learning (Heclo 1974). Ideational variation and diffusion

can, in different ways, foster learning processes among actors, which might trigger the gradual

alteration of an established meaning constellation. Learning initiates reflexive processes on the

level of individual or collective actors through which they draw lessons from experience which

has been made in the past or is demonstrated in other spaces. For example, actors can draw on

unrealised, suppressed or hidden alternatives (“subordinate path dependence”), from solutions

already used in adjacent fields or from their embeddedness in networks of policy fields, which

provide them with potential solutions in order to respond to new challenges (Crouch and Farrell

2004).

Diffusion and learning is contingent upon the existence of different, but discursively connected

institutionalized sites of authority that are capable of experimenting with new solutions. The

Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in the European Union is a case in point. The OMC was

created to spur learning and diffusion among the member states. Within the framework of the

OMC, member states and supranational institutions collaboratively develop common goals (e.g.

full employment, social inclusion etc.), but the member states can deploy different policy

instruments. They report on their achievements on a regular basis and participate in a peer

reviewed assessment procedure to facilitate “learning from difference” (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008).

Other federations, most notably Australia, have recently adopted similar frameworks to nudge

ideational change (Fenna 2012).

Another example is policy diffusion in federal systems. The public and universal health care

system in Canada was invented by the first socialist government on Canadian soil in the province

of Saskatchewan. This dynamic was triggered by the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth

Federation) government’s implementation of universal hospital insurance in 1947, which

provided all residents with encompassing hospital services. Although British Columbia and

Alberta followed the Saskatchewan model and introduced similar programs, the federal

government was reluctant to offer a shared-cost arrangement since a majority of the provinces

still refused to support federal action. Almost ten years later, however, attitudes among the

provinces had shifted and a majority now favoured federal support. As a consequence, Ottawa

passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act in 1957. Four years later universal

hospital insurance plans existed in every province. The diffusion and transformation of medicare

revealed a similar dynamic. Again, it was the CCF government in Saskatchewan which

introduced a universal insurance plan on the provincial level in 1962, despite massive protest

from local physicians. Although resistance mounted in a twenty-three-day doctors’ strike, the

government successfully implemented the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Act in the

same year. Just four years later, in 1966, the federal government announced the Medical Care

Insurance Act, which worked as a catalyst for the Canada-wide distribution of universal and

comprehensive health care services. By 1971, all provinces had implemented universal health

plans, which vary with respect to their generosity, but all conform to the basic principles of the

Saskatchewan model (Banting 2005).

Finally, another interesting mechanism of gradual change is conversion. Conversion actually is a

pattern of institutional rather than ideational change. However, for this type of institutional

change to be successful, ideational change is a necessary precondition. Conversion is

characterized through the changed enactment of existing rules due to their strategic redeployment

(Mahoney and Thelen 2010: 16). While institutions that become subject to conversion remain

formally the same, actors change the way the rules expressed in an institution are interpreted.

This presupposes considerable ambiguity and discretion over how a certain rule is to be applied,

and it highlights how different ideational frames can be used to challenge and, ultimately, change

the scope and content of institutional provisions. Conversion is a frequently observed

phenomenon in federal systems, where it is often difficult to ascertain the exact boundaries

between the federal level and the lower level units (provinces, Lander, cantons etc.). In Canada,

for example, the federal government has cultivated the so-called spending power doctrine,

claiming that it is in the legal position to introduce programmes that are actually falling under

exclusive provincial jurisdiction such as education or social policy. Although the spending power

is nowhere explicitly mentioned in the Canadian constitution and provinces often oppose

unilateral federal action, Ottawa gave several ambiguous constitutional provisions a very wide

interpretation to justify its activities (Broschek 2012).

Just as in the case of the dynamics of continuity, it is important to see how ideational layers

interact with institutional layers within a political order. Institutional layers, as mentioned above,

significantly shape the way how ideational change can unfold. In other words, institutional layers

also contextualize the mechanisms of ideational change. As a consequence, institutional

arrangements can variously contain or promote the diffusion of ideas within and between

political orders. Tightly coupled federations, such as Germany, have only a limited built-in

capacity to promote diffusion. The Länder’s main function is to implement legislation rather than

to autonomously legislate within a broad range of policy areas.3 This institutional setup

inevitably reduces opportunities for policy innovation and experimentation. As a consequence,

critical junctures might become an important precondition for change as they herald a brief

episode during which institutional constraints are relaxed.

Vice versa, change in loosely coupled institutional architectures is less dependent on such

extraordinary circumstances. All things being equal, loosely coupled institutional settings 3 Education policy represents an important exception to the rule.

represent a more change-conducive environment for mainly three reasons. First, they offer

change seeking agents more targets to induce change through dissemination of new ideas

(Clemens and Cook 1999). As they provide individual units with more leeway for

experimentation, they establish better institutional prerequisites to promote diffusion. Second,

loosely coupled architectures offer institutionalized exit options, allowing entrepreneurial agents

eager to challenge the status quo to bypass institutional veto points. While German federalism,

for example, often forces political actors from both governmental tiers in a system of joint-

decision making, an institutional arrangement that tends to become an institutional trap from

which there is no unilateral escape (Scharpf 1988), more loosely coupled federal architectures

afford them with a broader set of institutional options to pursue their goals. Third, loosely

coupled architectures not only offer more exit options for entrepreneurial agents to bypass

institutional veto points, but also entail a greater dose of ambiguity with respect to the question

of how competences between and among different sites of authority are distributed. As Pierson

(2004: 163) notes,

“[w]here demarcations of authority are ambiguous [as in case of loosely coupled institutional

architectures, JB], original designers may be less capable of sustaining control over long-term

paths of institutional development”.

Ambiguity makes institutional provisions more vulnerable because they are open to different

interpretations as to what they exactly mean. As a consequence, change seeking actors can

cultivate a new rationale for how institutional architectures allocate authority, or even establish a

competing “rationalizing myth” to challenge well-established ideational codes. To take up again

the example of Canadian federalism: Canada’s founding fathers were only able to settle their

different views on the purpose and nature of the federal state by drafting highly ambiguous

institutional provisions. It was therefore possible to give many provisions pertaining to the

allocation of competences between the federal level and the provinces a wide interpretation. This

lack of clarity allowed provincial politicians to successfully challenge the highly centralized

constitutional scheme, and to redirect the federal system on a more decentralized pathway over

time.

4. Conclusion

A growing body of literature has emphasized the role of ideas to make sense of social and

political order in a world characterized through the dissolution and redrawing of traditional

boundaries. Within the context of a globalizing world, the concept of meaning constellations

points to the simultaneity of convergent and divergent processes. On the one hand, the

transformative impact of accelerating diffusion processes within an increasingly connected, yet

still institutionally, culturally and territorially fragmented world society has facilitated the

convergence of ideational norms across space and time. On the other hand, these processes do

not unfold within a historical vacuum, therefore prompting contextualized, sometimes path

dependent and, ultimately, divergent patterns of re-adjustment (Schriewer 2012). Perhaps it has

never been more obvious than today that we do live in a world characterized through what Ernst

Bloch (1985 [1935] has observed in the Weimar Republic in Germany between 1919 and 1933:

The Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen, that is the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous,

between progressive, avant-gardist and highly reactionary developments. As has been

demonstrated in this article, the concept of meaning constellations offers a useful point of entry

into the analysis of what has been called the “global/local problematique”.

The historical-institutionalist literature in comparatively engaged social sciences offers valuable

analytical and theoretical tools to inquire into the historically constructed nature of meaning

constellations. This is particularly true if one takes into account more recent theoretical

developments that seek to move the theoretical discussion beyond the standard model of

historical causation. While this standard model puts a strong emphasis on periodization strategies

seeking to cut history into neatly ordered periods demarcated by rather brief critical junctures

and long-lasting pathways of continuity, other variants of historical institutionalism have

highlighted the ongoing simultaneity of continuity and change in multi-layered orders.

Considering different temporal logics which might even be nested, therefore, appears to better

reflect the complexity of ideational and institutional dynamics in a globalizing world.

Accordingly, meaning constellations consist of multiple ideational layers, which originate from

different historical contexts. To form a rather coherent meaning constellation, it is necessary to

partially erase incompatible or even contradictory layers during a formative period. Under such

circumstances, meaning constellations can become quite powerful scripts that are difficult to de-

construct because they appear as “given truths” and shape the behaviour of actors through a

“logic of appropriateness” (March and Olsen 1984). In important respects, the unitary meaning

constellation which has been evolving as an essential component of the federal order in

Germany, reveals such a historical pattern. The case of federalism in Canada, however,

demonstrates that asynchronies can persist and even increase over the course of time. A meaning

constellation, then, lacks a sufficient degree of internal coherence due to frictions and mismatch

among ideational layers as well as between the ideational and institutional layers that constitute a

federal order. As a consequence, an institutionalized order experiences ongoing change even in

the absence of highly contingent critical junctures.

In addition, it has been demonstrated that the degree of institutional coupling affects the dynamic

evolution of meaning constellations. For various reasons, tightly coupled architectures appear to

be less conducive to change than rather loosely coupled architectures. The latter offer more

scope for change seeking actors to contest established interpretations over the meaning and

implication of a given rule, furnish different sites of authority with ample resources to test

experimental innovations and, finally, tend to limit the power of status quo defending actors due

to institutionalized exit options. Taken together, the internal coherence as well as the institutional

environment of meaning constellations, therefore, should be considered as analytical and

theoretical starting point to speculate on the divergence of reactive responses to world society

dynamics in different spatial contexts.

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