Staking the Frame of a Feminist Discursive Institutionalism

This essay proposes an integrated discursive institutionalism as a framework for feminist political analysis. Both historical institutionalism and discourse analysis have merits and limitations, and both perspectives complement each other and offer solutions to their respective deficiencies. Traditionally there has been a strong demarcation between the two perspectives. A common way to divide both approaches is between investigating “causal regularities” and “understanding meaning.” I argue that a feminist institutionalism needs to deconstruct the dichotomy of causal explanation versus meaning and description and to reformulate the concept of causality. There is no adequate explanation without “meaning,” and the stretching of institutionalism toward “ideas” exemplifies this inadequacy. © 2009, The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.