Abstract

REYNARES, Juan Manuel. Institutional Change, Discourse and Politics. A Poststructuralist Research Proposal. Desafíos [online]. 2017, vol.29, n.2, pp.199-236. ISSN 0124-4035.  https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/desafios/a.4022.

The article deals with the discussion about the relation between institutions and discourse in political science. To do so, it recovers some contributions from discursive institutionalism that have outlined the way in which the symbolic dimension of politics allows for the comprehension of institutional change - something underestimated by most mainstream perspectives in institutionalism. The article shows how the ontological and epistemological assumptions of mainstream institutionalism limit the notion of politics to the achievement of consensus and providing reasons by communicative rationality of given actors, which, in turn, diminishes the contingent and contested character of politics. As a result, the article puts forward a poststructuralist perspective which underlines the constitutive decentered and conflictive character of social objectivity in the struggle among antagonistic hegemonic projects. Rhetorical tropes such as metaphor and metonymy are emphasised as resources in order to understand the dynamics of meaning displacement and re-totaliation through which institutional change is produced. The article concludes with how some of these concepts can be used in the analysis of state reform in the province of Córdoba, Argentina, between 1999 and 2000.

Keywords : Institutional change, discourse; rhetoric, poststructuralism, state reform.

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