Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Ideas and discourse are essential to politics as well as to political analysis. In this masterful book, Vivien A. Schmidt provides a sweeping appraisal of the many different ways in which scholars in political science and adjacent fields explain how ideas and discourse are used by policymakers and everyday citizens to understand the world, to influence others, and to mobilize for collective action. In so doing, she brings together, for the first time in one place, the many facets of her highly original approach to the power of ideas and discourse, developed over the past quarter-century under the name of discursive institutionalism. Schmidt’s masterful book not only serves to constitute the very large “field” of ideational and discursive approaches falling under the umbrella of discursive institutionalism. It also, as in the subtitle-outlines her distinctive discursive institutionalist perspective, highlighting her philosophical premises and methodological preferences while delineating the boundaries with competing approaches, including rationalist, historical, and sociological institutionalism. Schmidt’s ultimate goal is to promote a methodological pluralism which recognizes that because political reality is complex, it requires a diversity of perspectives, with agents’ contextualized ideas and discursive interactions at its core.</jats:p>