ABSTRACT
After a decade of attempts to establish ideational analysis as a legitimate idiom, it appears that much of its success hinges on the question of causality. Do ideas have the power to cause changes in policy or do they rely on a much stronger causal power, one that lies within the world of material interests? Critics of ideational analysis continue to insist that the latter is the case. They criticize ideational analysis for being too fussy in its explanation of how ideas are able to cause change as well as for being unable to eliminate interestbased approaches to the study of political change. Albert Yee is one of the scholars who makes both points. He maintains that, as the first generation of ideational analysis attempts to explain the effects of ideations, the argument seems to be that ideas “shape,” “constrain,” “orient” and “guide” the policy preferences of decision-makers. However, while these depictions are useful, “they do not reveal how ideas and beliefs possess and exercise the capacity to perform all these tasks. How do ideas and beliefs prescribe, shape, constrain, guide, etc. courses of action?” (Yee 1996: 94; see also Blyth 1997; Hansen and King 2001; Lieberman 2002; Parsons 2002).
