At the same time, and in contrast to some other discourse approaches
to policy analysis where discourses are more 'free-floating',
DI sets ideas and discourses in their institutional context (Arts and
Buizer, 2009). In doing this, Schmidt (2011) suggests that rather than
seeing the three ‘old new institutionalisms’ as rivals to one another
and to DI as is often the case, RI, HI and SI should instead be treated as
background knowledge to DI, providing “shortcuts to the uncontested
regularities and rationalities of institutionalised behaviour and interactions”
before turning attention to the dynamics and change in institutions.
Institutions – whether understood as incentive-based structures,
historically established patterns or socially constituted rules – “define
the institutional contexts within which repertoires of more or less acceptable
(and expectable) ideas and discursive interactions develop”
(Schmidt, 2008: 314).