Refining domestic politics theories of IPE: A societal approach to governmental preferences

Domestic politics theories of international political economy and the recent disruptions in international cooperation and trade apparently induced by domestic discontent have shown the crucial role domestic forces play in influencing governmental preferences. This article contributes to this theoretical school, first, by assessing seminal works on the ideational, material, and institutional dimensions of domestic politics, and second, by conceptualising the ‘societal approach’ to fill a major gap in domestic politics theorising. The societal approach asks under which conditions value-based societal ideas, domestic institutions, and material interests matter in shaping governmental preferences. When do ideas prevail over interests and vice versa? How do they interact with each other and with domestic institutions? The societal approach includes all three domestic variables as potential driving forces for governmental preferences and conceives them both as individual and as interacting forces. Most importantly, it complements domestic politics theories by proposing hypotheses on the conditions for the influence of each variable on governmental preferences. The article brings together previously conceived parts of the societal approach and considerably expands it.