Leveraging tools : integrating discourse and ideas into the analysis of EU enlargement of the Western Balkans

Abstract

Recent efforts to develop Discursive Institutionalism’s (DI) analytical toolkit have produced use - ful, well-organized instruments that help researchers decode challenging empirical puzzles and synthesize vast amounts of empirical data into digestible kernels of explanatory insight. In this article, I demonstrate how two tools –Schmidt’s DI tables and the Carstensen and Schmidt’s ideational power triad– can help us better understand the dynamics of institutional change as it relates to the European Integration in the Western Balkans