Success story or tall tale? Discursive cooperation and economic restructuring in Iceland

Darius Ornston

Review of International Political Economy, 2025, vol. 32, issue 1, 154-176

Abstract: Political economists have long recognized the power of ideas to influence economic adjustment by shaping public policy and fostering inter-firm coordination. This article extends this argument, demonstrating how ideas can have a direct and unmediated impact on economic restructuring. More specifically, it identifies discursive cooperation, or collective storytelling, as a distinct logic of collective action, separate from policy concertation and inter-firm coordination. Examining twenty first century Iceland, this article illustrates how shared narratives accelerated the country’s movement into financial services and tourism by facilitating the diffusion of new business models and attracting external resources. Absent inter-firm coordination, policy concertation, or supportive public policies, however, stakeholders struggled to invest in public goods. Instead of incremental upmarket movement, Iceland was characterized by volatile boom-bust dynamics. In illustrating the transformative power of storytelling in small open economies, this article simultaneously highlights the perils of relying on discursive cooperation alone.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2024.2399035 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:32:y:2025:i:1:p:154-176

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2024.2399035

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().