Critical junctures beyond the black box

Abstract

Studies of institutional change identify critical junctures from the position of hindsight. But this perspective prioritises antecedent factors that downplay the role of agency around moments of potential change. This article looks at changes in the ways in which agents use temporal language to identify events or periods as moments of (possible) juncture. It combines quantitative and qualitative methods of text analysis, drawing on a corpus of British parliamentary speeches from 1811–2019. The article first analyses changes in the strategic use of the term crisis over time, paying particular attention to significant shifts in its politicisation and temporalisation. It then identifies three distinct components to the contestation of crises: over their identification, evaluation and proposed prescriptions. We suggest that studies of critical juncture ought to focus more on the use of temporal language around possible junctures to better understand the political dynamics at moments of heightened uncertainty.