An ideology’s partial eclipse can strengthen its authority through blame deflection

Evidence

What Karl Polanyi once said about the failed ideas of an earlier era also rings true in this instance: by the standards of the IMF, the Washington Consensus’ “spectacular failure … did not destroy its authority at all. Indeed, its partial eclipse may have even strengthened its hold since it enabled its defenders to argue that the incomplete application of its principles was the reason for every and any difficulty laid to its charge.” Once again, when it comes to austerity, mere facts seldom get in the way of a good ideology. And a good ideology, in the absence of supporting facts, can always supply a few good models to generate those facts when needed. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 445

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Polanyi’s observation about failed ideas, an intellectual-history thread central to Mattei and the austerian genealogy. — connects to: The same ideology can be blamed or celebrated depending on political need; Attribution of blame to demonic forces displaces institutional responsibility — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 536
• ADDENDUM: The claim that failed austerity gets blamed on incomplete implementation parallels the scapegoating logic discussed across austerity histories.
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion that failure can strengthen an ideology’s hold by generating adaptive blame-deflection is a genuinely counterintuitive claim about how policy dogmas survive disconfirmation.

Broader Connections

• The same ideology can be blamed or celebrated depending on political need #expands (0.85)
• Attribution of blame to demonic forces displaces institutional responsibility #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 536