Broader neoliberal shifts enabled austerity’s return to economic common sense

Evidence

Despite their finding German homes and American pied-à-terres, appreciating why these decidedly local ideas were able to spring to global prominence in the current crisis requires an engagement with what I term austerity’s enablers: broader ideological and institutional shifts that bit-by-bit brought austerity back to the status of economic common sense after it had been relegated so decisively to the status of old-time religion. … They were part of a much broader intellectual shift in economics and economic policy worldwide that was part and parcel of the tearing up of the Keynesian instruction sheet in the 1970s. It is the rise of these neoliberal ideas that enabled the return of austerity as the commonsense thing to do in a slump. Remove these ideas from the intellectual fossil record and it is impossible to jump from the battered and isolated state pro-austerity ideas found themselves in by the 1960s to their modern instantiations. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 406

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘austerity’s enablers’ — the ideological and institutional shifts that restored austerity to common sense status.
• XREF: connects to: The June 2010 G20 marked the global policy shift from Keynesian stimulus to austerity — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 13; Austerity has twin histories of intellectual pedigree and empirical record; Europe’s Social Democrats and Christian Democrats embraced austerity as crisis policy — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 168 (+22 more)

Broader Connections

• Economic theory gives austerity legitimacy that complements raw state coercion #corroborates (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 861
• Neoliberalism pivoted from the economy to the framework encasing it #expands (0.80) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 88
• The gold standard naturalized austerity by removing it from political dispute #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1302
• Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice. #expands (0.78) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 135
• Austerity-bred consensus sustains further austerity in a self-reinforcing loop #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 235
• Austerity is economically irrational yet politically rational for preserving capitalism #qualifies (0.75)
• Austerity is not a coherent doctrine but derivative of scattered state-role beliefs #complicates (0.73) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 66
• Neoliberal austerity has fused with speculative faith into a new capitalist spirit. #expands (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 76
• Austerity’s core principles predate the twentieth century by a century of classical economics #qualifies (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 718
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 654
• Austerity’s real function is permanent structural extraction from many to few #expands (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 657