Contingency explanations of policy fall short when key actors were doctrinaire neoliberals

Evidence

In some cases, the backlash against ideational explanations arguably goes too far. Kim Phillips-Fein, for example, writes in her excellent book that New York’s civic leaders did not think of ways of managing debt through austerity “because they had read the free-market critiques of economist Milton Friedman or the antigovernment philosophizing of University of Virginia professor James Buchanan.” Yet the crux of her narrative is the dogged refusal of Gerald Ford, William Simon, and Alan Greenspan to bail out the city’s debt. A story of contingency hits a three-person wall which included a long-time devotee of Ayn Rand in Greenspan and, in Simon, an MPS member who wrote a neoliberal tract with a foreword written by Hayek himself. We need not choose between contingency, materialist forces, and the influence of ideas—the forms of explanation can and must work together. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 205

Categorization

• XREF: The three-person wall of Greenspan/Simon/Ford and the NY fiscal crisis connects to earlier method debates on ideational versus materialist explanation across this book and the broader historiography literature. — connects to: Flexibility, not a fixed policy list, defines the neoliberal program’s core — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 206; Contingency scholars reject theoretical coherence in explaining neoliberal policy; A scholarly school explains neoliberalism’s rise as ad hoc contingency without theoretical coherence — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 204 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A scholarly school explains neoliberalism’s rise as ad hoc contingency without theoretical coherence #corroborates (0.90) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 204
• Contingency scholars reject theoretical coherence in explaining neoliberal policy #corroborates (0.85)
• Scholars dispute whether ideas or class interest explain neoliberalism’s internal cohesion #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 121