Economic crises are ambiguous enough to enable wildly divergent political outcomes.

Evidence

Crises rarely come with an instruction manual. They are moments of daunting ambiguity for both decision-makers and citizens: it is extremely difficult to predict the policy responses they will trigger, as well as the kinds of protest they will unleash. When the stock market unexpectedly collapsed in 2008, nobody guessed that it would spur the outbreak of a populist moment across the Western world. Things could have unfolded entirely differently. The crisis could have caused a paradigm shift among political elites, turning them away from neoliberal economics and generating a new consensus around neo-Keynesian solutions (regulation of financial activity, public investment, expansionary monetary policy, etc.). Most academic commentators were expecting exactly such a shift, and they were quite puzzled by the “strange non-death of neoliberalism.” — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 99

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the “strange non-death of neoliberalism” literature (Crouch) and crisis-brink literature. — connects to: Epochal economic conditions limit but never determine the detailed form of political crises — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 513; Economic structures set limits but never fully determine political outcomes — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 100; Revolutionary conjunctures arise from accumulated overdetermined contradictions, not the economy alone — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 534 (+1 more)
• CANDY: The 2008 crash plausibly could have produced neo-Keynesian consensus but instead bred populism.

Broader Connections

• Epochal economic conditions limit but never determine the detailed form of political crises #corroborates (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 513
• Economic structures set limits but never fully determine political outcomes #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 100
• A conjuncture is a period fused by contradictions into crisis with no fixed outcome #corroborates (0.80)
• Revolutionary conjunctures arise from accumulated overdetermined contradictions, not the economy alone #corroborates (0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 534