Exogenous political shifts, not internal lock-in, can dissolve institutional legitimacy.

Evidence

The PA’s actions were not (entirely) driven by deterministic consequences of earlier choices. The Authority’s de-institutionalization must be attributed to factors beyond its control: its heavy dependence on political support and its legal impotence to define its own tasks. When new political actors took stage, big government became less popular, and railroad deficits were cast into its lap, maintaining high legitimacy became much harder. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 311

Categorization

• XREF: Qualifies the reader’s kept highlights on the PA’s crude numbers-obsession by attributing its decline to factors beyond its control rather than pure path dependence. — connects to: A dead political project can still dominate by default and inertia — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2072; Political settlements shift from impossible to inevitable through historical reversal — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2153