Ideas gain influence only through organizational architecture and network building

Evidence

While the starting point of this chapter was that ideas matter, we have not focused on the nature of those ideas per se. Instead we illuminated the conditions in which ideas can be made to matter. Ideas do not float nor do they do things by themselves. They are championed, carried, inscribed organizationally and institutionally, fought over, appropriated, and interpreted. Only then can they come to have an impact. This chapter has shown the performance of the conditions necessary for ideas to have an impact transnationally—a performance, in large part, comprising organization building, network creation, and community integration. The deployment of an organizational architecture is a necessary precondition for the influence of ideas. Only through the careful work of reconstructing lines of funding, organizing, network building, and influence framing can we understand the globalization of neoliberalism as a coherent body of thought and of self-conscious policy activism. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 605

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is the thesis that organizational infrastructure, not intrinsic intellectual merit, is what makes ideas travel and matter.
• XREF: Connects to Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory and to the broader sociology-of-knowledge claim that ideas need carriers. — connects to: Ideas become performative only when institutions carry and enact them — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 539; Networked mutual influence, not heroic individuals, explains neoliberal thought formation — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 13; Social network analysis prevents isolating ideas from political and business links — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 10 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Networked mutual influence, not heroic individuals, explains neoliberal thought formation #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 13
• Social network analysis prevents isolating ideas from political and business links #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 10
• Organizations form as catalysts where specialized power media crystallize #corroborates (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 780
• Influence generalization requires centralization through significant roles or objectives #expands (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 739