The absence of controversy is itself self-reinforcing.

Evidence

The question now is not necessarily how these values and beliefs ended up at the cognitive level accompanying the small-fields policy – explanations for that can be found in the reasons for implementing the policy. But the real issue from a path-dependence perspective is that those values and beliefs got stuck there ever since, and, perhaps even more interestingly, that they managed to dominate the other three levels of social structure, thereby being a sufficient cause for institutional path dependence. The notion proposed here provides an explanation for the first issue by arguing that there has just not been a sufficient controversy to cause a shift at the cognitive level. In other words, the absence of a controversy serves as a self-reinforcing mechanism. The second issue can only partially be resolved by the proposed notion. Locked-in ethics and values can, apparently, prevail over social dynamics harboring potential or actual controversies. From that perspective, it could be concluded that cognition, hence perceptions, are perhaps harder to subject to a controversy and change than alliances, legitimacy and resources are. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 1088

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the usual lock-in story: inertia here isn’t costly switching or vested interests but an argument that never gets loud enough to require answering.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘Nothing is harder to argue with than a debate that never happens’ — the politics of dormancy.
• XREF: Echoes the sociology-of-trust literature’s point that unexamined priors persist because nobody tests them; also resembles the archival-grain claim that common sense reproduces itself when evidence is spare.