Consensus, Dissensus and Keynesianism during the Economic Crisis

During the recent economic crisis, Keynesian ideas about fiscal stimulus briefly seemed to form the basis of a new expert consensus in Europe and elsewhere about how to deal with demand shocks, which however soon collapsed into a continuing dissensus, with important consequences for policy. Existing understandings of ideas have difficulty in explaining this outcome, as do more conventional bargaining accounts. In this article, we propose that sociological arguments about professions and spaces of political contention as ecologies provide a better understanding of the puzzle of Keynesianism’s rise and decline. The internal dynamics of prestige and status within the profession of economics intersected with policy arguments between such as Germany and the US in such a way as to make macroeconomic policy a ‘hinge’ issue, over which coalitions in both ecologies contended. This explains how Keynesian economists and political actors worked together in the first phase of the crisis to advocate for and implement fiscal stimulus. It also explains why aggrieved policy actors, who did not favor stimulus, had the means and motivation to help dis- rupt the apparent consensus in the second phase of the crisis, by promoting dissident economists, so as to increase their own freedom of action.