Breaking promises and raising taxes: rhetorical path dependence and policy dysfunction in time |
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Authors: | Wesley Widmaier |
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Institution: | Griffith University Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia |
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Abstract: | Where historical institutionalists have stressed the path-dependent efficiencies that stabilise policy orders, their rationalist assumptions have increasingly obscured the scope for instability. To redress such oversights, I integrate historical institutionalist insights regarding incremental change with discursive institutionalist analyses of interpretive tensions in a way that accords with Daniel Kahneman’s analyses of shifting ‘fast’/principled and ‘slow’/cognitive biases. The resulting framework posits that initial principled constructions of policy ideas are undermined where their subsequent ‘intellectual conversion’ limits flexibility and legitimacy. Empirically, I contrast the practices of George HW Bush and John Howard, as each broke anti-tax promises. Bush’s intellectual justifications undermined his credibility, but Howard’s principled justifications enabled his success. This analysis has implications for theories of institutional agency and dysfunction. |
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Keywords: | Rhetoric crisis leadership historical institutionalism discursive institutionalism |
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