Endogenizing the limits of ideas: a ‘how-to’ guide to understanding ignorance and failure in ideational political economy

This commentary essay makes the case for a different way of conceptualizing the role of ideas in political economy by arguing for the need to endogenize the limits of ideas—recognizing the key roles played by ignorance and failure in economic policymaking. The central role played by the limits of ideas poses a challenge for much ideational political economy scholarship, which has not yet adequately recognized their place. This challenge is particularly acute for classical ideational political economy—the scholarship most directly descended from Peter Hall’s (1993) work on policy paradigms and social learning. Yet the recent ‘practice turn’ in political economic scholarship also has its own blind spots regarding the limits of ideas, in large measure because it continues to assume that failure and ignorance are temporary problems that are generally resolved through social learning. Instead, I show that ignorance and failure are not only widespread and often persistent, but that they can also be functional to economic policymaking: a feature rather than a bug in political economic theory and practice.