The return of Keynesianism? Exploring path dependency and ideational change in post-covid fiscal policy

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The return of Keynesianism? Exploring path dependency and ideational change in post-covid fiscal policy

The aim of this article is to explore the nature of policy change in the domain of public finance (fiscal policy) in the wake of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic as well as for a post-Covid era. It draws upon the literatures of path dependency and ideational change in public policy to consider three broad questions: (1) whether the pandemic really is a critical juncture for policy change; (2) whether the extant neoliberal austerity paradigm has faced lasting ideational displacement by Keynesianism; and (3) whether Covid-19 has really punctuated the existing fiscal policy equilibrium or rather served as a path-clearing accelerator of public finance trends that were already underway. The article then
suggests three potential future trajectories: Keynesian, neoliberal, and mixed/other to consider how the path of policy change might materialize in the fiscal realm in the post-Covid era.

This article was published at https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/1/68/6513363

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Dr Usman W. Chohan

Dr. Usman W. Chohan is an international economist and academic who was one of the founding Directors of CASS, now serving as Advisor to President CASS on Economic Affairs & National Development. He is among the Top 100 Authors across all subjects & disciplines (out of 1.2 million authors) on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), which is the largest open repository of knowledge in the world. At CASS, he has authored six books in the past five years: (1) Public Value & Budgeting: International Perspectives, (2) Reimagining Public Managers: Delivering Public Value, (3) Public Value and the Digital Economy, (4) Pandemics and Public Value Management, (5) Activist Retail Investors and the Future of Financial Markets (co-edited), and (6) Public Value and the Post-Pandemic Society, all published with Routledge. In the academic realm, his research has been cited widely, and Dr. Chohan has testified before various authorities based on his technical expertise. Dr. Chohan has a PhD in economics from UNSW Australia, where his doctoral work led to the world’s first multidisciplinary synthesis of independent legislative fiscal institutions, and an MBA from McGill University (Canada), with coursework at MIT-Tsinghua. His previous practitioner experience includes working at the National Bank of Canada and the World Bank. He is also the President of the International Association of Hyperpolyglots (HYPIA), the leading organization worldwide for hyperpolyglotism and whose membership consists of the speakers of six or more languages. He appears frequently on domestic and international television, podcasts, and lecture series in various languages. He is also trained in South Asian musicology and plays the sitar. In addition, Dr. Chohan has maintained an annual reading challenge of 100 books every year since 2011. Dr. Chohan’s forthcoming seventh and eighth books are titled Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): Multidisciplinary Perspectives (edited), and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): Innovation and Vulnerability in the Digital Economy (co-edited).