Varieties of ignorance in neoliberal policy: or the possibilities and perils of wishful economic thinking

We might be tempted to view the recent efforts by political leaders to cultivate certain convenient forms of economic ignorance as characteristic of a novel ‘post-truth’ age. This article suggests instead that we take this troubling trend as an invitation to examine the role of ignorance more generally in political economic thinking and practice. Whereas many scholars have treated uncertainty and other unknowns as external challenges that can be resolved through expertise and learning, this article instead endogenizes ignorance, treating it as a key tool in the development of policy knowledge. Drawing on archival material from the early Reagan and Thatcher years, this article examines a moment when many of the contemporary assumptions about economic ignorance and strategies for coping with it were first developed and tried out. I introduce a typology of the practical role of ignorance in economic policymaking, ranging from wishful thinking, to confusion, fudging, denial and puzzling. Mapping the space between learning and lying, this article contends that ignorance plays two very different roles in the trajectory of many economic policies, allowing policymakers to discount the political effects of their economic actions while also opening up the possibility of genuine reflexivity about the limits of expertise.