ABSTRACT This paper develops the supply chain of economic ideas framework to address how institutional networks coordinate to achieve both stability and change in economic policymaking, arguing that both are products of the same institutional processes with coherence emerging through differentiation rather than convergence. A quantitative text analysis of 233 documents from the Federal Reserve, Economic Reports of the President, and Joint Economic Committee (1945–2024) reveals that the transition from Keynesianism to neoliberalism in the USA occurred through a reconfiguration of the governing institutional network rather than wholesale replacement of the paradigm; that the Federal Reserve anchored neoliberalism's core objective through vertical integration whilst supporting institutions diverged substantially; and that the paradigm's coherence persisted through the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, providing a criterion for distinguishing paradigmatic reorganisation from genuine paradigmatic change. The framework thus provides a means to assess whether contemporary political challenges to economic governance represent a surface‐level reorganisation of existing policies or a fundamental paradigmatic transformation.
Wood et al. (2026) studied this question.