For an idea so central to the governance of states and markets, austerity’s intellectual history is both short and shallow. There is no well worked out “theory of austerity” in economic thought that extends back in time to some foundational statements that became more systematized and rigorous over time as there is, for example, with trade theory. We have instead what David Colander has called a “sensibility” concerning the state, embedded in liberal economics from its inception, that produces “austerity” as the default answer to the question, what should we do when markets fail?

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 264