The Creation of Shared Understanding: Political and Economic Consensus and the Role of the Market in Transformational Policy Discourse

Exploring contributions in the policy science, political economy and power literatures, this theoretical chapter proposes that a fundamental effect of structural economic and political interactions within, and between, polyarchies — or liberal democracies — has potentially far-reaching consequences related to the capacity for societal change. Furthermore, it argues that the creation of shared understanding between economic and political elites is critical to a comprehension of how structural determinants are purposed by political activity at the pre-agenda phase of the policy process. It is against this consensual backdrop, and the discursive and deliberative narrowness that it produces, that transformational political change exists largely beyond the capacity of policy-makers or the collective will of ordinary citizens; instead it is, almost exclusively, a function of the invisible hand of market forces. In the absence of a global regulatory framework, the long-term consequences of shared understanding between today’s political and economic elites could have profound implications for tomorrow’s global citizens.