On the Political Usefulness of Credit: Theorizing the Credit State

• In Event: 3246 - The Politics of Public Policy

Abstract

Recent work has revealed that credit allocation is a key aspect of U.S. political economy. This paper offers a novel theoretical justification for why credit allocation an especially useful political tool in the U.S. Specifically, the paper argues that core qualities of credit – the fact that operates primarily as a space of social classification – gives credit a particular usefulness in a governmental context characterized by a high level of institutional conflict and political fragmentation. To make this case, the paper opens with a discussion of allocative credit as part of American economic and social policy, and then explains how credit’s classificatory nature gives a kind of fiscal, budgetary, and ideological flexibility, which together I characterize as a kind of political lightness. The paper next discusses the fractured U.S. political context in which that lightness of credit has proven especially useful. It closes with a discussion of the special ramifications of this political lightness for racial inequality.

Author

• Sarah Quinn, University of Washington