Universities, media, and civil service are claimed to converge on a shared line without central coordination, because status within them rewards the same conclusions.
Yarvin coined it in 2008. Neoreactionary in origin and outside mainstream political science, and included as the structural counterpart of the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model, which makes a parallel claim about convergence without conspiracy from the other direction.
In practice
- A professor, a leader writer and a policy adviser reach the same conclusion in the same month without having met, and each would say they reasoned to it independently.
- Three broadsheets take three positions on the same energy policy in the same week, which is what a converging mechanism should have suppressed.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is status competition without central coordination: career and prestige within universities, media and the civil service are awarded by the same audience, so positions converge without anyone issuing instructions.
- In its favour
- The convergence it points at is real enough to have been noticed from several directions, including the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model from the left, which proposes filters rather than coordination.
- Against it
- It is neoreactionary in origin and outside mainstream political science, offers no measurement of the convergence it asserts, and is unfalsifiable as stated, since disagreement among elite institutions can always be read as disagreement within the line.
- Standing
- Neoreactionary in origin and outside mainstream political science. Included as the structural counterpart to the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model, which advances a parallel claim about convergence without conspiracy from the opposite direction.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works