Globalists

The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism

Quinn Slobodian

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780674244849
  9780674979529
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674919808
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: History

George Louis Beer Prize Winner
Wallace K. Ferguson Prize Finalist
A Marginal Revolution Book of the Year

"A groundbreaking contribution…Intellectual history at its best."
—Stephen Wertheim, Foreign Affairs

Neoliberals hate the state. Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level. It was a project that changed the world, but was also undermined time and again by the relentless change and social injustice that accompanied it.

"Slobodian's lucidly written intellectual history traces the ideas of a group of Western thinkers who sought to create, against a backdrop of anarchy, globally applicable economic rules. Their attempt, it turns out, succeeded all too well."
—Pankaj Mishra, Bloomberg Opinion

"Fascinating, innovative…Slobodian has underlined the profound conservatism of the first generation of neoliberals and their fundamental hostility to democracy."
—Adam Tooze, Dissent

"The definitive history of neoliberalism as a political project."
—Boston Review

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Thinking in World Orders
• 1. A World of Walls
• 2. A World of Numbers
• 3. A World of Federations
• 4. A World of Rights
• 5. A World of Races
• 6. A World of Constitutions
• 7. A World of Signals
• Conclusion: A World of People without a People
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index