Neo-liberalism

10 Key excerpts on "Neo-liberalism"

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  Liberty Beyond Neo-Liberalism

  A Republican Critique of Liberal Governance in a Globalising Age

  • S. Slaughter(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Questions relate not only to the practical issue of how the legitimacy of neo-liberal governance may be bolstered but also to ethical issues of how the inequality and injustice of economic globalisation can be moderated. It was indicated in the introduction to this book that liberalism is defined by its emphasis on the importance of individual liberty. The broad tradition of liberalism can be understood in many different senses ranging from a type of society, to a political philosophy or to a party political platform. While difficult to pin down, liberalism is a historically developed way of thinking that has emphasized reason instead of tradition, contract rather than status, the present and the future instead of the past, the value and rights of the individual instead of that of existing power-holders, whose claims based on the superiority of cast or creed it challenged. Basically liberalism has been an attitude in defence of the individual man and citizen in defiance of the arbitrary acts of government (Bramstead and Melhuish 1978: xvii). Although this body of thought aspires to promote individual liberty through a democratic and constitutionally defined order that promotes Liberalism and the Consequences of Economic Globalisation 79 non-interference in peoples’ lives by the state, economic prosperity and entrepreneurialism have also been especially prominent parts of the liberal legacy (Gray 1995: 61–3). Liberalism is both a philosophical approach to political life and an ideology that has actually shaped modern political practice both within the state and beyond. In a philosophical sense, liberalism is “a body of ideas about social and political values, the principles that should govern political life, the grounds for political legitimacy” (Richardson 2001: 18). These values defend individual liberty – the belief that each and every adult human is best able to determine their own preferred life without interference from others.

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  Remaking the Global Economy

  Economic-Geographical Perspectives

  • Jamie Peck, Henry Wai-Chung Yeung, Jamie Peck, Henry Wai-Chung Yeung(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Neoliberal politicians will often invoke globalization, as a signifier of powerful and 164 Refiguring Global Rules in many respects unstoppable market forces, in order to advance the case for government sell-offs and privatization, fiscal austerity, financial and labour market deregulation, trade liberalization, welfare cutbacks and so forth. Simultaneously, critics of these policies and opponents of free-market globalization will often pointedly label all such phenomena as evidence of a creeping neoliberal (or, sometimes, American) hegemony. What the former are trying to depoliticize the latter seek to repoliticize – and the use of the label ‘neoliberal’ suits the latter because it is they who wish to underline the political origins and character of the programme. The economic narrative of globalization and the political script of neoliberalism are both, in a sense, compellingly simple. They describe a new world order of untrammelled markets and competitive freedoms in clean lines and uncompromising terms. Implicitly or explicitly, they portray countervailing interests as unrealistic and outmoded. There are, of course, always alternatives to neoliberal political projects, just as there is a vast array of possibilities for organizing and regulating the global economy. Yet it is one thing to recognize the limitations and silences of the scripts of neoliberal globalism, quite another to move beyond these in a way that is conceptually sound and empirically informed. Economic geographers, in particular, have long opposed ‘flat earth’ conceptions of neoliberal globalization, based on unmediated market hegemony, cultural homogenization, institutional convergence and the associated assertion of a ‘one best way’ in corporate governance, economic regulation and social policy.

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  Strategy and Performance of Water Supply and Sanitation Providers

  UNESCO-IHE PhD Thesis

  • Marco Schouten(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  The propagation of the use of private parties and the market mechanism fits within the neo-liberal reform agenda. McCarthy and Prudham (2004: 275) indicated the profound influence of Neo-liberalism on institutions with the following statement: Neo-liberalism is the most powerful ideological and political project in global governance to arise in the wake of Keynesianism, a status conveyed by triumphalist phrases as “the Washington consensus” and “the end of history”. The origins of Neo-liberalism are complex, yet one focal point is that Neo-liberalism is a reaction against Keynesianism during the 1970s (McCarthy and Prudham, 2004). Many governments after World War II adopted the recommendations of Keynes for state intervention into markets. However, in the 1970s, it was perceived that these state interventions were often counterproductive. Markets are complex, and governmental interventions may destabilize the market. This thinking led to a new liberal movement, called Neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism rose to prominence in the USA and the UK during the 1980s under President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher. It also influenced international development thinking through the wide-scale adoption of the so-called Washington consensus. Williamson (1990) invented the term ‘Washington Consensus’ to refer to the lowest common denominator of policy advice being addressed by the Washington-based institutions (like the World Bank and the IMF) to Latin American countries as of 1989. Voigt and Engerer (2002) observe that New Institutional Economics (NIE) has been largely neglected when the neo-liberal thinking was developed. They state (127-128): ... advocates of the New Institutional Economics have not been at the forefront of giving policy advice. A decade into change in Central and Eastern Europe, the Washington consensus seems to have lost much of its attraction.

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  International Institutions And State Power

  Essays In International Relations Theory

  • Robert O Keohane(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  7 explore the operation of reciprocity and examine the issue of institutional change via a comparison of rational-choice and reflective approaches to this issue.

  Neoliberal Institutionalism and Liberalism

  Liberalism is sometimes identified as a belief in the superiority of markets to state regulation of an economy. Thus defined, liberalism would be a highly inappropriate label for my work, which stresses the importance of international institutions, constructed by states, in facilitating mutually beneficial policy coordination among governments.13 Another conception of liberalism associates it with a belief in the value of individual freedom. Although I subscribe to such a belief, this commitment of mine is not particularly relevant to my analysis of international relations. One could believe in the value of individual liberty and remain either a realist or neorealist in one's analysis of world politics.

  But liberalism also serves as a set of guiding principles for contemporary social science. As a guide to social scientific thought, it stresses the role of human-created institutions in affecting how aggregations of individuals make collective decisions. It emphasizes the importance of changeable political processes rather than simply of immutable structures, and it rests on a belief in at least the possibility of cumulative progress in human affairs. In this sense, the work presented in this volume indeed reflects a liberal spirit. Institutions change as a result of human action, and the changes in expectations and processes that result can exert profound effects on state behavior.

  Consider the way in which international cooperation is viewed by neo-realiste on the one hand and neoliberal institutionalists on the other. Neorealiste and neoliberals agree that world politics lacks stable hierarchy and that, as Waltz (1959:186) puts it, "in anarchy there is no automatic hierarchy." But Waltz also admits that "there is no obvious logical relation" between this proposition and the statement that "among autonomous states war

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  Political Economy and Sociolinguistics

  Neoliberalism, Inequality and Social Class

  • David Block(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  10 Given that neoliberals always assumed (at least officially) the intimate interrelationship between liberal economics and liberal politics, and freedom of the market with freedom of thought, movement and behaviour, it is interesting that with certain regimes this link was separate in their minds. In this sense, we might see public declarations of the likes of Freidman as supreme acts of cynicism in the face of the obvious contradictions between what is said and what is done. The neoliberal thought collective and beyond As mentioned above, Mirowski has somewhat controversially argued for the existence of what he calls the ‘NTC’. This collective, a loose association of like-minded economists and politicians worldwide, is organized around certain key principles of what neoliberalism is. Mirowski draws on Ben Fink’s list of what may be seen as the eleven key characteristics of neoliberalism (Fink and Brown, 2014). These are as follows: (1) ‘Free’ markets do not occur naturally. They must be actively constructed through political organizing. (2) ‘The market’ is an information processor, and the most efficient one possible – more efficient than any government or any single human ever could be. (3) Market society is, and therefore should be, the natural and inexorable state of humankind. (4) The political goal of neoliberals is not to destroy the state, but to take control of it, and to redefine its structure and function, in order to create and maintain the market-friendly culture. (5) There is no contradiction between public/politics/citizenship and private/market/entrepreneur and consumerism – because the latter does and should eclipse the former. 67 NEOLIBERALISM 67 (6) The most important virtue – more important than justice, or anything else – is freedom, defined ‘negatively’ as ‘freedom to choose’, and most importantly, defined as the freedom of corporations to act as they please.

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  Ideology and Welfare

  • Gary Taylor(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  For neo-liberals, it makes no sense for the state to promote social justice. Such ideas are thought to run counter to the natural order of things and tend to be designed by those who have very little understanding of the values embraced by their fellow citizens. Hayek (1944) was adamant that the government should not attempt to impose distributive or social justice upon its citizens. He argued that to secure such a state of affairs, the government would need to treat people differently and that it should always aspire to treat them the same. He pointed out moreover that it would be virtually impossible to secure a sufficient level of agreement on the scale of values and principles needed to secure social justice. In his view, such justice could only be achieved if absolute equality was established between citizens. However attractive this might sound, Hayek was convinced that such an aim was both unrealistic and lacking support from the majority of people (Hayek, 1944, pp. 79, 109). Neo-liberals consider it dangerous to give the state the power to discriminate against sections of the community through deliberate intervention. It was considered more prudent and just to leave things to the free flow of market forces.

  Neo-liberal social values attempt to recapture the spirit of individualism and self-help and to save us from what some regard as misguided social engineering. Neo-liberals place the individual at the centre of their analysis and have little time for those social values that require the government to act in a positive way to redistribute resources and opportunities to those who ‘fail’ in the free market system. Collectivism is rejected firmly in favour of a neo-liberal vision of individuals competing with each other to advance their own prospects and in so doing help to keep society vibrant and alive. For neo-liberals, it is foolish to underestimate the importance of individual self-interest and to penalise the rich in the interests of bailing out those who (for whatever reason) are unable to compete successfully. They warn us of the dangers of ‘dumbing down’ and of attempting to appeal to the masses with promises of equality and social justice. A neo-liberal world is one where individual freedom is placed above the apparent desire to make us similar (or even the same) and one where the functions of the state are severely curtailed.

  State and welfare

  Given that neo-liberals extol the virtues of economic efficiency and low taxation, it should come as no surprise that they tend to be critical of the state playing a major role in the provision of welfare. Neo-liberals have been critical of supporters of the welfare state for concentrating too much upon trying to solve social problems. These problems are said to result largely from personal failings rather than from solvable economic fluctuations. Neo-liberals have criticised the broad sociological approach that looks to the state to solve problems faced by the individual and have argued that this approach has harmful effects upon the economy and will ultimately fail to achieve its goals (George and Wilding, 1994, p. 20). From a neo-liberal perspective, the state is an outsider that lacks sufficient understanding of the natural ebbs and flows of the capitalist economy and the need to provide people with incentives to do well.

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  Mentan: Democracy for Breakfast

  • Tatah Mentan(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Langaa RPCIG

    (Publisher)

  105 Part II: Neoliberalism, State And Global Governance Preview This part explores the relationship between Neo-liberalism, state power and global governance. It seeks to show how Neo-liberalism has failed to deliver a framework for state power and global governance capable of delivering stability and enduring prosperity. It also contends that the role of politics in general, and the state and global governance in particular, should be defined more broadly than the simple neo- liberal construction of institutions for the market. 106 107 Chapter 3 A Critique of Market-Driven Democracy Overview If we take seriously the ideology, arguments and values now emanating from neoliberalized globalizers, there is no room in the African continent, or elsewhere on earth, for a democracy in which the obligations of citizenship, compassion and collective security outweigh the demands of what might be called totalizing market-driven society; that is, an African society that is utterly deregulated, privatized, commodified and largely controlled by the ultra-rich and a handful of mega corporations and their local allies. In such a society, there is a shift in power from government to markets and the emergence of a more intensified political economy organized around three principal concerns: deregulated markets, commodification and disposability. Introduction A distinctive feature of the contemporary period of globalization is a powerful trend towards marketization in many regions of the world. Africa has not been spared of this rife marketization. The term “marketization” refers both to market ideologies and market-oriented reforms. A market ideology reflects the belief that markets are of superior efficiency for the allocation of goods and resources. In its most extreme form, this belief is associated with the commodification of nearly all spheres of human life.

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  The Neoliberal Revolution

  Forging the Market State

  • Richard Robison(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Note 1 For competing interpretations on the expansion of neo-populism in Latin America since the 1980s; see Dornbusch and Edwards 1991; Weyland 1996; Cammack 2000; and Demmers et al. 2001. Patricio Silva 57 4 Neo-liberalism in the Russian Federation Hans Oversloot 1 January 1992: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had ceased to exist. Its demise can be attributed to a number of causes, but the attempt to ‘liberalize’ both its economic and its political system was certainly one of the most important. The liberalization of politics and economics under secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev since about 1986 entailed nothing less than the attempt to disentangle politics and economics and to create at least semi-independent spheres for political and economic activity. Gorbachev himself was never a neo-liberal and even his conversion to social democracy came only after he had stepped down as secretary- general of the CPSU and president of the USSR. Nevertheless, it was under his rule that Neo-liberalism gathered strength through reforms in the political and economic spheres and was accompanied by a weakening of the state’s effectiveness in preserving the formal order, whether as a social- ist, proto-capitalist, one-party or proto-multi-party state. Liberalization in the (redefined) economic sphere occurred as individual labour and, somewhat later, cooperative labour which was not preordained in the economic plan (as was the activity of state firms and old-style coopera- tives), were redefined as befitting a socialist economy and were made legal. In the political sphere, one can say that for the first time in nearly 70 years of Soviet history a space for politics proper was being created under the heading of glasnost (the policy of ‘transparency’, or, literally, ‘voice’).

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  Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism

  • E. Bell(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  6 Defining Neoliberalism The term ‘neoliberalism’ is polysemous. As Gamble has pointed out, ‘There has never been one Neo-liberalism’ (Gamble, 2009, p. 71). The term was initially used in the 1930s by the German economist, Alexander Rüstow to describe the liberal thought which was emerging at the time which was hostile to the state interventionism that had become common in the early decades of the twentieth century (ibid., pp. 70–1). The original use of the term was therefore intended to dis- tinguish economic liberal thought from the ‘new liberalism’, so popular in Asquith’s Britain or Bismarck’s Germany at the turn of the century, and from all forms of collectivism, be they Soviet, Nazi or Keynesian (Dixon, 1998, pp. 6–7). It was in 1938 that a Paris confer- ence brought together a group of intellectuals, including the Austrian economists Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, to discuss their ideas. It was suggested that an international centre should be estab- lished to promote the renewal of classical liberalism (ibid., pp. 7–8). The idea was put on hold once war broke out the following year but it was revived in 1947 when von Hayek brought together key economic liberals at another conference held near Montreux in Switzerland and the Mont Pèlerin Society was founded (ibid., pp. 7–8). The Society was to be the nursery of neoliberal ideas in the twentieth century, spawn- ing such well-known neoliberals as Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics and Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics (ibid., p. 9). The version of neoliberalism promoted by the intellectuals of the Mont Pèlerin Society and those working for the think tanks which it inspired, such as Antony Fisher, Arthur Seldon or Ralph Harris of the Institute of Economic Affairs (founded in Britain in 1955), was essentially a form of nineteenth-century classical liberalism, in the 139 E. Bell, Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism © Emma Bell 2011

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  Neoliberalism 2.0: Regulating and Financing Globalizing Markets

  A Pigovian Approach for 21st Century Markets

  • L. Nijs(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  117 Our review and positioning of the dominant liberalism trends will allow us now to better define and position neoliberalism.

  2.3Positioning neoliberalism and the objective of the free market

  Neoliberalism as a term has been prone to the same vague demarcation lines as liberalism and its distinct classes in general, and is used in different settings, often with different connotations.118 In contemporary thinking, the term is often associated with suppression, poverty, capitalism, exploitation, and conspiracy theories of global capital. It is further seen as the direct driver behind such phenomena as free unregulated markets, privatization, globalization, monetarism, and deregulation, as well as the overall suppression of labor by capital. The concerning fact is that the literature often sees correlation even if there is none, and even causality without any direct or circumstantial evidence that traces certain significant events back to neoliberalism. The term has become prone to misappropriation, as it is now used in multiple dimensions while the real content of the term has started to shift (significantly) away from its original intent.119 This often happened when neoliberal thoughts were converted into political action and policy design. In that sense neoliberal policy (and in particular its economic chapter) has become disconnected from the fundamental values embedded in its (alleged) parent, the economic liberal ideology. Authors advocating neoliberalism have never constructed their thinking as neoliberalism, but as part of classical liberal theory or part of the doctrines developed by the Austrian, Chicago, or Virginia Schools,120 of economics and based their economic insights on classical economical thinking in a Smithian and Ricardian way. The abuse of the term neoliberalism happened because there is no real neoliberalism in place that would be truly new (‘neo’). A better term would have been ‘paleo-liberalism’121

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