Socio-Economic Review (2008) 6, 703–731 Advance Access publication August 26, 2008
doi:10.1093/ser/mwn016
THE STATE OF THE ART What is neo-liberalism? Max Weber Programme, European University Institute (EUI), Villa La Fonte, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy Correspondence: stephanie.mudge@eui.eu; stephaniemudge@gmail.com
Neo-liberalism is an oft-invoked but ill-defined concept in the social sciences. This article conceptualizes neo-liberalism as a sui generis ideological system born of struggle and collaboration in three worlds: intellectual, bureaucratic and political. Emphasizing neo-liberalism’s third ‘face’, it argues that a failure to grasp neo-liberalism as a political form imposes two limitations on understanding its effects: (i) fostering an implicit assumption that European political elites are ‘naturally’ opposed to the implementation of neo-liberal policies; and (ii) tending to preempt inquiry into an unsettling fact—namely, that the most effective advocates of policies understood as neo-liberal in Western Europe (and beyond) have often been elites who are sympathetic to, or are representatives of, the left and centre-left. Given that social democratic politics were uniquely powerful in Western Europe for much of the post-war period, neo-liberalism within the mainstream parties of the European left deserves particular attention. Keywords: liberalism, neo-liberalism, economic thought, institutionalism, political economy JEL classification: A14 sociology of economics, B2 history of economic thought since 1925, F59 international relations and international political economy
1.
Introduction
In the 1990s, political observers began to note the demise, for better or for worse, of politics as we knew it. In the words of Crouch (1997, p. 352), the mainstream parties of the left came to live ‘in a political world which is not of their making’1—a world whose very structure is antithetical to the goals and principles of social democracy. A growing sociological literature traces an international turn towards free markets from the 1970s, placing particular emphasis on the production and export of the ‘Washington consensus’ from North to Central and 1
Crouch refers here to the British New Labour victory in 1997, comparing it with Churchill’s Conservatives’ victory in 1951.
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Stephanie Lee Mudge