Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:20:59.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Neo-liberalism and fiscal conservatism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

By
Andrew Gamble
Edited by
Vivien A. Schmidt  and
Mark Thatcher
Vivien A. Schmidt
Affiliation:
Boston University
Mark Thatcher
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Get access

Summary

The present period is one of economic turbulence but ideological stability. Despite the scale of the 2008 financial crash, there has not been, so far, much sign of the type of shift in the ideas governing economic policy that followed the economic upheaval of the 1930s and the smaller upheaval of the 1970s. The 1930s saw the emergence of Keynesianism and Social Democracy and the 1970s saw the emergence of to monetarism and neo-liberalism. Although challenged by recent events, for the moment neo-liberalism appears to be retaining its ascendancy. How should we understand this resilience? How should we understand neo-liberalism? These are the questions with which this chapter is concerned, and it makes three main claims. First, neo-liberalism is more than simply a contingent reaction to Keynesianism and Social Democracy. Part of its resilience as a set of ideas is that it draws on perennial themes of classical liberal political economy, particularly concerning the nature of commercial society and the role of the state in a market economy. Second, neo-liberalism is not a unified doctrine but rather has several distinct strands, which can be contradictory. Third, one of the most striking contradictions is in regard to neo-liberal attitudes to fiscal conservatism. In terms of the typology developed in Chapter 1, I argue that the resilience of neo-liberalism can best be explained by the first three explanations: (1) the ideological malleability of its core principles, (2) the gap between rhetoric and reality, and (3) the ways in which neo-liberal ideas achieve discourse hegemony by being translated into a form of populist economic common sense. These features make neo-liberalism difficult to discredit and help to account for its resilience.

Type
Chapter
Information
Resilient Liberalism in Europe's Political Economy , pp. 53 - 76
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bell, Daniel. 1976. ‘The Public Household’. In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James, and Wagner, Richard. 1977. Democracy in Deficit. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chang, Ha-Joon. 2002. Kicking away the Ladder: Economic Development in Historical Perspective. London: Anthem.Google Scholar
Cockett, Richard. 1994. Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Crouch, Colin. 2011. The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Robert. 1996. Approaches to World Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1977. Inflation and Unemployment: The New Dimension of Politics. London: IEA.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. ‘The End of History’, The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989): 3–18.Google Scholar
Gamble, Andrew. 2006. ‘Two Faces of Neo-Liberalism’. In The Neo-Liberal Revolution: Forging the Market State, edited by Robison, Richard (20–35). London: Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gamble, Andrew. 2012. ‘The UK: The Triumph of Fiscal Realism?’ In The Consequences of the Global Financial Crisis: The Rhetoric of Reform and Regulation, edited by Wyn Grant and Graham Wilson (34–50). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter. 1993. ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Policy-Learning in Britain’, Comparative Politics 25 (3): 275–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannah, Leslie. 1976. The Rise of the Corporate Economy. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich von. 1944. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1976. Law, Legislation and Liberty. Vol. 2. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hont, Istvan. 2005. Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Krugman, Paul. 2012. End This Depression Now. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Mises, Ludwig von. 1944. Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Nicholls, Anthony. 1994. Freedom with Responsibility: The Social Market Economy in Germany, 1918–1963. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the State? Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 1945. Origins of Our Time: The Great Transformation. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
Ridley, Matt. 2011. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. London: Fourth Estate.Google Scholar
Rothbard, Murray. 1973. For a New Liberty. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph. 1990. ‘The Crisis of the Tax State’. In The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, edited by Swedberg, Richard (99–140). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shonfield, Andrew. 1965. Modern Capitalism: The Changing Balance of Public and Private Power. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Skidelsky, Robert. 1967. Politicians and the Slump. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Skidelsky, Robert. 2009. Keynes: The Return of the Master. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Thompson, Helen. 2008. Might, Right, Prosperity and Consent: Representative Democracy and the International Economy. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Rachel. 2008. Neo-Liberal Ideology: History, Concepts and Policies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×