Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Theorizing ideational continuity: The resilience of neo-liberal ideas in Europe
- Part I Economy, state, and society
- 2 Neo-liberalism and fiscal conservatism
- 3 Welfare-state transformations: From neo-liberalism to liberal neo-welfarism?
- 4 The state: The bête noire of neo-liberalism or its greatest conquest?
- Part II Neo-liberalism in major policy domains
- Part III Neo-liberalism in comparative perspective
- Part IV Conclusion
- Index
- References
4 - The state: The bête noire of neo-liberalism or its greatest conquest?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Theorizing ideational continuity: The resilience of neo-liberal ideas in Europe
- Part I Economy, state, and society
- 2 Neo-liberalism and fiscal conservatism
- 3 Welfare-state transformations: From neo-liberalism to liberal neo-welfarism?
- 4 The state: The bête noire of neo-liberalism or its greatest conquest?
- Part II Neo-liberalism in major policy domains
- Part III Neo-liberalism in comparative perspective
- Part IV Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
Neo-liberalism has had one central message for the state: scale back, cut back, cut out, transform. This brings to mind Winston Churchill's reply to an opponent who asked, ‘How much is enough?’ to Churchill's repeated push to spend increasingly more on defence in the 1930s. Churchill's rejoinder came in the form of a story about a Brazilian banker with whom he had just had lunch. The banker had received a cable informing him of the death of his mother-in-law and asking for instructions. He cabled back: ‘embalm, cremate, bury at sea; leave nothing to chance’.
This take on neo-liberalism – as burying the state – is certainly exaggerated because neo-liberalism comes in many different forms with many different policy applications. Only the recommendations of the most radical strands come close to the Brazilian banker's response to his mother-in-law's death. Yet the story as a metaphor for neo-liberal views of the state nonetheless somehow rings true. This is largely because neo-liberals have been more anti-state in their rhetoric than in their actions.
The state has been neo-liberalism’s bête noire, as its main focus of attack, because neo-liberals – whatever their differences – have viewed the state as consistently doing too much in the wrong ways with the worst consequences not only for the markets but also for democracy, by endangering individual freedom through its interventions. As a provider of public goods, the state had to be scaled back to leave room for the market, which would assure more efficiency. However, the state has also been neo-liberalism’s greatest conquest, as its main locus of action, because it has been primarily through the state that neo-liberals have been able to realize their vision(s).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Resilient Liberalism in Europe's Political Economy , pp. 112 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013
References
. 2007. Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
. 2002. ‘Rediscovering Civil Society: The European Union and the White Paper on Governance’, European Law Journal 8 (1): 102–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2008. La Longue Marche vers l’Europe Sociale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2002. Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2008. ‘The Power of Defining Work and Welfare: Politics and Discourse in European Welfare Reform’. Paper prepared for presentation at the 16th International Conference of the Council for European Studies, Chicago, IL (March 6–8).
., , , and . 1996. Public Management: The New Zealand Model. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 1986a. ‘Man and the State’, Mont Pèlerin Society Presidential Talk, August 31, p. 2, LAMP.
. 2007. ‘Introduction’. In The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Vol. II, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents, The Definitive Edition, edited by (1–33). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
, and . 2012. ‘Economic Patriotism: Reinventing Control over Open Markets’,Journal of European Public Policy 19 (3): 307–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2007. Neo-Libéralisme Version Française: Histoire d'une Idéologie Politique. Paris: Demopolis.Google Scholar
. 2009. ‘French Neo-Liberalism and Its Divisions: From the Colloque Lippmann to the Fifth Republic.’ In The Road to Mont Pèlerin, edited by and (45–67). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
, and . 1996. ‘Italy and the EMU as a “Vincolo Esterno”: Empowering the Technocrats, Transforming the State’, South European Society and Politics 1 (2): 272–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
. 2004. Naissance de la Biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France, 1978–1979. Paris: Hautes Études/Gallimard/Seuil.Google Scholar
, and . 2002. ‘The Rebirth of the Liberal Creed: Paths to Neoliberalism in Four Countries’, American Journal of Sociology 108 (3): 533–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Building States and Markets after Communism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1988. The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2007. ‘Organized Civil Society and Democratic Legitimacy in the European Union’, British Journal of Political Science 37 (02): 333–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
., and . 2001. Varieties of Capitalism: Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1971. ‘Three Basic Postulates for Welfare Economics’, Journal of Economic Literature 9, 785–97.Google Scholar
. 2001. ‘The “Crisis” of Keynesianism and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism in Britain: An Ideational Institutionalist Approach’. In The Rise of NeoLiberalism and Institutional Analysis, edited by and (193–218). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
, and . 2002. ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy 9 (2): 147–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and . 2010. ‘How Policy Makers Really Understand Globalization: The Internal Architecture of Anglopohone Globalisation Discourse in Europe’, Public Administration 88 (4): 903–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1944 (reprinted 2007). The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents, The Definitive Edition. Edited by , The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Vol. II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
, and . 1998. ‘The Politics of Currency Crises in Sweden: Policy Choice in a Globalized Economy’, West European Politics 21: 103–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Playing the Market: A Political Strategy for Uniting Europe, 1985–2005. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 1944. ‘Letter to Hayek, June 28’. Reprinted in John Maynard Keynes, Activities 1940–1946. Shaping the Post-War World: Employment and Commodities, edited by , Vol. 27 (1980), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes (385–86). London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2005. ‘Pressure from Without, Subversion from within: The Two-Pronged German Employer Offensive’, Comparative European Politics 3: 432–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and . 2010. ‘The European Rescue of the Washington Consensus? IMF and EU Lending to Eastern European Countries’. London School of Economics, European Institute, LEQS Paper No. 22 (May).
, and (eds.). 2007. Varieties of Capitalism in Post-Communist Countries. First edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRef
. 2012. ‘L’EÉtat entre politics, policies et polity – ou : peut-on sortir du triangle des bermudes?”, Gouvernement et action publique 2012 (1): 59–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2001. ‘Institutional Embedding of Market Economies: The German Model and its Impact on Japan’. In The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism: Germany and Japan in Comparison, edited by and (39–93). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 1999. Tocqueville's Revenge: Dilemmas of Institutional Reform in Post-Dirigiste France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
, and . 2010. ‘Europe and the Management of Globalization’,Journal of European Public Policy 17: 299–317.Google Scholar
, and . 2009. The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2003. The British Regulatory State: High Modernism and Hyper-Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
, and . 2011. Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis of New Public Management, Governance, and the Neo-Weberian State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
, and . 2005. ‘Adaptation, Recombination, and Reinforcement: The Story of AntiTrust and Competition Law in Germany and Europe’. In Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, edited by and (255–81). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2002. ‘The Italian State and the Euro.’ In European States and the Euro, edited by (212–37). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2012. ‘Supranational Governance as Economic Patriotism? The European Union, Legitimacy and the Reconstruction of State Space’,Journal of European Public Policy 19 (3): 324–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1983. ‘International Regimes, Transactions and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order’. In International Regimes, edited by (195–231). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. ‘Negative and Positive Integration in the Political Economy of European Welfare States’. In Governance in the European Union, edited by et al. (15–39). London: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2000. ‘Economic Changes, Vulnerabilities, and Institutional Capabilities’. In Welfare and Work in the Open Economy. Vol. I: From Vulnerability to Competitiveness, edited by and (21–124). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2012. ‘Legitimacy Intermediation in the Multilevel European Polity and Its Collapse in the Euro Crisis’, MPIfG Discussion Paper 12/6, available at .
. 1996. From State to Market? The Transformation of French Business and Government. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2000. ‘Values and Discourse in the Politics of Adjustment’. In Welfare and Work in the Open Economy: Vol. 1, edited by and . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2002b. ‘Does Discourse Matter in the Politics of Welfare State Adjustment?’, Comparative Political Studies 35 (2): 168–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2003. ‘How, Where, and When Does Discourse Matter in Small States’ Welfare State Adjustment?’, New Political Economy 8 (1): 127–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2009. ‘Putting the Political Back into Political Economy by Bringing the State Back Yet Again’,World Politics 61 (3): 516–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 2012. ‘France's Postwar Model from the State in Action to a State of Mind’. Review Essay of Philip Nord's France's New Deal in French Politics 10 (2): 196–208.Google Scholar
. 2012. ‘Like a Phoenix from the Ashes? Reassessing the Transformation of the Swedish Political Economy since the 1970s’, Journal of European Public Policy 19 (8): 1126–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and . (In press). ‘Ordoliberal Lessons for Economic Stability: Different Kinds of Regulation, Not More Regulation’. Governance.
. 2010. Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
. 1997. ‘German Capitalism: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?’. In Modern Capitalism or Modern Capitalisms, edited by and (35–54). London: Pinter.Google Scholar
. 2010. Reforming Capitalism: Institutional Change in the German Political Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and . 2001. The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism: Germany and Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 2009. ‘Liberalism and Neo-Liberalism in Britain 1930–1980’. In The Road to Mont Pèlerin, edited by and . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
. 2012. ‘Remembering Bill Niskanen: Pursuing Economics as a Public Science in the Service of Liberty’, Public Choice 153 (1–2): 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1978. ‘The French State in the International Economy’. In Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Policies of Advanced Industrial States, edited by (255–93). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
- 13
- Cited by