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
In today's increasingly globalized environment, many economic fundamentals need to be reconsidered in order to regain stability in the global marketplace. One such consideration is the failing dynamics of the international tax infrastructure. Neoliberalism 2.0 brings a 21st century assessment of the Pigovian taxes, considering a completely new calibration of the international tax systems, inspired by the historically developed Pigovian tax model. The book considers the impact neoliberalism had and will have on regulatory infrastructure, democracy in an era of globalization and reduced legitimation of the national state. The Pigovian model brings home the often forgotten relationship between taxation (as a part of the regulatory sphere), macro-economics, and the political-philosophical context in which law and economics emerge. The model also takes into account the phenomena of globalization and financialization and is tested using the financial sector as an example. This book addresses the many challenges a Pigovian shift would imply for the sovereign and its national economies. Neoliberalism 2.0 demonstrates the ability to design a paradigm-changing alternative to the current tax infrastructure, while taking into account a low economic growth environment of the future, the implications of globalization and the changing relationship between citizens and their state.
This book probes the surface of contemporary economic and social change and reveals how the shift to a knowledge-based economy is redefining firms, empowering individuals, and reshaping the links between learning and work. Using economic, management and knowledge-based theories, it describes the emergence of a new breed of capitalist, one dependent on knowledge rather than physical resources.
Anchored in the principles of the free-market economics, 'neoliberalism' has been associated with such different political leaders as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Augusto Pinochet, and Junichiro Koizumi. In its heyday during the late 1990s, neoliberalism emerged as the world's dominant economic paradigm stretching from the Anglo-American heartlands of capitalism to the former communist bloc all the way to the developing regions of the global South. At the dawn of the new century, however, neoliberalism has been discredited as the global economy, built on its principles, has been shaken to its core by a financial calamity not seen since the dark years of the 1930s. So is neoliberalism doomed or will it regain its former glory? Will reform-minded G-20 leaders embark on a genuine new course or try to claw their way back to the neoliberal glory days of the Roaring Nineties? Is there a viable alternative to neoliberalism? Exploring the origins, core claims, and considerable variations of neoliberalism, this Very Short Introduction offers a concise and accessible introduction to one of the most debated 'isms' of our time. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Explains the surprising endurance of neoliberal policymaking over two decades in post-Communist countries, from 1989-2008, and its decline after the financial crash.
In this sprawling and ambitious book John Braithwaite successfully manages to link the contemporary dynamics of macro political economy to the dynamics of citizen engagement and organisational activism at the micro intestacies of governance practices. This is no mean feat and the logic works. . . Stephen Bell, The Australian Journal of Public Administration Everyone who is puzzled by modern regulocracy should read this book. Short and incisive, it represents the culmination of over twenty years work on the subject. It offers us a perceptive and wide-ranging perspective on the global development of regulatory capitalism and an important analysis of points of leverage for democrats and reformers. Christopher Hood, All Souls College, Oxford, UK It takes a great mind to produce a book that is indispensable for beginners and experts, theorists and policymakers alike. With characteristic clarity, admirable brevity, and his inimitable mix of description and prescription, John Braithwaite explains how corporations and states regulate each other in the complex global system dubbed regulatory capitalism. For Braithwaite aficionados, Regulatory Capitalism brings into focus the big picture created from years of meticulous research. For Braithwaite novices, it is a reading guide that cannot fail to inspire them to learn more. Carol A. Heimer, Northwestern University, US Reading Regulatory Capitalism is like opening your eyes. John Braithwaite brings together law, politics, and economics to give us a map and a vocabulary for the world we actually see all around us. He weaves together elements of over a decade of scholarship on the nature of the state, regulation, industrial organization, and intellectual property in an elegant, readable, and indispensable volume. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University, US Encyclopedic in scope, chock full of provocative even jarring claims, Regulatory Capitalism shows John Braithwaite at his transcendental best. Ian Ayres, Yale Law School, Yale University, US Contemporary societies have more vibrant markets than past ones. Yet they are more heavily populated by private and public regulators. This book explores the features of such a regulatory capitalism, its tendencies to be cyclically crisis-ridden, ritualistic and governed through networks. New ways of thinking about resultant policy challenges are developed. At the heart of this latest work by John Braithwaite lies the insight by David Levi-Faur and Jacint Jordana that the welfare state was succeeded in the 1970s by regulatory capitalism. The book argues that this has produced stronger markets, public regulation, private regulation and hybrid private/public regulation as well as new challenges such as a more cyclical quality to crises of market and governance failure, regulatory ritualism and markets in vice. However, regulatory capitalism also creates opportunities for better design of markets in virtue such as markets in continuous improvement, privatized enforcement of regulation, open source business models, regulatory pyramids with networked escalation and meta-governance of justice. Regulatory Capitalism will be warmly welcomed by regulatory scholars in political science, sociology, history, economics, business schools and law schools as well as regulatory bureaucrats, policy thinkers in government and law and society scholars.
Authoritarian Neoliberalism explores how neoliberal forms of managing capitalism are challenging democratic governance at local, national and international levels. Identifying a spectrum of policies and practices that seek to reproduce neoliberalism and shield it from popular and democratic contestation, contributors provide original case studies that investigate the legal-administrative, social, coercive and corporate dimensions of authoritarian neoliberalism across the global North and South. They detail the crisis-ridden intertwinement of authoritarian statecraft and neoliberal reforms, and trace the transformation of key societal sites in capitalism (e.g. states, households, workplaces, urban spaces) through uneven yet cumulative processes of neoliberalization. Informed by innovative conceptual and methodological approaches, Authoritarian Neoliberalism uncovers how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, and highlights how alternatives to neoliberalism can be formulated and pursued. The book was originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.
The complex relationship between globalization and European integration was largely shaped in the 1970s. During this decade, globalization began, for the first time, to threaten Western European prosperity. Using an innovative approach, the book shows how western Europeans coped with the challenges of globalization during a time of deep economic crisis during the period 1973-1986. It examines the evolution of economic and social policies at the national, European and global level and expands beyond the European Economic Community (EEC) by analysing the various solutions envisaged by European decision-makers towards regulating globalization, including the creation of the Single Market. Based on extensively examined archives of transnational actors, international organizations and focusing on the governments of France, Germany and the UK, as well as the European Commission, the book uncovers deep, previously unknown, economic divisions among these actors and the roles they played in the success of the EEC. This book will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners of political science, European studies, history, comparative politics, public policy and economic history.
For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them? Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given. The heart of Rodrik’s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.
How do recent trends toward globalization affect the Caribbean, a region whose suppliers, production, markets, and politics have been globalized for centuries? What is the status of neoliberal development policy in the Caribbean, where the rewards for belt tightening and economic opening have been slow in coming? How have Caribbean policymakers and citizens responded to and resisted the pressures to conform to the new rules of the global economy? By examining these questions through the lens of political economy, this volume explores the interaction among development, trade, foreign policy, the environment, tourism, gender relations, and migration. With its global implications, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars from all disciplines who are concerned with the impact of development and globalization.
