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Socio-Economic Review Advance Access originally published online on August 26, 2008
Socio-Economic Review 2008 6(4):703-731; doi:10.1093/ser/mwn016
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

What is neo-liberalism?

Stephanie Lee Mudge

Max Weber Programme, European University Institute (EUI), Villa La Fonte, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy

Correspondence: stephanie.mudge{at}eui.eu; stephaniemudge{at}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 pre-empt 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.

Key Words: liberalism • neo-liberalism • economic thought • institutionalism • political economy


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