From ‘There is No Alternative’ to ‘Maybe There are Alternatives’: five Challenges to Economic Orthodoxy after the Crash

Abstract

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, politicians famously told the public and themselves that ‘there is no alternative’ to a neoliberal economic paradigm. Fast‐forward to 2019 and there is, instead, the sense that ‘maybe there are alternatives’. However, when many observers and commentators look back to the 2008 crisis, they see a general continuity with what went before. In order to gain a better understanding of this ‘interregnum’, we map five sets of ideas and practices that challenge the policies, ideas, and conventions of pre‐crash orthodoxy. In doing so, we argue that there has been a fundamental transformation in legitimate public discourse about the economy since 2008: ideas and practices that were previously unimaginable or illegitimate in mainstream economic debate are now commonplace. Although this does not represent a ‘paradigm shift’, it represents significant political change that is important to understand and interrogate on its own terms.

Relational expertise and the spatial (re)production of austerity: Challenges and opportunities for progressive politics

“…What is particularly relevant here, and applicable in the case of austerity, is the way in which the invocation of crisis plays an important role in mobilizing radical social movements and provides the discursive space to reimagine expertise in a broader and more inclusive form. While the drug crisis, epidemics of drug related deaths and infectious diseases allowed us to challenge the primacy of law enforcement expertise, we are now faced with the opportunity to challenge existing economic orthodoxies (Hunt and Stanley, 2019).…”

“…Bringing these discussions to wider public prominence has entailed directly challenging existing experts and forms of expertise, something the discontent austerity policies have engendered has aided (Hunt and Stanley, 2019). Existing economic paradigms have been increasingly rejected in favour of new economic thinking which incorporates heterodox approaches to economics as well as incorporating broader political, moral and value-laden discussions on areas such as economic justice, intergenerational inequality, public ownership, housing rights and communal solidarity into policy discussions.…”

The political economies of different globalizations: theorizing reglobalization

“…As Colin Hay and Matthew Watson (2003: 289) suggested at the time, by disingenuously invoking 'the image of globalisation as a non-negotiable external economic constraint' underpinned by a 'logic of no alternative', Blair and his contemporaries were able to 'render contingent policy choices "necessary"'. Yet there are, in fact, many possible globalizations, and the orthodoxies that prevailed before 2008 have never been more fiercely challenged (Hunt and Stanley, 2019).…”