Neo-liberalism, Partisanship, and Public Policies

Abstract

A wide-scholarly and interdisciplinary literature has analyzed neo-liberalism in various facets. Typically, this term is referred to as a new form of “political-economic governance premised on the extension of market relationships” (Larner, 2000:5). On the public policy side, it has been also depicted as Thatcherism or Reaganomics, and it has been identified with a political manifesto in which privatization and liberalization were the essence of public policies, especially for those economic services – namely those delivered in network industries – previously managed by state-owned monopolies.\ud While this first wave of neo-liberalism clearly identifies an ideological divide, as these policies were almost exclusively promoted by right-wing, conservative governments, its later diffusion around the world, progressively lost this original ideological bias

Liberalizing telecommunications in Europe: path dependency and institutional complementarities

“…This result suggests that the intensity of liberalization measures is likely to increase when the level of private ownership in the industry is relatively higher, i.e. policy-makers avoid maintaining relevant legal barriers at the entrance of a largely privatized industry (Belloc and Nicita, 2011, 2012a, 2012b.…”