Neoliberalism and Patterns of Economic Performance, 1980-2000

Abstract

Neoliberal discourse often produces the impression that the world has undergone a wholesale shift toward laissez-faire and that this shift has produced economic prosperity. This article examines national economic data to discern the degree to which (1) governments have in fact retreated from the market and (2) countries have enjoyed increasing economic prosperity over a period in which they have supposedly been liberalizing. The evidence is mixed on both counts. Although international capital mobility and trade liberalism appears to have grown over the past two decades, there is little evidence of a broad scaling back of governments. Over the same period, countries have not experienced any appreciable improvement in growth, cross-national equality, employment, or national debt loads, although there is some evidence of improved price stability near the end of the 1990s.

The Arc of Neoliberalism

“…Foreign direct investment into developing and former Socialist countries began to accelerate (Cohen & Centeno 2006), with Western businesses anxious to gain footholds in these new economic frontiers. Trade was liberalized substantially (Chorev 2007), and businesses aggressively sought to internationalize their operations.…”

“…Unequal benefits accrued between countries as well, but differential accumulation is somewhat more complex at this level of aggregation (Cohen & Centeno 2006, Firebaugh 2006, Korzeniewicz & Moran 2009). The fastest growth was realized in three major emerging regions-the Far East, South Asia, and Eastern Europe-all of which grew by establishing themselves as manufacturing outposts for the rich world.…”

Is there convergence across countries? A spatial approach

“…The theoretical debates over cross-national convergence have triggered a considerable amount of empirical work in several areas, including demography (Dorius 2008; Wilson 2011), cultural values (Inglehart and Baker 2000), industrial policies (Henisz et al 2005), national economic performance (Bandelj 2009; Cohen and Centeno 2006), regional development (Monfort 2008), institution-building (Polillo and Guillén 2005), the network structure of the world polity (Beckfield 2010), inter-governmental networks (Ingram et al 2005), Internet use (Guillén and Suárez 2005), national systems of innovation, trade, and investment (Doremus et al 1998), and dyadic institutional distances between pairs of countries along a variety of dimensions (Berry, Guillén and Zhou 2010), among others. Most of these empirical studies find fragmentation and continuing heterogeneity, i.e., little evidence of convergence across countries over time.…”

Considerations of the impact of neoliberalism and alternative regimes on learning and its outcomes: an empirical example based on the level and distribution of adult learning

“…This development has been most prominent in Anglo-Saxon states, including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, but as a source of political influence, neoliberalism has extended well beyond the reach of these 3 countries. Neoliberal ideas have had an impact across a broad range of policy thinking, including limited government intervention, government budgetary discipline, free trade, competitive exchange rates, privatization, reduced capital controls on cross-border flow of finance, and deregulation of market activity among others such as union-busting (Rodrik, 1996;Cohen and Centeno, 2006). In short, this list is known as the "Washington Consensus" because international organizations located in Washington such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank promoted these policies throughout the world, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s.…”