Neoliberalism with Scandinavian characteristics: The slow formation of neoliberal common sense in Denmark

Abstract

This article describes the ascension of neoliberal economic ideas in the macroeconomic establishment in Denmark. Based on a systematic analysis of documents from the Danish government and the Economic Council from the 1970s to the early 2000s, the article traces the development of the economic ideas and policy instrument that dominate the analytical process of the Danish macroeconomic establishment. The article applies a Gramscian-inspired framework to track the gradual and uneven process under which neoliberal economic ideas became common sense in the Danish context. This framework challenges some of the assumptions of the ideational focus of much constructivist literature, and offers an alternative analysis focused on the legitimating role of economic ideas. As much of the ideational change took place after policy adaptions to international economic developments, the Danish case provides little support for the theory of the causal power of ideas. Rather, it seems as though economic models and ideas are imported as ‘after the fact’ legitimations of changes in policy.

Territorial stigmatization and housing commodification under racial neoliberalism: The case of Denmark's ‘ghettos’

“…The break with roll-back neoliberal ideology is illustrated well in Fogh Rasmussen's response to a series of non-profit housing policy recommendations from the political-economic establishment. The influential, neoliberalized Danish Economic Council (Stahl, 2022) published a 2001 report arguing that housing regulation is inefficient and causes socioeconomic problems and recommending rent deregulation and discontinuation of government subsidies (Danish Economic Council, 2001). The Chairman of the Council would soon head Fogh Rasmussen's so-called Welfare Commission (2006), tasked with addressing challenges to the Danish welfare state.…”

Envisaging global balance-sheet capitalism: The Bank for International Settlements as a collective organic intellectual

“…If adopted and supported by dominant social groups, such a hegemonic project will become economic ‘common sense’ – a set of taken-for-granted assumptions that naturalize a contingent institutional and discursive configuration of ‘the economy’ and define the terms of acceptable debate. Elite coherence is thus a critical element of a functioning hegemony (Desai 1994), and so struggles over economic common sense occur at the popular level and among elites, particularly in periods of political-economic and institutional crisis (Stahl 2021). At both levels, intellectuals play a pivotal role in the struggle for and maintenance of hegemony (Gramsci 1971: 5–23).…”

Financialized accumulation, neoliberal hegemony, and the transformation of the Swedish Welfare Model, 1980–2020

“…While integral hegemony implies a hegemonic order where large parts of consenting masses materially profit, minimal hegemony implies a state of affairs where public discontent increasingly amasses, but subaltern classes, and crucially the leaders that nominally represent then, are too weak and disorganized to perform or articulate any significant form of counterhegemonic visions or strategies (Cafruny & Ryner 2007: 143–144). Class domination rests on a combination of coercion and consent, where the latter is reified through the creation and diffusion of a hegemonic common sense (Sum & Jessop 2013: 206) as a ‘set of ideas that are taken for granted and accepted as unproblematic truth’ (Stahl 2021: 4) that constrains the perceived viability of alternative policies.…”