The Neoliberal (Counter-)Revolution

‘We are not the Wild West’: anti-fracking protests in Romania

“…This opposition is certainly more encompassing than providing specific frameworks for the management of risk, bringing specific legal and economic mechanisms for defining costs and benefits, public priorities, and levels and mechanisms of decision (Finewood and Stroup 2012). The shale gas industry in the post-communist era is a typical neoliberal development because it combines at least three core elements of the neoliberal doctrine: privatization, deregulation and liberalisation (Duménil andLévy 2005, Harvey 2006). This means that gas deposits are bought and then gas is extracted from them by private companies, that complex economic and technical procedures are largely deregulated, and that finally the gas is distributed via a liberalised market.…”

Britain and the Crisis of the European Union

“…Many of the characteristics of the Anglo-American model have stemmed from this approach, in particular its voluntarism and short-termism, as well as the liberal character of its welfare system and corporate governance, and the relative importance of its financial institutions, particularly its stock markets. (Gamble 2003: 88 and 105) In terms of political economy, UK elite-sponsored Atlanticism is also rooted in the writings of a number of influential Anglo-liberal economists, some fleeing Nazism, most notably Friedrich von Hayek, who travelled between the great centres of liberal economics learning in the US and UK, developing and spreading the open-seas and unfettered free-market messages across the Anglosphere, in so doing reinforcing the sense of an epistemic community of shared beliefs centred on maximising the freedom of markets and fostering open competition (Blyth 2002, Dumenil and Levy 2005, Mirowsk and Plehwe 2009). The demise of empire was also significant in the initial turn towards Europe since it occurred at a time when US interests were preoccupied in Indo-China and elsewhere.…”

Institutionalising Dissent: HIV/AIDS, the Post-Apartheid State and the Limits of Transnational Governance in South Africa

“…20 Among the varying perspectives on globalisation, a point of agreement is the rising level of social inequality that has accompanied the implementation of the 'neoliberal' economic policies that characterise global economic integration. 21 Part and parcel of this globalisation process has been the growth of intermittent financial crises precipitated by the rapid movement of finance capital and the extension of neoliberal economic norms through the imposition of structural adjustment programmes and the signing of free-trade agreements. Since the end of the Bretton Woods agreements and the unfettering of global capital, financial crises have been primarily concentrated in developing countries, with the East Asian crisis of 1997 and the Russian Crisis of 1998 being but two of many examples.…”