Introduction

NeoliberalismSupply Side Economics Full Description:Supply-Side Economics posits that production (supply) is the key to economic prosperity. Proponents argue that by reducing the “burden” of taxes on the wealthy and removing regulatory barriers for corporations, investment will increase, creating jobs and expanding the economy. Key Policies: Tax Cuts: Specifically for high-income earners and corporations, under the premise that this releases capital for investment. Deregulation: Removing environmental, labor, and safety protections to lower the cost of doing business. Critical Perspective:Historical analysis suggests that supply-side policies rarely lead to the promised broad-based prosperity. Instead, they often result in massive budget deficits (starving the state of revenue) and a dramatic concentration of wealth at the top. Critics argue the “trickle-down” effect is a myth used to justify the upward redistribution of wealth. has been one of the most influential and contentious paradigms in modern history, reshaping economies, politics, and societies around the world since the late 20th century. In broad terms, neoliberalism refers to a revival of 19th-century liberal ideas in a new form – a market-centered vision of society that gained ascendancy in the late 1970s and 1980s. It champions free markets, privatizationPrivatization Full Description:The transfer of ownership, property, or business from the government to the private sector. It involves selling off public assets—such as water, rail, energy, and housing—turning shared public goods into commodities for profit. Privatization is based on the neoliberal assumption that the private sector is inherently more efficient than the public sector. Governments sell off state-owned enterprises to private investors, often at discounted rates, arguing that the profit motive will drive better service and lower costs. Critical Perspective:Critics view privatization as the “enclosure of the commons.” It frequently leads to higher prices for essential services, as private companies prioritize shareholder returns over public access. It also hollows out the state, stripping it of its capacity to act and leaving citizens at the mercy of private monopolies for their basic needs (like water or electricity).
Read more, and a reduced role for the state in economic affairs, claiming that individual freedom and prosperity are best achieved by unleashing market forces. Critics, however, argue that neoliberalism has come at a steep cost: growing inequality, erosion of public goods, and deep social dislocation. This article provides a comprehensive overview of neoliberalism – what it is, where it came from, how it developed historically, its key features, how it has changed over time, its status as of 2025, and how historians have studied it. The tone throughout is scholarly yet accessible, and while the analysis is balanced and evidence-based, it reflects a broadly leftist critique that highlights the toxic social and economic outcomes associated with neoliberal policies. This overview serves as a gateway to more in-depth articles on each subtopic, guiding readers from high school students to academic researchers through the complex story of neoliberalism.

Defining Neoliberalism

What exactly is neoliberalism? At its core, neoliberalism is an ideology and a policy model that seeks to extend competitive markets and market logic into all areas of life. Political economists often define neoliberalism as a theory of political-economic practice that holds human well-being is best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework marked by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade^[1^]. In this view, the state’s proper role is chiefly to secure and support markets – for example, by enforcing contracts, protecting property rights, and ensuring money’s stability – and otherwise to retreat from intervention. As the Marxist geographer David Harvey famously summarized, neoliberalism preaches that “the freedom of the market and trade” is the guarantor of all other freedoms^[1^]. Under neoliberal theory, if a market does not exist (in realms such as education, healthcare, or even pollution rights), it must be created by state action, and once established, market mechanisms should operate with minimal interference^[1^].

Proponents of neoliberalism often invoke values like freedom, choice, and individual responsibility. The British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, one of neoliberalism’s chief architects, encapsulated the doctrine with her famous mantra “There is no alternative,” suggesting that no other economic system (such as socialism or extensive state planning) could deliver prosperity and freedom. Likewise, U.S. President Ronald Reagan declared in 1981, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” signaling the neoliberal belief that government intervention usually does more harm than good^[2^]. These slogans underscored the neoliberal view that market competition should replace government programs and social welfare, positioning private enterprise and consumer choice as the engines of progress.

It is important to note that neoliberalism as a term was rarely embraced by its own champions – it has been used more often by critics and scholars. In current usage, the term generally refers to the wave of market-centric reforms and ideas that gained global prominence from the late 20th century onward. These include policies of deregulationDeregulation Full Description:The systematic removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain business activity. Framed as “cutting red tape” to unleash innovation, it involves stripping away protections for workers, consumers, and the environment. Deregulation is a primary tool of neoliberal policy. It targets everything from financial oversight (allowing banks to take bigger risks) to safety standards and environmental laws. The argument is that regulations increase costs and stifle competition. Critical Perspective:History has shown that deregulation often leads to corporate excess, monopoly power, and systemic instability. The removal of financial guardrails directly contributed to major economic collapses. Furthermore, it represents a transfer of power from the democratic state (which creates regulations) to private corporations (who are freed from accountability).
Read more (removing government oversight from industries), privatization (transferring public assets or services to private ownership), trade and financial liberalization (opening up international trade and capital flows), and an overall retrenchment of the welfare state in favor of market solutions. In short, neoliberalism is broadly defined as the extension of competitive markets into every realm of life, accompanied by a reconfiguration of the state’s role – away from social provision and toward enforcing market rules and corporate interests^[3^]. While the exact definition is contested (and the term can carry somewhat different meanings in different contexts), most scholars agree on this general outline: neoliberalism denotes a revival of classical liberal ideas of free markets, but adapted to the late 20th-century context and applied as a political project to restructure societies. As we will see, this project had distinct intellectual origins and evolved through specific historical turning points.

Intellectual Origins and Early Development

The intellectual roots of neoliberalism trace back to the mid-20th century, as a response to the rise of big-government ideologies like state socialism and welfare-state liberalism. The term “neoliberalism” itself was coined in the 1930s – notably at the 1938 Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris, where European liberal thinkers met to discuss a “new liberalism.” Economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek were alarmed by the expansion of government planning (whether in Soviet communism or western welfare states) and sought to articulate a vision of society that re-centered market competition while still recognizing that pure laissez-faire needed updating. This early use of “neoliberal” advocated a market economy with a framework of rules and a legal order – distinguishing itself from 19th-century laissez-faire by acknowledging that an active state might be needed to maintain the conditions for competition (for instance, preventing monopolies) and to provide a basic social safety net. German proponents of this approach, such as Wilhelm Röpke and the ordoliberal school in post-war West Germany, spoke of a “social market economySocial Market Economy Full Description:An economic model combining free-market capitalism with social policies to establish fair competition and a welfare state. It was the “Third Way” designed to provide the prosperity of capitalism while blunting the appeal of socialism among the working class. The Social Market Economy rejects both the laissez-faire capitalism of the 19th century and the command economy of the Soviet bloc. The state actively intervenes to prevent monopolies and provide a robust social safety net (pensions, healthcare, unemployment benefits), arguing that the market must serve society, not just capital. Critical Perspective:Structurally, this system was a Cold War weapon. It was designed to sedate the labor movement, offering workers a “slice of the pie” to prevent radical political organizing. By integrating unions into corporate decision-making, the state effectively neutralized class struggle, transforming the working class into stakeholders in the capitalist system rather than revolutionaries. Further Reading Rising from the Ruins: The Anatomy of the Wirtschaftswunder The Adenauer Era: Integration, Stability, and the Invention of “Chancellor Democracy” The Great Silence: Collective Amnesia and the Legacy of the Holocaust Wiedergutmachung: The Luxembourg Agreement and the “Entry Ticket” to the West The Long Road Home: The Return of the POWs and the Visit to Moscow Wandel durch Annäherung: Willy Brandt, Ostpolitik, and the Silent Revolution 1968 and the Revolt Against the Fathers The Americanization of the Bonn Republic: Coca-Cola and Rock ‘n’ Roll The German Autumn: The Red Army Faction and the Crisis of 1977 From Crisis to Kohl: Stagnation, the Greens, and the End of the Bonn Republic ,” indicating a blend of market principles with social policy. In this sense, the initial neoliberal thought was not about no government at all, but rather about creating a limited but strong state that could “order” the market framework while avoiding direct economic management.

The more familiar version of neoliberalism, however, took shape after World War II through a transatlantic network of scholars and advocates centered around the Mont Pelerin SocietyMont Pelerin Society Full Description:An exclusive international organization founded by Friedrich Hayek and others to combat the rise of state planning and social democracy. It served as the primary intellectual incubator for neoliberal thought, playing a long-term strategic role in shifting global economic consensus. The Mont Pelerin Society was the “thought collective” behind the neoliberal counter-revolution. Established when free-market ideas were politically marginalized, it brought together economists, philosophers, and historians to refine and propagate individualist economic theories. Critical Perspective:Critically, this group exemplifies the “long game” of ideology. They understood that to change policy, they first had to change the intellectual climate. By building a network of think tanks and academic departments, they successfully waited for a crisis (stagflation) to present their pre-packaged ideas as the only viable solution, effectively manufacturing a new “common sense” that favored the elite.
Read more, founded in 1947. Mont Pelerin was an elite intellectual group convened by Friedrich Hayek in the Swiss Alps that included economists such as Milton Friedman, Frank Knight, James Buchanan, and Michael Polanyi, along with philosophers like Karl Popper. These thinkers shared a deep belief in classical liberal values – they championed individual liberty, private property, and free markets – but they also recognized that simply letting markets run unchecked could lead to monopolies or political backlash. Thus, they worked on strategies to defend and reimagine liberal capitalism in a world trending toward collectivism and state intervention. Historian Quinn Slobodian has shown that these neoliberal architects were preoccupied with a grand question: How can capitalism be safeguarded from democracy? Slobodian argues that neoliberals, rather than naively “freeing” markets, actually focused on designing institutions to encase markets – to “inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy” by insulating economic decisions from popular political control^[4^]. From this perspective, early neoliberals were not anarchic free-marketers but institution-builders: they advocated for constitutional limits on government, independent central banks, international trade agreements, and other supranational frameworks that would lock in market-friendly policies beyond the reach of mass politics.

During the post-war decades (1950s–1960s), neoliberal ideas remained in the margins, as Keynesian economicsKeynesian Economics Full Description:The dominant economic consensus of the post-war era which argued that the government had a duty to intervene in the economy to maintain full employment and manage demand. Neoliberalism defined itself primarily as a reaction against and a dismantling of this system. Keynesian Economics underpinned the “Golden Age” of capitalism and the welfare state. It operated on the belief that unregulated markets were prone to collapse and that the state must act as a counterbalance—spending money during recessions and taxing during booms—to ensure social stability and public welfare. Critical Perspective:From the neoliberal viewpoint, Keynesianism was a slippery slope to totalitarianism. However, critics argue the dismantling of this consensus broke the social contract between capital and labor. By abandoning the commitment to full employment and social safety nets, the state abdicated its responsibility to its citizens, prioritizing the health of the currency over the health of the population.
Read more and social-democratic welfare states dominated in the West. Nonetheless, neoliberal thinkers kept refining their doctrines. In academia, Chicago School economists like Milton Friedman pushed for free-market policies (Friedman famously promoted monetarismMonetarism Monetarism is the economic school of thought associated with Milton Friedman, which rose to dominance as a counter to Keynesian economics. It posits that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon and that the government’s role should be limited to managing the currency rather than stimulating demand. Key Mechanisms: Inflation Targeting: Using interest rates to keep inflation low, even if high interest rates cause recession or unemployment. Fiscal Restraint: Opposing government deficit spending to boost the economy during downturns. Critical Perspective:Critics argue that monetarism breaks the post-war social contract. By prioritizing “sound money” and low inflation above all else, monetarist policies often induce deliberately high unemployment to discipline the labor force and suppress wages. It represents a technical solution to political problems, removing economic policy from democratic accountability. and school vouchers, for example), while public-choice theorists like James Buchanan critiqued government bureaucracy and advocated constitutional constraints on public spending. Hayek, in works like The Road to Serfdom (1944) and later The Constitution of Liberty (1960), warned that state economic planning would inevitably threaten political freedom, reinforcing the case for market order. These ideas were nurtured in think tanks (such as the Institute of Economic Affairs in the UK and the American Enterprise Institute in the US) and in business circles who funded pro-market research.

Another, often overlooked, arena for neoliberal development was Latin America. In countries like Chile, a group of economists trained at the University of Chicago (dubbed the “Chicago Boys”) began in the 1960s to advocate free-market reforms as a solution to inflation and stagnation. Their opportunity came in the 1970s under dramatic circumstances: in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a coup in Chile, overthrowing the socialist president Salvador Allende. Pinochet’s regime, with guidance from the Chicago Boys, implemented radical market reforms – slashing trade barriers, privatizing state enterprises, deregulating finance, and weakening labor unions. David Harvey notes that Chile’s experiment was essentially the first laboratory of neoliberal state formation in the world^[5^]. Imposed under authoritarian conditions (and accompanied by repression of labor and left-wing opponents), Chile’s neoliberal overhaul in the late 1970s provided a model that would later inspire reforms elsewhere. It’s telling that Milton Friedman himself visited Chile and praised it as an “economic miracle,” illustrating how early neoliberal ideas often intersected with authoritarian politics to achieve their ends.

By the late 1970s, the stage was set for neoliberalism to move from fringe to mainstream. Stagnating growth and high inflation (the stagflationStagflation Full Description:A portmanteau of “stagnation” and “inflation,” describing a period of high unemployment coupled with rising prices. This economic crisis in the industrialized West shattered faith in the post-war order and provided the “window of opportunity” for neoliberalism to ascend. Stagflation was the crisis that Keynesian economics could not explain or fix. Triggered in part by oil shocks, it created a situation where traditional state spending only fueled inflation without creating jobs. This failure paralyzed the political left and allowed the neoliberal right to step in with radical new solutions focused on breaking unions and shrinking the money supply. Critical Perspective:Naomi Klein and other critics view this moment as the first major application of the “Shock Doctrine.” The crisis was used to justify painful structural reforms—such as crushing labor power and slashing social spending—that would have been politically impossible during times of stability. crisis) were undermining the post-war Keynesian consensus. In this context, neoliberal intellectuals and policy advocates were poised to offer an alternative. They found powerful political champions at the end of the 1970s – setting the scene for what Harvey calls the “revolutionary turning-point” of 1979–1980, when neoliberal doctrine moved from seminar rooms to the halls of power^[1^].

The Rise of Neoliberalism: 1970s–1990s

President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1982. Their governments’ market-oriented reforms in the 1980s were emblematic of neoliberalism’s global ascent.

The turn of the 1980s marked the triumph of neoliberal policy in major Western nations and soon across the world. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in the UK with a mandate to halt Britain’s economic decline by defeating inflation and curbing the powerful trade unions. She famously proclaimed “Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul,” reflecting her intent not just to reform the economy but to transform British society along market lines. Thatcher’s government aggressively deregulated industries, privatized state-owned companies (from British Telecom to British Airways), cut taxes (especially for the wealthy and businesses), and weakened labor unions (most dramatically in her confrontation with the miners’ union in 1984–85). Her policies, often dubbed “ThatcherismMonetarism Monetarism is the economic school of thought associated with Milton Friedman, which rose to dominance as a counter to Keynesian economics. It posits that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon and that the government’s role should be limited to managing the currency rather than stimulating demand. Key Mechanisms: Inflation Targeting: Using interest rates to keep inflation low, even if high interest rates cause recession or unemployment. Fiscal Restraint: Opposing government deficit spending to boost the economy during downturns. Critical Perspective:Critics argue that monetarism breaks the post-war social contract. By prioritizing “sound money” and low inflation above all else, monetarist policies often induce deliberately high unemployment to discipline the labor force and suppress wages. It represents a technical solution to political problems, removing economic policy from democratic accountability. ,” encapsulated neoliberal tenets: tight control of the money supply to fight inflation (a monetarist approach influenced by Friedman), reduced government spending on social programs, and a rhetorical emphasis on individual enterprise over collective social guarantees. While these moves were controversial domestically, they succeeded in taming inflation and were credited by supporters with reviving Britain’s competitiveness – at the cost, critics note, of rising unemployment and social inequality in the 1980s.

Across the Atlantic, the United States underwent a parallel transformation under President Ronald Reagan (elected 1980). Reagan’s administration embraced a similar package of neoliberal reforms, often summarized as “Reaganomics.” This included sweeping tax cuts (especially the 1981 Kemp-Roth tax cut which significantly lowered top marginal tax rates), broad deregulation of business and finance, and a general posture of rolling back government’s economic role. Reagan famously removed price controls on oil, deregulated sectors like airlines and telecommunications (continuing a trend started under Jimmy Carter), and took a hostile stance toward labor unions – notably breaking the PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981, an action that signaled a shift in power toward employers. In rhetoric, Reagan preached free-market fundamentalismMarket Fundamentalism Full Description:The quasi-religious belief that markets are not just efficient, but morally superior and self-correcting. It posits that the market is the ultimate arbiter of value and that any interference with market logic is inherently harmful and inefficient. Market Fundamentalism is the ideological core that sustains neoliberal policymaking. It extends the logic of the market into non-economic spheres, arguing that schools, hospitals, prisons, and even environmental protection function best when run like businesses competing for profit. Critical Perspective:This worldview ignores the existence of “market failures” and externalities (like pollution). By assuming the market is always right, it justifies the erosion of democracy; if the market is the perfect decision-maker, then democratic oversight is merely “red tape.” It reduces society to a collection of consumers rather than a community of citizens.
Read more: he extolled entrepreneurs and often repeated that government intervention was the problem, not the solution. While military spending actually surged under Reagan (revealing that neoliberals did not necessarily oppose a strong state in all areas, especially defense), domestic social spending was constrained and welfare programs were trimmed. The combined effect of Reagan-Thatcher policies was to establish a new norm: market liberalization and privatization became the guiding principles of “good governance” in Anglo-American capitalism.

From these Anglo-American epicenters, neoliberal policies reverberated globally. The early 1980s debt crisis in Latin America (when many countries defaulted on loans amid high interest rates) provided an opening for neoliberal “structural adjustmentWashington Consensus The Washington Consensus refers to a specific array of policy recommendations that became the standard reform package offered to crisis-wracked developing countries. While ostensibly designed to stabilize volatile economies, critics argue it functions as a tool of neocolonialism, enforcing Western economic dominance on the Global South. Key Components: Fiscal Discipline: Strict limits on government borrowing, often resulting in deep cuts to social programs. Trade Liberalization: Opening local markets to foreign competition, often before domestic industries are strong enough to compete. Privatization: Selling off state-owned enterprises to private investors. Critical Perspective:By making aid and loans conditional on these reforms, the consensus effectively strips sovereign nations of their ability to determine their own economic destiny. It prioritizes the repayment of international debts over the welfare of local populations, often leading to increased poverty and the erosion of public infrastructure.” programs, often imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank as conditions for rescue loans. Indebted countries in Latin America and Africa were told to liberalize trade, privatize state enterprises, cut public spending, and deregulate their economies as part of the cure for their crises. This set of policies became known as the “Washington ConsensusWashington Consensus The Washington Consensus refers to a specific array of policy recommendations that became the standard reform package offered to crisis-wracked developing countries. While ostensibly designed to stabilize volatile economies, critics argue it functions as a tool of neocolonialism, enforcing Western economic dominance on the Global South. Key Components: Fiscal Discipline: Strict limits on government borrowing, often resulting in deep cuts to social programs. Trade Liberalization: Opening local markets to foreign competition, often before domestic industries are strong enough to compete. Privatization: Selling off state-owned enterprises to private investors. Critical Perspective:By making aid and loans conditional on these reforms, the consensus effectively strips sovereign nations of their ability to determine their own economic destiny. It prioritizes the repayment of international debts over the welfare of local populations, often leading to increased poverty and the erosion of public infrastructure.” (a term coined in 1989 by economist John Williamson), which encapsulated the neoliberal development model that international institutions prescribed: fiscal discipline, tax reform (favoring broad bases and low rates), financial and trade liberalization, privatization of public industries, deregulation to promote business, and secure property rights. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, dozens of countries from Mexico to New Zealand underwent sweeping liberalization reforms in line with this agenda.

In China, meanwhile, a remarkable hybrid occurred: starting in 1978, Deng Xiaoping’s government began market-oriented reforms, decentralizing economic control and welcoming foreign investment – effectively introducing capitalist market dynamics under the oversight of a communist one-party state. While China is not a neoliberal state in the ideological sense (the Communist Party retained ultimate control), its post-1978 “reform and opening” can be seen as part of the global turn toward market mechanisms. Harvey notes that Deng’s liberalization of the Chinese economy from 1978 onward transformed China “from a closed backwater to an open center of capitalist dynamism” within two decades – a shift that coincided with the Thatcher-Reagan revolution and reinforced the worldwide trend toward markets and away from state planning^[1^].

By the 1990s, neoliberalism had achieved a truly global reach. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many post-communist countries in Eastern Europe and Russia embraced rapid privatization and market reforms (often advised by Western economists in a process termed “shock therapy”). In the European Union, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the drive toward a single market and single currency reflected neoliberal influences – emphasizing free movement of capital and goods, low inflation, and constraints on government deficits. Even center-left parties adapted to the neoliberal era: in the UK, Tony Blair’s “New Labour” and in the U.S., Bill Clinton’s New Democrats both accepted core neoliberal tenets by the 1990s, such as deregulation and balanced budgets, albeit with a softer edge. Clinton, for example, oversaw financial deregulation (the repeal of Glass-Steagall ActGlass-Steagall Act Full Description:A key piece of banking legislation passed as part of the New Deal financial reforms. It separated commercial banking (taking deposits) from investment banking (speculating on the stock market), designed to prevent banks from gambling with ordinary people’s money. The Glass-Steagall Act was established to restore public confidence in the banking system. It built a firewall between the boring, necessary utility of storing money and the high-risk, high-reward world of Wall Street speculation. For decades, it prevented the kind of financial contagion that triggered the crash. Critical Perspective:The repeal of this act in the late 20th century (under neoliberal deregulation) is often cited as a major cause of the 2008 financial crisis. Its history illustrates the cyclical nature of regulation: a disaster forces the state to curb the excesses of finance, but over time, the financial lobby erodes those protections, leading inevitably to the next disaster.
Read more in 1999) and embraced free trade agreements like NAFTA, while also attempting a modest expansion of the social safety net (e.g. expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit). This synthesis is sometimes called the “Third Way,” blending market economics with a rhetoric of social inclusion – but many analysts note that Third Way governments largely continued the neoliberal trajectory, merely with more social spending than their conservative counterparts. Historian David Priestland observes that by the late 1990s, debates raged over whether figures like Clinton and Blair were “soft neoliberals” or genuinely pursuing a new form of social democracy; either way, they did not fundamentally reverse the market-centric direction set in the 1980s^[6^].

In sum, from roughly 1980 to 2000, neoliberalism became the dominant policy paradigm worldwide. Free-market ideology went from intellectual insurgency to orthodoxy. Institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization (founded in 1995 to promote trade liberalization globally) entrenched neoliberal principles in global governance. The era was marked by booming financial markets, the spread of global supply chains, and a rhetoric of inevitability – encapsulated by Thatcher’s TINA slogan. By the turn of the millennium, commentators like Francis Fukuyama even proclaimed “the end of history,” suggesting that free-market liberal democracy had prevailed as the final form of human government. Yet, beneath the triumphalist consensus, cracks were forming – many rooted in the social and economic outcomes that neoliberal policies were generating.

Key Features of Neoliberal Policy and Ideology

Neoliberalism can be understood through its key features and policy prescriptions. These reflect both its ideological commitments and the concrete measures adopted in neoliberal reforms across countries:

Deregulation: A hallmark of neoliberal policy is the removal or relaxation of government rules on businesses and finance. Neoliberals argue that regulations impede efficiency and innovation. In practice, deregulation in the 1980s–90s meant eliminating controls on prices and wages, loosening environmental and labor protections, and crucially, financial deregulation. For example, the lifting of restrictions on banks and Wall Street allowed for an explosion of new financial instruments (derivatives, etc.) and more risk-taking. Airlines, trucking, telecommunications, and other industries were similarly deregulated in the name of competition. While deregulation reduced costs for some businesses and consumers, critics point out it also increased instability (notably in finance) and often harmed workers or the environment due to weakened protections. Privatization: Transferring enterprises or services from public ownership to private hands is another core neoliberal strategy. State-owned companies (in sectors like energy, water, telecommunications, transport) were sold off en masse in many countries during the 1980s–90s. The justification was that private firms would be more efficient and profit-driven, improving service and reducing fiscal burdens. Thatcher’s government in Britain privatized steel, coal, railroads, and public housing (through policies like selling council houses to tenants). Around the world, governments privatized everything from airlines to pension systems. Privatization also extended to services: for instance, contracting out or outsourcing government functions to private companies. Neoliberal ideology treats competition and profit incentives as superior to public sector management. A concern, however, is that privatization can put essential goods under profit logic, which may lead to higher inequality in access (e.g. poorer communities priced out of quality services) and the loss of public accountability. Tax Cuts and Small Government: Neoliberalism generally favors lower taxes, especially on businesses and high-income earners, under the theory that this spurs investment and innovation (the “trickle-down” idea). Reagan’s and Bush’s tax cuts in the US, and Thatcher’s tax reforms in the UK (shifting from progressive income taxes toward more regressive consumption taxes), exemplify this trend. The flipside is reducing government expenditure – often through cutting welfare programs, subsidies, or public employment – to avoid large deficits. Neoliberals also emphasize fiscal discipline (keeping budget deficits low) and often pursue austerity measures (spending cuts) as a remedy for economic trouble. The ideal neoliberal state is “lean,” not spending much on social programs, and non-interventionist in the economy (aside from necessary market-maintenance functions). This push for austerity has been especially evident when IMF programs have required debtor countries to cut public spending on education, health, and subsidies as part of structural adjustment. Free Trade and Globalization: Neoliberalism is closely associated with the removal of barriers to international trade and investment. It views free trade as a key engine of growth, allowing countries to specialize and corporations to access global markets. In practice, this meant reducing tariffs, quotas, and capital controls. During the 1990s, many emerging economies opened up to foreign capital flows and imports as part of the Washington Consensus. Trade agreements like NAFTA (1994) and the establishment of the World Trade Organization promoted a globally integrated market. Globalization, facilitated by neoliberal policies, allowed multinational corporations to extend supply chains worldwide and seek lower-cost labor and inputs. While this brought cheaper consumer goods and new opportunities for some developing countries, it also contributed to deindustrialization in some Western regions (as factories moved to low-wage countries) and put downward pressure on wages globally. Critics also note that free capital mobility led to volatile speculative flows and financial crises (for instance, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 was exacerbated by sudden capital withdrawals after rapid liberalization). Market-Based Governance: Neoliberal thinking extends beyond macro-policy into the philosophy of governance and daily life. It tries to “marketize” government operations and social relations. This includes outsourcing public services to private companies, introducing competition and profit motives in sectors like education (e.g. charter schools, school voucher programs) and healthcare (managed care, private insurance markets), and using market signals (prices, cost-benefit analysis) in public decision-making. It even entails shaping individuals as entrepreneurs of the self, as theorized by sociologist Michel Foucault – meaning people are expected to behave like mini-businesses, managing their own human capital and competing in all aspects of life^[6^]. In a neoliberal culture, personal success or failure tends to be framed as entrepreneurial triumph or lack of effort, rather than as a result of social structures. The pressure to compete permeates spheres such as education, where students and universities are ranked and measured for performance, or the labor market, where workers are expected to constantly upgrade their skills to stay “marketable.” This cultural aspect – sometimes called neoliberal subjectivity – reflects the ideology’s deep impact beyond just economics. Strong Property Rights and Rule of Law: Neoliberals insist on solid legal frameworks to protect private property and enforce contracts. Contrary to the caricature of “minimal state,” neoliberal architects knew that a strong state is needed in certain domains – particularly in securing the rule of law, policing, and national defense. The state’s coercive power can even be robustly employed to implement neoliberal reforms. For example, neoliberal policies have often been imposed under authoritarian regimes (Chile under Pinochet, or many structural adjustment programsStructural Adjustment Programs Full Description:Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) are the enforcement mechanism of neoliberalism in the developing world. When countries face debt crises, international lenders provide bailouts only if the government agrees to restructure its economy according to free-market principles. Consequences: Erosion of Sovereignty: National governments lose control over their own budgets and priorities. Social Impact: Requirements to cut deficits frequently lead to the introduction of user fees for health and education, excluding the poor from essential services. Export Orientation: Economies are forced to focus on extracting resources for export to pay off debts, rather than growing food or goods for domestic consumption. Critical Perspective:Critics describe SAPs as a form of “debt peonage,” where developing nations remain perpetually indebted to Western financial institutions. The programs often result in a net flow of wealth from the poor global South to the rich global North, exacerbating underdevelopment. in one-party states) or with a heavy hand against dissent (e.g. strike-breaking, crushing of unions). The neoliberal state may refrain from economic management, but it is by no means weak: it actively shapes markets, sometimes using force, to create a society aligned with market imperatives. As scholar Wendy Brown notes, neoliberalism doesn’t wither the state but reorients it – from serving citizens’ welfare to serving economic competition and elite interests^[7^].

In summary, neoliberalism’s key features boil down to liberating markets and limiting democracy’s influence over the economy. Its guiding belief is that unfettered markets produce the most efficient and optimal outcomes, whereas collective regulation or public provision are inherently suspect. This framework has undeniably driven certain economic changes – it helped unleash globalization and corporate profitability – but it has also generated profound social consequences, which have been the target of extensive critique.

Social and Economic Outcomes: A Critical Perspective

From a leftist and critical perspective, the legacy of neoliberalism is deeply problematic. While proponents claimed that freeing markets would bring widespread prosperity, critics argue that neoliberal policies have produced toxic social and economic outcomes for many populations. Key among these outcomes is a dramatic rise in inequality. In country after country, the neoliberal era (circa 1980 onward) has seen the richest strata of society capture a vastly disproportionate share of wealth and income gains, while real incomes for middle and working classes have often stagnated. For example, in the United States – a flagship neoliberal economy – the top 1% of earners received roughly 10% of national income in the late 1970s; by the mid-2010s, the top 1% claimed over 20% of income, the highest concentration since the 1920s^[8^]. Wages for median workers barely grew in real terms over decades, even as productivity soared. A similar pattern is observed globally: according to the World Inequality Lab, from 1980 to the 2010s the top 1% of the world’s population captured twice as much of global income growth as the bottom 50% of humanity^[8^]. This sharp increase in inequality is widely linked to neoliberal policies – deregulation and globalization weakened labor’s bargaining power, tax cuts favored the wealthy, and privatization often enriched a few while making basic services costlier for the many.

Neoliberalism has also been associated with the erosion of job security and labor rights. The emphasis on labor market “flexibility” translated to the decline of labor unions, the rise of contract and gig work, and more precarious employment for workers. Public-sector unions and jobs declined as government functions were outsourced. In many countries, social safety nets were scaled back – unemployment benefits, welfare assistance, and public housing support were reduced under the logic that generous benefits create “dependency.” The result has been greater economic insecurity for working-class communities. As the middle class hollowed out, phenomena like the “working poor” (people holding jobs yet living in poverty) grew more common in advanced economies.

Another outcome is the privatization of social services and the accompanying social stratification. Under neoliberal regimes, services like education, healthcare, and pensions were partly or wholly privatized in numerous contexts. While wealthy individuals could access top-quality private services, those with fewer means often faced worsening quality or higher costs for basic needs. For instance, public education budgets were squeezed while private schooling and tutoring expanded; public hospitals suffered under austerity while private clinics bloomed for those who could pay. Higher education increasingly saddled students with debt (notably in the U.S.) as public funding fell and universities ran on market principles. The net effect has been a transfer of risk and burden onto individuals – each person responsible for their own healthcare, retirement, and retraining – which benefits those with wealth and punishes those without. Feminist critics also point out that neoliberal austerity often pushed unpaid care work onto women in the home as state services retrenched.

Neoliberal globalization had particularly harsh effects on developing countries and marginalized communities. The structural adjustment programs of the 1980s–90s, imposed by the IMF in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, required sudden removal of subsidies, opening to foreign competition, and privatization. While intended to restore growth, these policies frequently led to short-term social pain: spikes in prices for food and fuel once subsidies were removed, layoffs of public employees, and cuts to health and education spending. Many African and Latin American countries in the 1980s experienced a “lost decade” of development with low growth and deteriorating living standards under these programs. Even where growth eventually resumed (as in some Latin American countries in the 1990s), the benefits were very uneven, and local industries sometimes collapsed under competition from imports. In places like Russia and Eastern Europe, the 1990s shock therapy created oligarchic elites who captured former state assets, while millions fell into poverty amid the transition chaos.

Critics like economist Joseph Stiglitz (former World Bank chief economist) argued that the neoliberal formula was “one-size-fits-all” and often “market fundamentalist,” ignoring local social needs and causing unnecessary suffering in transition economies. Activist intellectual Naomi Klein, in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, went further: she contended that neoliberal policies often advanced in the wake of crises or shocks (natural disasters, coups, financial crises), effectively exploiting traumatized societies to push through unpopular free-market measures before democratic resistance could mobilize. Klein cites examples from Pinochet’s Chile to post-Katrina New Orleans, suggesting a pattern of “disaster capitalism” where crises were used as cover for privatization and cuts when people were least able to resist^[9^].

One of the most damaging long-term outcomes linked to neoliberalism is the propensity for financial crises. By deregulating finance and encouraging high levels of debt and speculation, neoliberal policies arguably laid the groundwork for instability. This was evidenced in the series of financial meltdowns: the Latin American debt crisis (1980s), the Asian financial crisis (1997–98), the Russian default (1998), and culminating in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis – the worst since 1929. In the United States and Europe, decades of deregulation (like the repeal of banking rules and the growth of a shadow banking sector) led banks to take on extreme leverage and create exotic derivatives, contributing to a massive housing bubble and its collapse. When the 2008 crisis hit, governments had to intervene on an enormous scale (trillions of dollars in bank bailouts, emergency stimulus, etc.), effectively socializing the losses after years of privatized gains. This sequence – a neoliberal boom benefiting financiers and wealthy investors, followed by a bust requiring state rescue – highlighted what critic Yanis Varoufakis calls the internal contradiction of neoliberal capitalism: it claims to disdain state interference, yet repeatedly needs state power to save the system from its own excesses. Indeed, as Varoufakis wryly notes, neoliberalism’s commitment to markets was “never particularly liberal” in practice; it favored Wall Street and corporate interests, bending rules whenever convenient to protect them^[10^].

Beyond economics, social fabrics and democratic institutions have also been strained under neoliberalism. The ideology’s emphasis on individualism and competition can corrode social bonds and solidarity. Political scientists have observed increasing voter alienation and distrust in institutions in many neoliberalized societies. When people experience government as primarily serving markets and investors, not ordinary citizens, it can breed disillusionment with democracy. The rise of populist movements in recent years – both left-wing and right-wing – can be partly seen as a backlash against the inequalities and insecurities of the neoliberal era. For example, the wave of right-wing populism (Donald Trump in the U.S., Brexit in the UK, far-right parties in Europe, Bolsonaro in Brazil, etc.) often drew support from those who felt left behind by globalization and free-market policies. Ironically, while these populists often rail against “globalist elites” (adopting some anti-neoliberal rhetoric), many still govern with neoliberal economic policies (e.g. tax cuts for the rich, deregulation), mixing it with nationalist and authoritarian tendencies – a fusion some analysts call “authoritarian neoliberalism.” On the other hand, left populists and social movements (such as Syriza in Greece, the Sanders movement in the U.S., Corbynism in the UK, Latin America’s “Pink Tide” leaders like Hugo Chávez or Evo Morales) explicitly campaigned to reverse neoliberal reforms and restore social protections, with varying degrees of success.

Even public health and environmental outcomes have been linked to the neoliberal turn. Critics argue that privatizing healthcare and reducing social safety nets contributed to worse health outcomes and heightened vulnerability – issues starkly revealed during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic (where countries with underfunded public health systems struggled). Neoliberal emphasis on growth and deregulation has also often meant weak responses to climate change and environmental degradation, as market solutions proved inadequate to address these collective action problems. The reluctance to impose stringent regulations on industry or to invest heavily in green technology transitions until very recently can be tied to decades of market-fundamentalist thinking.

In synthesizing these critiques, David Harvey famously contends that neoliberalism has been “a project to restore class power” – beneath its lofty rhetoric of freedom, it has effectively served to re-establish the dominance of economic elites after the more egalitarian post-war decades^[9^]. “It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory,” Harvey writes, “to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration of naked class power”^[9^]. In Harvey’s analysis, neoliberalism did not fail in its own terms – it successfully enriched a small elite and shifted power back to owners of capital – but it did so at the expense of broad social welfare and equality.

Even some mainstream institutions began to acknowledge these downsides. In a notable 2016 paper, economists at the IMF (long a bastion of neoliberal orthodoxy) asked “Neoliberalism: Oversold?” and concluded that certain neoliberal policies – particularly unrestrained capital market liberalization and fiscal austerity – increased inequality and hurt long-term growth as a result . This admission from within the establishment echoed what left critics had argued for years: that the promised benefits of neoliberalism (higher growth, efficiency, “trickling down” to the poor) often failed to materialize, while the negative side effects (inequality, instability) were very real. In short, by the early 21st century there was mounting evidence that neoliberalism as a socio-economic model had severe flaws – fueling calls for alternative approaches.

Transformations and Challenges in the 21st Century

Although neoliberalism became the de facto global model by the 1990s, it has not been static. The early 21st century has seen significant transformations, challenges, and adaptations of neoliberalism. One major jolt was the global financial crisis of 2008–09, which shook confidence in unregulated markets. In the immediate aftermath, there was much talk of the “death of neoliberalism” or a decisive shift toward re-regulating finance and expanding the role of government (as had happened after the 1930s Depression). Governments did intervene massively – banks were nationalized or bailed out, stimulus spending rescued economies from total collapse – actions that seemed to contradict neoliberal dogma. Yet, once the immediate crisis passed, many countries reverted to austerity policies (for example, severe public spending cuts in Greece, Spain, the UK, and elsewhere around 2010–2015) as leaders insisted on reducing deficits. This indicated that neoliberal ideas were resilient and could reassert themselves even after a crisis of their own making. Scholars like Philip Mirowski quipped that neoliberals “never let a serious crisis go to waste” – they often manage to adapt and even deepen neoliberal reforms following crises, by shifting blame or arguing the solution is more market discipline. Indeed, post-2008, some financial regulations were tightened (e.g. the Dodd-Frank Act in the US), but the fundamental power of the financial sector was not broken, and inequality continued to rise in many places as recovery disproportionately benefited asset owners.

The 2010s, however, brought growing political unrest that indicated a breaking point for the neoliberal consensus. Popular movements like Occupy Wall Street (2011) directly challenged the 1% vs 99% wealth divide. In many countries, established center-left and center-right parties (which had converged on neoliberal economic policies) lost ground to insurgent candidates who rejected aspects of neoliberal globalization. The Brexit referendum in 2016, for example, was driven partly by anger in deindustrialized regions of England that had suffered job losses and felt left out in a globalized economy. The election of Donald Trump, though complex in causes, also reflected a revolt against the bipartisan embrace of free trade and financialization – Trump railed against trade deals and Chinese imports, appealing to some blue-collar voters hurt by factory closures. However, Trump’s actual economic policies (big corporate tax cuts, financial deregulation) largely remained within neoliberal logic, showing how entrenched the paradigm still was even in populist clothing.

Meanwhile, some countries in Latin America elected openly anti-neoliberal governments (the Pink Tide of the 2000s: Venezuela under Chávez, Bolivia under Morales, Argentina under Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, etc.), which renationalized industries and expanded social programs. These met varying degrees of success and pushback. By the late 2010s, a right-wing turn in some of these countries and economic troubles (e.g. Venezuela’s crisis) tempered the “post-neoliberal” wave in Latin America, though the left gained new momentum again in the early 2020s (with leaders like Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and Gabriel Boric in Chile).

A significant transformation in the neoliberal landscape has been the rise of what some call “neoliberalism with authoritarian characteristics” – regimes that combine strongman politics or illiberal democracy with pro-market economics. Examples include Russia under Vladimir Putin (state-directed capitalism benefiting oligarchs, paired with political authoritarianism) or Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (neoliberal reforms in early years, then increasingly centralized power). Even China presents a unique case: it has embraced many neoliberal aspects in its economy (markets, competition, integration into global trade) while maintaining an authoritarian one-party state. This suggests that political liberalism (democracy, civil liberties) and economic liberalism (free markets) have decoupled in some places – undermining the 1990s assumption that free markets and free societies inevitably go together. In fact, historically, neoliberals themselves (like Hayek) often preferred technocratic or constitutional limits on democracy to secure their economic vision, and as Slobodian documented, early neoliberals sometimes condoned or allied with authoritarian regimes if it meant protecting capitalism from leftist movements^[4^]. Thus, the melding of neoliberal economics with nationalist or authoritarian politics in the 21st century can be seen as an evolution consistent with neoliberalism’s core aim of shielding the market order, even at the cost of democratic norms.

One area where neoliberalism faced a severe ideological challenge is the climate crisis and environmental sustainability. Markets have struggled to address issues like carbon emissions because environmental costs are “externalities” not priced in transactions. For years, neoliberal ideology resisted strong regulatory or public-led approaches to climate change, favoring market mechanisms like carbon trading or voluntary corporate responsibility, which proved inadequate. As climate threats intensified in the 2010s, there has been growing realization (even among some economists) that state intervention on a massive scale is required – a notion fundamentally at odds with neoliberal minimalism. Concepts like the Green New Deal proposed in the US and Europe represent a break with neoliberal thinking, harkening back to Keynesian-style government-led investment to transform energy and infrastructure. Whether such ideas take hold remains a key question for the post-2020 era.

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–21 arguably delivered another huge blow to neoliberal orthodoxy. The pandemic forced governments worldwide to take extraordinary actions: shutdowns of business (violating the neoliberal creed of keeping markets always open), huge fiscal spending for emergency relief, and direct intervention to support or produce vaccines and medical goods. In the words of economic historian Adam Tooze, 2020 saw “government support for households, businesses and markets on dimensions not seen outside wartime” – a de facto admission that state capacity and public goods are crucial in a crisis . The pandemic revealed the weaknesses of decades of neoliberal policy: countries with privatized or underfunded health systems struggled with capacity; global supply chains optimized for efficiency (not resilience) buckled; and the lack of social protections left millions vulnerable. Some commentators declared that COVID-19 might finally mark the “end of neoliberalism” as a dominant paradigm . Indeed, by 2021 even the IMF and World Bank were urging governments to spend generously to support recovery, breaking with austerity dogma.

However, caution is warranted. While emergency measures in 2020 were non-neoliberal in character, they were also often temporary and top-down. For instance, huge central bank interventions propped up financial markets – which, as Tooze notes, actually stabilized and enriched asset owners, meaning the wealthy recovered faster than the poor . In the United States, the stock market surged and billionaire wealth grew even as the pandemic wreaked havoc on lower-income workers. This suggests that existing power structures adapted the crisis response to preserve the neoliberal order’s core features (like protecting capital). As Tooze put it, an intellectual crisis for neoliberalism “does not a new era make” – without organized political movements and ideas to replace it, neoliberalism may persist by default . Indeed, by 2022–2023, governments began pulling back emergency aid and some reverted to concerns about debt and inflation, signaling a possible return to business-as-usual neoliberal policy (albeit with more awareness of its pitfalls).

Amid these developments, Yanis Varoufakis has provocatively argued that neoliberal capitalism is already morphing into a new stage he calls “technofeudalism” or “techno-lordism.” In his analysis, the rise of Big Tech monopolies and platform companies (like Amazon, Google, Facebook) is creating a system where traditional market competition is replaced by quasi-feudal “cloud empires” that extract rents through control of digital ecosystems^[10^]. Companies such as Amazon don’t just compete in markets – they are the market platform, setting rules and harvesting vast consumer data, giving them unprecedented power. Varoufakis claims that the old neoliberal ideal of many firms competing has given way to a reality of a few tech lords dominating, with algorithms instead of price signals directing outcomes^[10^]. He notes that neoliberalism’s glorification of the infallible “invisible hand” of the market is now being superseded by Silicon Valley’s algorithmic control, which doesn’t even pretend to be an open market. While not all scholars agree that we have entered a post-capitalist “technofeudal” phase, Varoufakis’s perspective underscores that 2025 is not 1985 – the political economy has changed in ways that strain classic neoliberal doctrine. The growing concentration of wealth and power in tech giants, the importance of data and AI, and the willingness of states to partner with or rely on those corporations (as seen when governments leaned on Big Tech for pandemic responses, surveillance, etc.) suggest that the next era might be something different from the neoliberal globalization that defined the late 20th century. Whether that next phase is a modified neoliberalism or a new system altogether remains to be seen.

Neoliberalism in 2025: Where Do We Stand?

As of 2025, neoliberalism remains a subject of intense debate – with some insisting it is still the prevailing order, and others claiming it has been eclipsed or is in terminal decline. The truth likely lies in between: neoliberalism’s hegemony has been weakened and openly contested, yet many of its structures and policies are still firmly in place. On one hand, the intellectual monopoly once enjoyed by neoliberal ideas (the TINA mindset) is clearly broken. Economic discourse has shifted to reconsider the role of government, inequality, and market failures. Issues like wealth taxation, anti-trust action against monopolies, and re-industrialization policies are back on the agenda in ways that would have been dismissed in the 1990s. Even the U.S., long the bastion of free-market rhetoric, saw in the early 2020s a resurgence of industrial policy (e.g., large investments in semiconductor manufacturing and clean energy through government spending bills) that marks a departure from pure neoliberal thinking.

Moreover, electorates have been voting for change – whether it’s left-wing coalitions in parts of Latin America rejecting austerity, or right-wing populists rejecting free trade, the political winds have shifted. The COVID crisis reinforced publics’ appreciation for strong public health systems and social insurance, potentially generating pressure for rebuilding those capacities. There is also greater awareness of the climate emergency, leading to policies that prioritize sustainability over short-term market efficiency.

On the other hand, the material power of the neoliberal-era elite remains formidable. Inequality is still extremely high by historical standards; billionaires and large corporations wield enormous influence over policy (often through lobbying or the revolving door between business and government). Financial markets, though now operating with somewhat tighter regulations than pre-2008, continue to dominate many economies, and global capital flows remain substantial. Many countries’ policy frameworks – from independent central banks focusing on inflation, to trade treaties that constrain government intervention – still bear the neoliberal imprint. In the European Union, for example, fiscal rules and competition laws continue to reflect the 1990s neoliberal design, limiting how much member states can engage in deficit spending or industrial policy (though there have been temporary suspensions for crises).

In essence, while the ideological confidence of neoliberalism has been shaken, its institutional legacy endures. We might say we are now in a transitional period: “late neoliberalism,” where the old order is no longer uncontested but a new one is not yet born. The outcomes of current political battles – over how to manage post-pandemic recovery, how to address inequality, how to regulate Big Tech, and how to tackle climate change – will determine whether neoliberalism finally gives way to a different paradigm (be it a neo-Keynesian revival, a socialist renaissance, a nationalist-mercantilist turn, or Varoufakis’s technofeudal dystopia).

What is clear is that by 2025 neoliberalism is no longer taken for granted as the natural policy framework. The phrase “post-neoliberal” is increasingly used in academic and political discussions, albeit more as a wish or tentative description than a fully realized condition. Some have suggested we may be entering an era of “neo-statism”, where states reassert control to deal with crises (health, environment, inequality) that markets failed to solve. Others worry about a slide into “illiberal capitalism,” where pro-market economics persists without liberal democratic norms. The direction is uncertain.

Crucially, the leftist critique of neoliberalism – once confined to the margins – has moved into mainstream conversations. Concerns about inequality, social justice, and the excesses of capitalism are now voiced not just by radicals but even by business forum panels and moderate politicians. The enduring question is whether these critiques will translate into structural change or merely adjustments to stabilize the existing order. As the historian Quinn Slobodian reminds us, neoliberal thinkers were adept at evolving and finding new ways to protect their core project of safeguarding capitalism from democratic pressures. Understanding that history is vital for those who seek alternatives.

Historiography: Studying Neoliberalism

Given neoliberalism’s profound impact on recent history, it has become a vibrant field of study across disciplines – from history and political science to economics, sociology, and anthropology. Yet writing the history of neoliberalism poses challenges, starting with the question: When and how did neoliberalism begin, and what counts as neoliberal? The historiography of neoliberalism has thus involved both defining the concept and tracing its genealogy.

For many years, the term “neoliberalism” was used sparingly. As historian David Priestland notes, even a decade or two ago it was largely confined to academic discourse and often invoked mainly by critics on the left^[6^]. The late 2000s and 2010s, however, saw an explosion of interest. This was fueled by the 2008 crisis and its aftermath, which prompted a reckoning with the preceding decades of policy. Suddenly “neoliberalism” became a common term in public debates (to the point that The Guardian columnist Owen Hatherley quipped that the word was appearing everywhere, even as many struggled to define it precisely).

Scholarly definitions vary. Some, like political scientist Wendy Larner, emphasize neoliberalism as a policy framework (“the political project of promoting free markets and trade, deregulation, etc.”). Others, like anthropologist Aihwa Ong, describe neoliberalism as a logic that can coexist with diverse institutions (what she calls “neoliberalism as exception”). Sociologist Loïc Wacquant focuses on neoliberalism as a reordering of state functions, pairing economic deregulation with punitive social policy (e.g. the rise of the carceral state to contain those marginalized by the market). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines neoliberalism as arising in the late 1940s as a response against large-state ideologies, promoting a competitive order with a significant but limited state role, and notes its evolution into a more radical anti-statist stance by the 1970s .

One fruitful approach historians have taken is to trace neoliberal intellectual networks and debates. Books like Angus Burgin’s The Great Persuasion (2012) looked at the early neoliberals (Hayek, Friedman, etc.) and how they managed to influence public debate from the 1930s to the 1970s. Daniel Stedman Jones’s Masters of the Universe (2012) similarly charted the rise of neoliberal ideas in the US and UK, from think-tanks to the Reagan-Thatcher revolution. These works tend to highlight the agency of neoliberal thinkers and organizers – showing that what became a tidal wave in the 1980s started as a small, well-funded intellectual movement that spent decades in preparation.

Others have expanded the lens globally. Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists (2018), as discussed, reframed neoliberalism as a project of global economic governance, with an emphasis on international institutions and legal frameworks. Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe’s edited volume The Road from Mont Pelerin (2009) gathered research on various facets of neoliberal thought and its adaptation in different contexts (including lesser-known figures and sub-traditions). Jessica Whyte’s The Morals of the Market (2019) delved into how neoliberals engaged with human rights discourse, shedding light on their vision of morality in a market society.

There is also a significant strand of historiography examining neoliberalism’s relationship with race, gender, and culture. For instance, historian Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains (2017) investigated James Buchanan’s work on public choice theory and its ties to segregationist politics, suggesting a link between neoliberal ideas and efforts to resist the civil rights state (a thesis that sparked debate). Feminist scholars like Nancy Fraser and Melinda Cooper have analyzed how neoliberalism intersected with the feminist and family transformations of the late 20th century – sometimes co-opting feminist language of choice and empowerment for market ends, while simultaneously relying on women’s unpaid care work to absorb the shocks of welfare cuts. Cultural critics such as Mark Fisher (in Capitalist Realism, 2009) have explored how neoliberalism shaped consciousness – fostering a sense that “there is no alternative” and diminishing imaginative capacity to envision a different society.

A recurring historiographical debate is how broad or narrow the term “neoliberalism” should be. Some economists and historians argue it has become too broad, a catch-all pejorative that obscures more than it clarifies. They point out that policies labeled neoliberal can differ significantly: for example, Chile under Pinochet, the U.S. under Clinton, and China under Deng all get called neoliberal in some sense, yet their systems have stark differences. Scholars like Priestland acknowledge this concern, noting that neoliberalism encompasses a spectrum – from the libertarian minimal-state version to more “ordoliberal” versions that allow a bigger state role^[6^]. The term’s critics suggest using more specific labels for specific phenomena (like “financialization” or “market fundamentalism” or simply “free-market reforms”). However, many historians defend the utility of “neoliberalism” as a broad umbrella concept precisely because it enables analysis of the connections between what might seem like disparate changes – in governance, culture, and economy – as part of a larger shift from roughly the 1970s onward. As Priestland puts it, the term is valuable “as long as people are clear what they are referring to,” since it draws attention to the interrelated ideological, political, and cultural transformations toward market-centric thinking^[6^].

Indeed, one of the strengths of the historiography has been to show that neoliberalism was not only about economics, but about reshaping society and values. Historians highlight, for example, how neoliberal ideas influenced education (the rise of standardized testing and university rankings), urban policy (public-private partnerships, gentrification driven by real estate markets), and even personal identity (the notion of self as entrepreneur). By studying speeches, media, and everyday discourse, historians and cultural scholars have tracked how concepts of competition, efficiency, and personal responsibility permeated common sense by the 1990s – a process the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci might call the formation of a new hegemonic “common sense.” This aligns with what David Harvey and others describe: neoliberalism’s success lay in becoming hegemonic as a mode of discourse, to the point that it was incorporated into the way many people understood the world (for instance, thinking of higher education primarily as an investment in one’s “human capital” to earn more later, rather than as a public good or personal enrichment in its own right).

The field of neoliberalism studies is inherently interdisciplinary. Economic historians examine data on inequality, growth, and productivity to assess neoliberalism’s quantitative impact. Political historians look at elections, party platforms, and state policies to map the political shifts. Intellectual historians sift through the writings of neoliberal thinkers and their opponents. Global historians track the spread and local adaptation of neoliberal policies across different countries (leading to concepts like “variegated neoliberalism,” which acknowledges local specificities in how neoliberalism is implemented). Oral histories and biographies contribute by revealing how key players (politicians, economists, activists) understood what they were doing under the banner of market reform.

In recent years, historiographical reflection on neoliberalism has itself become a topic. For example, a 2019 forum in the journal Contemporary European History titled “How historians should approach the history of neoliberalism” debated methodologies. One takeaway is that historians must avoid presentist moralizing and instead historicize neoliberalism: understand it not just as a monolithic evil, but as a complex historical phenomenon that emerged from specific circumstances, evolved over time, and was promoted by real people with a variety of motives – some genuinely believing it would improve society, others more cynically using it to entrench privilege. By examining archival materials, historians have uncovered how neoliberal projects were often strategic responses to crises. For example, the turn to neoliberalism in the late 1970s is now well-documented as a reaction to the profit squeeze and stagflation of that decade; it was not an inevitable evolution, but a political choice among alternatives (one that benefited certain groups over others).

The historiography of neoliberalism also increasingly includes the study of resistance and alternatives – social movements, from the Zapatistas in Mexico to anti-globalization protesters in Seattle (1999), that contested neoliberal policies. Such studies highlight that neoliberal hegemony was never absolute; it was continually challenged and required force or consent to be maintained. For instance, the Battle of Seattle protests in 1999 against the WTO brought issues of trade justice and labor rights into public consciousness, foreshadowing later movements like Occupy. Historians writing in the 2020s are thus in a unique position: they can document neoliberalism’s rise and heyday, but also its cracks and potential decline, providing a full arc of a historical epoch.

In conclusion, the study of neoliberalism has blossomed into a rich field that cuts across many domains of history. It serves as a focal point for understanding the late 20th and early 21st centuries – much as studying “KeynesianismKeynesianism Full Description:Keynesianism emerged as a direct response to the failure of classical economics to explain or fix the depression. It posits that the “invisible hand” of the market is insufficient during a downturn because of a lack of aggregate demand. Therefore, the state must step in as the “spender of last resort,” borrowing money to fund public works and social programs. Critical Perspective:Structurally, this represented a fundamental shift in the role of the state—from a passive observer to an active manager of capitalism. It was essentially a project to save capitalism from its own contradictions, using public funds to prevent the kind of total social collapse that often leads to revolution.” or “industrial capitalism” is key to understanding earlier eras. Through the work of scholars like David Harvey, Quinn Slobodian, Wendy Brown, Naomi Klein, Philip Mirowski, and many others, we have a much clearer picture of how neoliberalism was constructed, what it entailed, and what consequences it brought. As a historical concept, neoliberalism helps us connect the dots between Chile in 1973, Britain in 1979, Washington in 1989, Russia in 1992, and the world in 2025 – revealing a common thread of ideology and policy, even amidst local differences. Whether neoliberalism is now finally ending or simply mutating, historians will continue to analyze it, ensuring that future generations understand both its promises and its perils.

Conclusion

Neoliberalism, in summary, was the defining political-economic project of the last quarter of the 20th century and the early 21st. Its emphasis on free markets, private enterprise, and a circumscribed role for government fundamentally transformed societies around the globe. This anchor article has outlined what neoliberalism is – from its intellectual origins in mid-century liberal thought to its implementation by leaders like Reagan and Thatcher, its core features of policy and ideology, and the dramatic social outcomes it produced. We have seen how neoliberalism rose to dominance, how it has been critiqued for exacerbating inequalities and social injustices, and how recent events have shaken its hold. We have also reviewed how historians and scholars make sense of neoliberalism, treating it not as a vague epithet but as a concrete historical phenomenon shaped by ideas, interests, and struggles.

For a history-focused website, understanding neoliberalism is crucial because it provides context for so many developments of the past 50 years – from the fall of communism to the rise of globalization, from the shifting fortunes of labor and capital to the current debates over populism and inequality. By presenting a balanced yet critical account, this article invites readers to grapple with neoliberalism’s legacy: its achievement in reshaping the world economy and its failures in delivering broadly shared prosperity or social cohesion. The leftist critique articulated here – that neoliberalism has been toxic in many ways – is grounded in factual outcomes and scholarly analyses, and it serves as a counterpoint to the celebratory narratives of market fundamentalists.

This overview serves as a starting point for deeper exploration. Readers interested in “What is neoliberalism?” can delve into conceptual pieces and definitions by economists and philosophers. Those curious about intellectual origins can read about the Mont Pelerin Society or figures like Hayek and Friedman in greater detail. The historical trajectory of neoliberalism can be further explored through case studies of specific countries or regions (e.g., neoliberal reforms in post-Soviet Russia, or the impact of structural adjustment in Africa). The key features outlined (deregulation, privatization, etc.) each have their own complex histories and debates. For the present day, examining neoliberalism’s status in 2025 opens questions of what might come next – a “post-neoliberal” order or a reinvention of the old creed. And finally, for historiography enthusiasts, the rich scholarly discourse on neoliberalism offers insight into how history itself is written and interpreted.

In closing, neoliberalism as a historical subject teaches us about the power of ideas in shaping material reality, and the power of people in organizing to implement or resist those ideas. The story of neoliberalism is one of bold thinkers and ruthless politicians, of corporate power and popular backlash, of utopian promises and harsh realities. By understanding this story, we gain insight into the world we live in today – a world still grappling with the neoliberal legacy – and we become better equipped to engage in the ongoing debates about which direction society should take next.

Endnotes

[^1]: David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2. Harvey defines neoliberalism as “a theory of political economic practices” that emphasizes entrepreneurial freedom within a framework of private property, free markets, and free trade, with the state’s role limited to creating and preserving that framework.

[^2]: Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1981, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), 1–5. Reagan’s famous quote “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” encapsulated the neoliberal anti-statist ethos.

[^3]: Kenneth J. Saltman, “The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 31, no. 1 (2010): 47–68. (Defines neoliberalism as extension of competitive markets into all areas of life and the re-tasking of the state to serve market interests.)

[^4]: Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 2. Slobodian argues that neoliberals sought not merely to free markets but to “encase” them in institutions that protect capitalism from democratic pressures.

[^5]: David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 7. Harvey describes the Pinochet regime in Chile (1973 onwards) as “the first experiment with neoliberal state formation,” noting how Chile’s Chicago School-guided reforms prefigured neoliberal policies later adopted in the US, UK, and elsewhere.

[^6]: David Priestland, “Writing the History of Neoliberalism,” St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford (blog), January 15, 2019. Priestland discusses the broad versus narrow definitions of neoliberalism and the term’s contentious use in debates over the legacy of 1990s center-left governments.

[^7]: Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015). Brown explores how neoliberal rationality corrodes democratic values, reconfiguring citizens as market actors and redefining governance as a form of economic management, ultimately hollowing out democratic institutions.

[^8]: Facundo Alvaredo et al., World Inequality Report 2018 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2018), 10. The report finds that in the United States, the top 1% captured 27% of total income growth 1980–2016, while the bottom 50% got only 12%. It also notes that the top 1% share of income roughly doubled in the U.S. and other Anglo-Saxon countries since 1980, reflecting rising inequality in the neoliberal era.

[^9]: David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 119. Harvey argues that neoliberalism’s rhetoric of freedom masks a project of restoring class dominance: “a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration of naked class power.”

[^10]: Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (London: Penguin Books, 2023). Varoufakis contends that neoliberal capitalism has evolved into a new “technofeudal” stage dominated by Big Tech “cloud capitalists,” where markets are replaced by digital platforms that extract monopoly rents. His thesis suggests the neoliberal era is ending, superseded by a model in which giant tech firms, rather than competitive markets, orchestrate economic activity.

[^11]: Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri, “Neoliberalism: Oversold?” Finance & Development 53, no. 2 (June 2016): 38–41. Economists at the International Monetary Fund acknowledge that certain neoliberal policies – unrestricted capital movement and fiscal austerity – have “not delivered as expected” and instead increased inequality and instability, prompting a re-evaluation of neoliberal doctrine within the IMF.