Politics and Neoliberalism

The articles in this volume directly or indirectly examine central tenets of neoliberalism: interference with market mechanisms is the cause of poor economic performance, and returning to market fundamentalism will restore prosperity. Despite these bold claims, scholars have not examined the extent to which neoliberal policies result in positive outcomes or whether economic successes are explained by neoliberalism. This volume of "Research in Political Sociology" assesses these neoliberal claims. The introductory article compares classical liberalism to neoliberalism, and summarizes the political-legal changes in corporations environment and the redistribution of income and wealth from the mid-1970s to the present in the United States.The first part of this volume examines the effects of neoliberal policies on higher education in the state of Missouri and workers health in Canada, and whether neoliberalism can explain changes in social service provisions and economic development initiatives by local US governments. The second part of this volume examines how the politics of neoliberal reforms affected polices of racial redress in Fuji and Tanzania, and the capacity of neoliberalism to explain economic development and change in the organization of business enterprises in China and India. Together, these articles find little support for the claims of neoliberalism, which suggests that liberalism is better understood as an ideology than as a theory.