The Sovereign Consumer
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"In the dramaturgy of neoliberal thinking and policy, the character given the starring role is the 'sovereign consumer,' as honoring individual preferences amidst a cornucopia of goods and services becomes the touchstone of freedom and justice. Niklas Olsen takes the contemporary analysis of neoliberalism in an exciting and productive new direction by providing a genealogy of the script and a study of this neoliberal persona. It is a thrilling achievement." (Samuel Moyn, Professor of Law and History, Yale University, USA)"Niklas Olsen's work provides us with a great example of the perplexing ways the original work of neoliberal intellectuals came to matter many years after their original conception. Ridiculed by many due to his apparent backwardness and atavism, Ludwig von Mises idea of "consumer sovereignty" provided neoliberalism with freshwater that came to feed streams of relevant work close to and apparently detached from the neoliberal source. Via George Stigler's "efficient consumer" and post-Keynesian Social Democracy, Olsen reconnects intellectual origins and subsequent manifestations of neoliberal consumerism. He does a terrific job where others fail in neoliberalism studies: clarifying both the common thread at the ideational level and the wider influences and variety of real world experiences." (Dieter Plehwe, Research Fellow of the President's Project Group, Berlin Social Science Center, Germany)
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Content
1. Introduction.- 2. The Birth of the Neoliberal Sovereign Consumer.- 3. Liberating the Consumer: Ludwig Erhard and the Making of the Federal Republic.- 4. From Choice to Welfare: The Concept of the Consumer in the Chicago School of Economics.- 5. The Emergence of the Sovereign Consumer in Post-war Economics. - 6. Sovereign Consumers Enter the Scandinavian Welfare State: The Case of Denmark. - 7. Neoliberalism without Neoliberals.- 8. Epilogue.
