Conclusion

Since the latest financial crisis in 2008, we have witnessed the rise in popularity of Karl Polanyi’s work. At the inception of the crisis, it was possible to detect a growing scientific interest in the double movement thesis in particular (Dale 2010). This was accompanied by the widespread – if short-lived – expectation of the demise of the neoliberal consensus and the arrival of another great transformation. Many assumed this great transformation would take the form of a second coming: the restoration of the post-war welfare state, including its Keynesian utilities and maintenance systems. Mainstream readings of the crisis presented it as an empirical refutation of neoliberal arguments for market solutions and a vindication of Keynesian stabilization policies (Akerlof and Shiller 2010; Skidelsky 2009; Taylor 2010). Financial rescue packages devised during several intergovernmental emergency meetings received, therefore, the support of left-wing intellectuals, opinion makers, and political parties and were positively presented as a relaunch of state activism in economic affairs. Almost a decade later, the expectation of a great transformation has evaporated, leaving many analysts busy looking for a plausible explanation of why it did not happen (Crouch 2011; Mirowski 2013; Streeck 2014). The surprising non-death of neoliberalism is, understandably, casting a shadow on Polanyi’s double movement thesis (Dale 2012). However, it is not eroding the political faith in past welfarist solutions, nor denting the intellectual hegemony political economy has acquired within the social sciences. Notwithstanding the postmodernist search for a new politics related in Part I, state-driven protective measures aiming at harnessing the market still remain an integral part of political manifestos produced by opposition movements across the world.