ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to elucidate the role of the Atlantic heartland. Where the previous chapter considered the socially constructed causal relations between competition and growth, the traces of struggles with competing common senses, and the logic of no alternative, this chapter concludes Part III on the production of neoliberal common sense. Through examining the Atlantic heartland, the importance of positivist – ‘scientific’ – standards underpinning the knowledge claims of these intellectuals becomes even starker; the unique influence of AngloAmerican economists and processes of socialization within this international community of intellectuals are now placed under the spotlight. This again contributes to understanding why previously averse states – for example, France and Germany – have begun to undergo neoliberalization and further reinforces the origins of the intellectual consensus underpinning recent EU reform.
