ABSTRACT
Introduction With the end of the Cold War, changes in the structure of national sovereignty and the emergence of supranational institutions have been accompanied by a redistribution of power among states, market actors, and civil society. These changes are often associated with the increasing dominance of the neoliberal paradigm of globalization, an international system of production, trade, investment, and economic development characterized by minimal state involvement in economic transactions, labor markets, and financial speculation and the privatization of formerly public institutions, such as those associated with healthcare, education, housing, security, and the military. Neoliberal economic policies emphasize free market, maximal competition, free trade, deregulation, and trade liberalization (Brown, 2005; Palley, 2005). Rooted in Popper’s concept of the open society, which informed George Soros’s “Open Society Institute” and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (written in 1962), neoliberalism posits human freedom and dignity as bases for democracy, against the threat of fascism, communism, and other kinds of state control, with an understanding of freedom as best realized through free market activity and private property rights. Despite claims to “small government” and its emphasis on democracy as constitutive of the good life, countless theorists have demonstrated how neoliberalism relies heavily on state power and supranational financial institutions like the IMF to protect property rights, set monetary policy in times of crisis, and develop new markets (Harvey, 2005, 5). Over the past two to three decades, neoliberal agents like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have attempted, with a great deal of success, to extend this system to the far reaches of the globe, primarily by way of debt, structural adjustment, and “free” trade.
