ABSTRACT
For some time before the financial crisis, critiques of “neoliberalism” abounded in popular and academic debates. For some neoliberalism was seen to be the advance of free markets into areas where states once protected social rights; for others it was the disciplinary ideology that asserted the power of markets over people and nature, even producing neoliberal subjects. The notion that markets exercised power was not a new one by any means. Indeed a core assumption of political and institutional economy is that markets do not “clear” automatically, that they need regulating or support from state or public-sector authorities. Neoliberalism (or ordoliberalism) described the productive role of the free market through moralising, demonising, and disciplining everyday lives. Post-crisis neoliberalism described the assertion of austerity to push through health-sector reforms and as a meme that validated regional under-development, and anti-democratic and authoritarian policies imposed by the EU and Germany on smaller Eurozone member states.
