Political Neoliberalism: Order and Rupture

In recent years, the concept of neoliberalism has been discarded as shrill and overspent. In Political Neoliberalism, Christian Joppke argues that it is a useful lens to make sense of a wide range of political phenomena–those pertaining to the order and governing of advanced Western societies, but also rupture and conflict at the extreme right and left ends of the political spectrum.

With respect to order, Joppke outlines an inventory of the political forms of neoliberalism that undermined the post-World War II liberal-democratic synthesis. This is complemented by a genealogy of neoliberalism, which matured from a movement associated with the right into a full-blown political order once the left, in terms of the Third Way, embraced its principles. In response to the center right-left consensus on market-conforming principles and policies, radical movements have emerged that signal rupture: right-wing populism, on the one hand, and left-wing identity politics, on the other.