Postneoliberalism – A beginning debate
▻http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/DD2009_51_postneoliberalism/Development_Dialogue_51_small.pdf
The argument in this article is set against the following background.
There was a fi
rst phase of neoliberalism – starting in Chile 1973 and
gaining power in the 1980s – which consisted mainly of the destruc-
tion of the post-war (Fordist and peripheral-Fordist) institutional set-
tings and (asymmetric) social compromises, and a second phase in
the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin wall, when neoliberal politics
was largely uncontested, institutionalised in many spheres of the so-
cial and constitutionalised (in national legal systems as well as inter-
nationally, for example, in the WTO).
For some years a third phase has
been underway, consisting of attempts to deal with the contradictions and crises
of neoliberalism itself.
Neoliberal politics has produced highly unstable
relations which can no longer be controlled: the most obvious ex-
amples are the fi
nancial crisis and the social crisis of integration, but
there is also a deepening of the environmental crisis. These strategies
can be called postneoliberal and they aim to deal with the several cri-
ses of functioning and to avoid a crisis of legitimation of neoliberal
and especially of capitalist societal relations – or to deal with such a
crisis if it occurs.