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Article
Publication date: 14 September 2015

Ewa Bińczyk

The paper surveys selected standpoints in the Polish humanities that are visibly critical toward neoliberal assumptions and claims of economics. The resources used in the text…

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Abstract

Purpose

The paper surveys selected standpoints in the Polish humanities that are visibly critical toward neoliberal assumptions and claims of economics. The resources used in the text are: Andrzej Szahaj’s philosophical postulates and assertions; Tadeusz Kowalik’s view; criticism and postulates of social economics articulated by the quarterly magazine Nowy Obywatel (The New Citizen). The purpose of this paper is to construct a possibly cohesive picture of this type of criticism by indicating important similarities between the approaches mentioned above, its strongest arguments, philosophical premises and political inclinations.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual synthesis and interpretation of theoretical standpoints and its philosophical premises, a comparative analysis of the text/content of the magazine (The New Citizen).

Findings

Each of the three standpoints discussed in the paper proves to be an interesting example of social economics. It is also symptomatic that they share a similar, critical attitude toward the way in which the transformation of the Polish economy from a socialist to a capitalist system had been carried out. The transformation is thereby interpreted as a process that is not accomplished at all from the point of view of the ideals of social justice and integrity.

Practical implications

The popularization of Polish normative views of economics taking into account the problem of social justice, and the possible transformation of the way in which economic problems are publicly understood in Poland.

Originality/value

The discussion of non-standard interpretations of Polish transformation and its effects that undermine and challenge neoliberal ideology in economics.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 42 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 18 October 2011

Lars Mjøset

This analysis attempts a comparative specification of certain aspects of the country studies contained in this volume. The point of departure is the banking crises of the early…

Abstract

This analysis attempts a comparative specification of certain aspects of the country studies contained in this volume. The point of departure is the banking crises of the early 1990s (deep in Finland, Norway and Sweden, mini-crisis in Denmark and absent in Iceland) and the contrast to Iceland's financial meltdown in 2007/2008 (no crisis in the three, a new mini-crisis in Denmark). Detailed process tracing of the Icelandic crisis is provided. The case account is then used to shed light on the different roles of neoliberalism, economics expert knowledge and populist right-wing party formation in the five Nordic political economies.

Details

The Nordic Varieties of Capitalism
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-778-0

Article
Publication date: 12 October 2020

Nikhilesh Dholakia, Aras Ozgun and Deniz Atik

This paper aims to uncover links, overlaps and influence flows across two seemingly unrelated historical processes – the broadening of the marketing concept and the rapid rise of

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to uncover links, overlaps and influence flows across two seemingly unrelated historical processes – the broadening of the marketing concept and the rapid rise of neoliberal ideology, and associated economic and social policies.

Design/methodology/approach

Historical examination of the pivotal points in marketing thought, especially since 1960s and 1970s, is juxtaposed with the historical rise of neoliberalism to uncover linkages between marketing and neoliberalism, with a particular reference to Foucault’s analysis of the neoliberal transgression of classical liberalism.

Findings

While noble intentions were behind the broadening of the concept of marketing, the implicit assumptions reinforced neoliberal ideology and policies that led to rapid rise in inequality and to disastrous financial and economic crises.

Research limitations/implications

This study, relying on extensive interdisciplinary theorizing, could benefit from empirical and practical extensions.

Practical implications

Globally pervasive marketing practices – based on the broadening of the marketing concept – have become imbricated in contemporary spiraling crises. To escape such spirals, radical rethinking of marketing theories and practices is required.

Social implications

To reorient away from serving only the interests of centralized capital and to serve the needs of people the world over, marketing thought and practice need to reorient to innovative ideas that transcend the broadened and generic marketing concepts.

Originality/value

The paper develops the linkages between marketing theory and practices since the late 1960s and the neoliberal ideology politics and policies, with roots in the 1920s, that rose to prominence in the 1970s. A key contribution is an exploration of, in a marketing context, Foucault’s analysis of the neoliberal eclipsing of classical liberalism.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 55 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 August 2010

Barbara D. Merino, Alan G. Mayper and Thomas D. Tolleson

The paper aims to use a neoliberal ideology to frame an analysis of how the power of ideas can be used to maintain a failed corporate governance model based on stockholder primacy.

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Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to use a neoliberal ideology to frame an analysis of how the power of ideas can be used to maintain a failed corporate governance model based on stockholder primacy.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper employs the concept of corporate hegemony to provide an understanding of the conditioning environment in the USA in the 1990s. It examines the tactics that neoliberals used to gain consensus for their ideology and to skillfully deflect criticism in the face of significant policy failures that have had a global impact.

Findings

The paper highlights the power of ideology to create a desired outcome. It finds that Sarbanes‐Oxley represented a neoliberal victory in that it legitimated shareholder primacy and continued use of a failed corporate governance model.

Practical implications

Sarbanes‐Oxley did not address the systemic problems associated with deregulation; it will not resolve the basic problem of how to prevent corporate malfeasance in an economic environment that rewards arbitrage capitalism, high risk and a focus on short‐term profits.

Originality/value

If shareholder primacy weakens accountability, as the paper suggests, then accounting researchers need to develop models that focus on deregulation rather than on regulatory capture and the use of state power to promote private interests. Accounting academics need to assume the role of public intellectuals and to reject Milton Friedman's focus on negative freedom as the sole objective of economic activity and examine economic well being in terms of positive freedom.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 23 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 4 February 2011

Masudul Alam Choudhury

I am thankful to many colleagues and institutions for their assistance in bringing up this important work to its fruition for publication. As a most comprehensive work on the

Abstract

I am thankful to many colleagues and institutions for their assistance in bringing up this important work to its fruition for publication. As a most comprehensive work on the epistemological foundations of a theory of Islamic economics and finance, this work required a lot of initiative to get it up to the publication level. It was very difficult to bring the entire subject matter and contents of this book to a fair degree of understanding among colleagues. The impediment in this direction was the prevalent subservience of Islamic scholarship to mainstream economic theory that has its own epistemological leaning, which has already received serious criticism from the highest levels of thought. But these critical examinations along with the Islamic epistemological scholarship have not seeped into intellection. Islamic economics and finance as a subject area leaned and slumbered in the bosom of a disappearing linage of neoliberal paradigm. It never had the chance to mature and become an original contributor in the absence of intellectual consciousness that must establish the domain of high thought. The present book is a criticism of that uncritical and epistemologically barren intellection in Islamic economics and finance. While this book takes a bold and original approach to the epistemological foundations of Islamic economics and finance, conceptually, analytically, and empirically, it seriously rejects the prevalent scholarship on intellectual grounds.

Details

Contributions to Economic Analysis
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-721-6

Article
Publication date: 11 November 2014

Henri Guénin-Paracini, Yves Gendron and Jérémy Morales

– This paper aims to better understand why neoliberal governance is so resilient to the crises that frequently affect all or part of the economy.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to better understand why neoliberal governance is so resilient to the crises that frequently affect all or part of the economy.

Design/methodology/approach

The argument of this paper relies on a macroanalysis of discourses surrounding the Global Financial Crisis.

Findings

Drawing on Girard and Foucault’s work, this paper argues that the resilience of neoliberalism partly ensues from the proclivity of this mode of governing to foster, for reasons that this paper seeks to highlight, spontaneous and widespread processes of scapegoating in times of turmoil. As a consequence of these processes, crises often are collectively construed as resulting from frauds: the blame is focused on specific actors whose lack of morality is denounced, and this individualizing line of interpretation protects the regime from systemic questioning.

Practical, social and political implications

Particular actors, rather than the system itself, are made accountable when things go wrong. Consequences are paramount. Today’s political economy is characterized with a proclivity toward social reproduction. While substantive change is possible in theory, considerable challenges are involved in practice in overcoming the dominance of neoliberalism in society.

Originality/value

Although Girard’s work has exerted significant influence over a number of disciplines in the social sciences, his ideas have not yet been widely used in governance and accountability-related research. Anthropological theorizations – such as those proposed by Girard – are valuable in providing us with a sense of how power develops in the economy.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 11 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 August 2021

Chandana Alawattage and Danture Wickramasinghe

This paper draws on the concepts of biopolitics and neoliberal governmentality to provide a sociological analysis of the strategic turn in management accounting.

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper draws on the concepts of biopolitics and neoliberal governmentality to provide a sociological analysis of the strategic turn in management accounting.

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual and review paper addresses four interrelated questions: How can the early history of management accounting be revisited from a biopolitical angle? How has strategising been linked to the neoliberal evolution of capitalism? How has this neoliberal connection transformed management accounting into its new form of strategising? What are the implications of this transformation for future research and pedagogical practices in management accounting?

Findings

Management accounting is strategised in four interrelated directions: by absorbing the jurisdictional and veridictional roles of the market into the calculative practices of management accounting; by transforming management accounting's centripetal hierarchical order of calculations to a centrifugal order the neoliberal governmentality demanded; by re-calculating the point of production as a site in which labour now takes the form of entrepreneurs of the self, performing not only material but also immaterial elements of managerial labour; and by rescoping management accounting to address issues the “fourth or the global age of security” brought, including the social and the environmental ones.

Research limitations/implications

The research expands the existing frames of reference for exploring contemporary calculative practices in neoliberal governmentality.

Social implications

Strategic turn in management accounting implicates in issues of security, governance and ethics and offers “new opportunities” for expanding management accounting's relevance beyond economic enterprises to various civil society and political constituencies.

Originality/value

This paper makes a theoretical contribution to management accounting's contemporary developments by demonstrating how it moves into biopolitical circulation.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 35 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 March 2021

Daniel Kuehn

In 1969, Warren Nutter left the University of Virginia Department of Economics to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Nixon…

Abstract

In 1969, Warren Nutter left the University of Virginia Department of Economics to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Nixon administration. During his time in the Defense Department, Nutter was deeply involved in laying the groundwork for a military coup against the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Although Nutter left the Pentagon several months before the successful 1973 coup, his role in Chile was far more direct than the better-known cases of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Arnold Harberger. This chapter describes Nutter’s role in Chile policymaking in the Nixon administration. It shows how Nutter’s criticisms of Henry Kissinger are grounded in his economics, and compares and contrasts Nutter with other economists who have been connected to Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Details

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Selection of Papers Presented at the 2019 ALAHPE Conference
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-140-2

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 July 2018

Aisling O’Donnell

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the relative absence of a theoretical underpinning to modern neoliberalism. Tracing the history of the term, it becomes clear that modern…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the relative absence of a theoretical underpinning to modern neoliberalism. Tracing the history of the term, it becomes clear that modern economics has only a tenuous relationship to the type of economics the term “neoliberalism” originally described. Furthermore, modern neoliberalism appears to be strengthened by the crisis it creates. Particular qualities of the orthodoxy make it at the same time both vague and omnipresent, allowing it to operate to exacerbate a pattern of crisis, resulting in profound socio-political consequences, such as the election of Donald Trump and in the rise of populist movements generally.

Design/methodology/approach

Critical analysis rejects the premise that prevailing knowledge is ultimately true, but rather seeks to trace the basis of knowledge to structural inequalities at significant junctions in history. The premise of interpretative research is that social phenomena have mutually impacting relationships with social contexts and human activities. Using a critical interpretive research methodology, this paper contends that there are critical social and theoretical issues which have contributed to the resilience of modern neoliberalism, even where it has manifest crisis. Furthermore, unique qualities of the orthodoxy have operated to oppress and manipulate social processes that would challenge or curtail its reach.

Findings

This paper contends that, first, modern neoliberalism has an inverted relationship to crisis in that it is ultimately able to leverage the crisis it creates to its advantage. Second, this is partly a result of the theoretical ambiguity associated with the orthodoxy, and finally, the rise of the populist right in various political forums and contexts is connected in some way to the failure of the left and to respond effectively to it.

Research limitations/implications

The subject of the paper helps to explain and analyse the way that the neoliberal orthodoxy is able to leverage crisis to its advantage, and why, therefore, it continues to thrive even though it creates economic upheaval, environmental destruction, social and cultural division and increased inequality. After economic crisis, the orthodoxy presents not as the cause of it, but rather the appropriate policy response to it. The failure of the left to effectively challenge the neoliberal policy programme post-crisis is argued to be an important link in a causal chain which connects neoliberalism to the rise of the populist right.

Practical implications

This paper brings emphasis to the ways in which modern economics has subverted the constraints of a theoretical foundation, and ultimately has become a policy practice that exacerbates inequality and leverages crises that it has created to its advantage. It also highlights the linkages between economic crisis, the persistence of the neoliberal paradigm and the rise of right-wing populism in recent years.

Originality/value

The paper combines descriptive and normative accounts of the origins and evolution of neoliberalism as it has been accounted for by major economists and scholars, adding to this the understanding that in breeching from theoretical foundations, the policy programme has become vague and malleable, which curtails the possibility for the left to respond to it effectively, and contributes to the rise of the populist right in various contexts.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 45 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 19 September 2006

Robert J. Antonio and Alessandro Bonanno

We address here how the U.S. neoliberal policy regime developed and how its reconstructed vision of modernization, which culminated, under the rubric of globalization, was…

Abstract

We address here how the U.S. neoliberal policy regime developed and how its reconstructed vision of modernization, which culminated, under the rubric of globalization, was neutralized by 9/11 and neoconservative geopolitics. We analyze the phases in the rise of neoliberalism, and provide a detailed map of its vision of global modernization at its high tide under Clinton. We also address how the Bush Doctrine's unilateral, preemptive polices and the consequent War on Terror and Iraq War eroded U.S. legitimacy as the globalization system's hegmon and shifted the discourse from globalization to empire. Cold War modernization theorists, neoliberal globalization advocates, and Bush doctrine neoconservatives all drew on an American exceptionalist tradition that portrays the U.S. as modernity's “lead society,” attaches universal significance to its values, policies, and institutions, and urges their worldwide diffusion. All three traditions ignore or diminish the importance of substantive equality and social justice. We suggest that consequent U.S. policy problems might be averted by recovery of a suppressed side of the American tradition that stresses social justice and holds that democracy must start at home and be spread by example rather than by exhortation or force. Overall, we explore the contradictory U.S. role in an emergent post-Cold War world.

Details

Globalization between the Cold War and Neo-Imperialism
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-415-7

1 – 10 of over 1000