What's Left of Leftism?

Abstract

A novel brand of laissez-faire that lay outside the political mainstream in the early postwar years was broadly hailed at the dawn of the twenty-first century as the common sense of a global age. Yet how to understand neoliberalism as a specifically political thing, especially in the unlikely terrains of Western European and leftist politics, is unclear. This article mobilizes field theory to conceptualize and investigate neoliberal politics in Western democracies, treating the left-right axis as a variable but fundamental organizing dichotomy over which mainstream political parties exert a unique definitional influence. To trace how this dichotomy has shifted over time, I develop a novel index of political neoliberalism using data on the electoral programs of mainstream parties across 22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries between 1945 and 2004. I find that between the 1970s and 2004 a revised political center emerged, featuring a new concept of state responsibility and the means by which it should govern: a historical shift that took root across the left-right spectrum among mainstream parties and that was as much in evidence in Continental, Nordic, and southern countries as in Anglo-liberal countries. The overall trend can be fairly characterized as the rise of a specifically neoliberal politics. I suggest that a full explanation requires both a political sociology and a sociology of knowledge, attending to the organizational and cultural bases of Western party systems.

Anti‐elite parties and political inequality: How challenges to the political mainstream reduce income gaps in internal efficacy

“…Many observers agree that such a 'vibrant clash' has largely disappeared from European party systems. This is reflected most famously by the cartelisation argument of Mair (1995, 2009), but also by findings that many former working-class parties have converged to neoliberal policies (Mudge 2011;Schumacher 2012). And indeed, many contributions on the effects of polarisation (to which we return below) have shown that ideological differences between parties generally facilitate citizens' participation (e.g., Dalton 2008Dalton , 2010.…”

“…We depart from the general notion that some elite dissent is important for democracies (Schattschneider 1960). This is reflected most famously by the cartelisation argument of Mair (1995, 2009), but also by findings that many former working-class parties have converged to neoliberal policies (Mudge 2011;Schumacher 2012). By contrast, '[t]oo much emphasis on consensus and the refusal of confrontation lead to apathy and disaffection with political participation' .…”

Neoliberalism with Scandinavian characteristics: The slow formation of neoliberal common sense in Denmark

“…If neoliberal ideas did not shape the Danish turn towards neoliberalism, this does not preclude the fact that they play a central role in the continued persistence of such policies, especially with the continued strengthening of neoclassical liberalism even under social-democratic governments in the 1990s. This points to the central role of the shifts of centre-left parties, in the institutionalisation of the tenets of neoliberalism, from direct political project to elite common sense (Cahill , 2014;Mudge , 2011). I will argue here that economic theory, both in the case of the post-war Keynesian period and in the neoclassical period seems to function in a legitimating rather than a strategic role.…”

Ruling the Interregnum: Politics and Ideology in Nonhegemonic Times

“…The end of the 1970s interregnum ushered in a twenty-five-year period of neoliberal dominance. With the defeat or domestication of organized labor in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of the pro-business leaders of the third-way social democracies, 58 no alternatives could muster major support in the period. The situation, of course, changed with the financial crisis of 2008.…”