7. Revisiting and Revising World-Wide Neoliberalism

Ongoing controversies around the existence of neoliberalism can be resolved by way of more clearly delineating the neoliberal core. In addition to key concepts like property rights, freedom of contract and rule of law protecting property owners from discrete political intervention, the opposition to both laisser-faire liberalism and collectivism can be identified as central to the history and variety of neoliberalism within and beyond nation states. At the international level, neoliberals aimed at political arrangements that likewise protect property owners and promote economic globalization through GATT and the WTO, and a range of other international financial and regulatory organizations. To this end, neoliberal thought collectives within and around the Mont Pèlerin Society developed global performance indicators like the Economic Freedom Index, for example, which serve to direct and observe legislative and regulatory reform processes around the globe. Core values, principled beliefs and political approaches of the economic freedom movement subsequently have been institutionalized at the level of global financial institutions, where global performance indicators like the World Bank’s ease to do business index have started to exert epistemic authority way beyond the scope of the original neoliberal thought collectives and yet remain subject to contestations.