Comparative Policy Analysis: Introduction

Abstract

Policy regimes are systematic approaches to policy formation made by sets of government or governance institutions that steer capitalist economies in different directions – different enough to matter vitally to billions of people. Comparative policy analysis proposes systematically examining the formation of these public policy regimes across a number of societies. This research and action framework focuses on the rise to hegemonic dominance of neoliberalism, a universal ideology that, most obviously, stresses markets, enterprise, profit, privatization, deregulation, free trade, unrestricted movements of capital and profits, etc., all enforced by the exercise of state power exclusively in the interest of the capitalist class. Neoliberalism has been widely adopted by states as the guiding ideological structure for economic policy making. But neoliberalism encounters resistances from socio-political traditions that, contained by capitalism, reflect a different conception of society and economy. The interaction forms the varieties of “neoliberalisms”.