Settler-Neoliberalism: Tom Flanagan and Friedrich Hayek on the Prairies

Abstract

After encountering the writings of neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek in the late 1970s, the political scientist Tom Flanagan became one of the most well-known Hayekians in Canada. Over the course of a career devoted mainly to the study of Louis Riel, Metis history, and the policies of Canadian settler colonialism, Flanagan developed a particular kind of “settler-neoliberalism.” This article takes a broad view of Flanagan’s intellectual development in order to show that, once Flanagan is situated transnationally in the appropriate intellectual currents, his work stands out and represents the most thoroughgoing effort, if not the only one, to deploy neoliberal ideas systematically in the service, or the defence, of a settler-colonial project. By examining the ways in which neoliberal ideas enabled Flanagan’s defence of settler colonialism, this article concludes ultimately that neoliberalism has been a collaborative companion to the Canadian settler-colonial project.