The roots of neo-liberal resilience: Explaining continuity and change in background ideas in Europe’s political economy

Abstract

Defines and elucidates the concept of ‘background ideas’; Defines and elucidates neo-liberalism and its relationship to background ideas; Uses discursive institutionalism as framework for analysis of background ideas and neo-liberalism; Explores different levels of neo-liberal ideas in terms of philosophy, program, and policy; Considers how different levels of ideas may be transformed over time through revolutionary or evolutionary change; Examines different forms of ideas, especially as philosophies, ideologies, and discourse, and different types of ideas, both cognitive and normative; Considers the different ways in which ideas are constructed and communicated by policy or political entrepreneurs and/or act in discursive policy communities; Discusses political entrepreneurs as ideological, pragmatic, or opportunistic. Neo-liberalism has come to constitute the core background idea of European political economies, as the unquestioned set of beliefs, understandings, or core philosophy exercising a seemingly incontrovertible hold since the 1980s in Europe. Using a discursive institutionalist framework, this article defines background ideas; describes their different forms, levels, and types; theorizes about the nature of continuity and change in such ideas; and considers the agents and discursive processes through which such ideas are constructed and disseminated. It illustrates throughout with examples of neo-liberalism, from the philosophical origins through its many different permutations in different institutional contexts over time. This article concludes that although ‘background ideas’ as a concept remains somewhat elusive, it is nonetheless useful as a way of understanding how neo-liberalism has managed to infuse people’s deepest assumptions about the possible and thereby to set the limits of the imaginable with regard to political economic action.