For scholars seeking to analyse the global political economy of neoliberalism, the âex-communistâ (or âstate socialistâ) states of Central and Eastern Europe1 (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (USSR) offer abundant material for research. Having embodied the antithesis of neoliberalism prior to the demise of the Soviet bloc in 1989â91, the region subsequently became a state-of-the-art laboratory for neoliberal ideas and practices, prompting rapid reintegration with the global economy and the political institutions that govern it. According to many accounts, this process was primarily driven by external actors, including the European Union (EU), international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, hegemonic Western states, and their multinational corporations (MNCs). In contrast, scholars of comparative âpost-socialistâ transformations have primarily emphasised the importance of domestic actors and conditions. This said, much of the so-called transformatology literature has been written by policymakers and there has been little attempt in theorising dimensions of the transformation (e.g. class, gender, race) that are not directly relevant to policymaking.
Before exploring some of these issues, we should first clarify what we mean by the term âneoliberalismâ. Despite the extraordinary popularity of the term in contemporary academic debates, this is not as easy as it first might seem, for the term has often been invoked with imprecision, in partly overlapping and partly contradictory ways (Ferguson, 2010; Mudge, 2008). It can represent an academic f-word, generating polemical heat, but not much analytical light (Springer, 2016). Hence, as one recent commentary warns, the term has come to connote omnipresence and omnipotence, as if it were an all-enveloping force or zeitgeist (Eagleton-Pierce, 2016, p. 12). Attempts to decipher the term have been further complicated by the fact that, until recently, very few people were willing to openly describe themselves as âneoliberalsâ (for exceptions, see Bowman, 2016; Pirie, 2014). For these reasons, Bill Dunn has recently argued for abandoning the concept of neoliberalism altogether (Dunn, 2017). In this book neoliberalism does not represent a ârascal conceptâ (Peck, Theodore, & Brenner, 2010), neither is it limited to a strict set of economic ideas or policies (Kozul-Wright & Rayment, 2007; Palley, 2005; Stiglitz, 2002), or the machinations of a secretive âthought collectiveâ (Mirowski, 2013; Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009). Rather, we perceive it in three, mutually interrelated ways. Firstly, we see it historically as a loose set of ideas and policies (typically including a strong ideological commitment to market âself-regulationâ and tariff reduction, a monetarist analysis of inflation, supply-side theory, and the deployment of âenterprise modelsâ that allow arms of the state to be run like businesses) whose ideational origins can be traced back to the interwar years and found on both sides of the Atlantic (Dardot & Laval, 2013; Harvey, 2007; Peck, 2010; Turner, 2008). Second, we perceive neoliberalism as a class project, aiming not so much to ârestoreâ the power of economic elites (for contra Harveyâs popular argument, it had arguably never been lost during the âGreat Boomâ that followed after World War II), as to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation following the global crisis of 1973 (Davidson, 2010, 2018; DumĂ©nil & LĂ©vy, 2004; Harvey, 2007). Third, and finally, we argue that since gaining support among ruling classes in the 1970s, neoliberalism has come to represent the current phase of global capitalism, characterised, amongst others, by a structural reorientation of the state towards export-oriented, financialised capital, open-ended commitments to market-like governance systems, privatisation and corporate expansion, and deep aversion to social collectives and the progressive redistribution of wealth on the part of ruling classes (Mirowski, 2009; Mudge, 2008; Saad-Filho, 2010). Attempts to deepen the neoliberal project globally have gone through different phases and often been fiercely contested by local populations (Davidson, 2017; Peck & Tickell, 2002). The resistance to neoliberalisation has taken a plurality of forms over the decades, both progressive and reactionary; from the popular revolt of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, southern Mexico, through concrete attempts to wield state power in order to construct a âsocialism of the twenty-first centuryâ in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela, to the more recent, ânationalistâ and/or âpopulistâ backlash against neoliberal globalisation, as manifested by the electoral inroads of the far-right throughout Europe, the âBrexitâ vote in the UK, or the ascendancy of authoritarian regimes in countries like Egypt, India, Philippines, Turkey, and, most recently, the US.
This book argues that the origins of the âdouble transformation â (Holman, 1998) in Hungary and elsewhere in CEE preceded the formal âtransitionâ to (free) market capitalism and parliamentary democracy in 1989â91 and can be more satisfactorily explained in relation to the wider neoliberal restructuring of the capitalist world economy since the early 1970s onwards. As such, neoliberal ideas and practices were not simply imported, âfrom outsideâ after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but emerged âorganicallyâ in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as a response by domestic political and economic elites to the deepening economic and political crisis of Soviet-style state capitalism , in the wake of a mounting debt crisis and increasing geopolitical competition with the âWestâ, and growing disbelief in the Soviet model amongst local members of the nomenklatura . The essential aim of the âneoliberal turnâ in the region was thus to improve conditions for capital accumulation, while ensuring that the democratic transition went as smoothly as possible. As such, while at one level obviously a repudiation of past policy, policymakers in Budapest and elsewhere in the region pursued the same objectives as central planners under âactually existing socialismâ.
Following the transition,...