Demias-Morisset, Raphaël. “Anglo-American Neoliberalism: An Illiberal Model?.” In The Anglo-American Model of Neoliberalism of the 1980s: Construction, Development and Dissemination, pp. 81-96. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022.
Abstract
This chapter aims to examine the potential illiberal nature of Anglo-American neoliberalism. Its assumption is that illiberalism is a key to understanding the economic, political, and potentially institutional transformations that took place under Thatcher and Reagan. The Anglo-American governments of the 1980s would thus constitute a model that, being both neoliberal and illiberal, is relevant to understanding the contemporary growth of “illiberalism.” Indeed, this hypothesis should help explain the tactical alliance between neoliberals and populist-nationalist-conservatives. The chapter will therefore begin by showing the lack of thought given to certain contradictions in the definition of the neoliberal market economy, which largely invalidates the over-simplistic representation of the relationship between the rule of law and the free market. Outlining this first break between liberalism and neoliberalism will then make it possible to establish a link between phenomena that are not often compared, because of the conceptual and semantic confusions that surround these questions.
