The Rise and Fall of America’s Neoliberal Order

Abstract

In this paper, Gary Gerstle argues that a neoliberal order emerged in the 1970s and 1980s from the debris of the New Deal Order, and dominated American politics in the 1990s and 2000s. He both draws on the extensive literature on neoliberalism and moves beyond it, detecting in this ideology not just coercive ambitions but emancipatory strivings, and identifying communism’s 1989-1991collapse as critical to neoliberalism’s triumph. This session is based on a paper available to anyone registered for the annual meeting. Gerstle and the three commentators will speak only for ten minutes apiece, leaving much time for discussion.

Chair: Angus Burgin, Johns Hopkins University

Commentator: Melinda Cooper, University of Sydney

Presenter: Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge

Commentator: Peter James Hudson, University of California, Los Angeles

Commentator: Quinn Slobodian, Wellesley College