Neoliberalism, the doctrine that assumed hegemonic status about 1980, made a bold promise. Liberalizing markets, by unleashing the wealth-enhancing forces of competition and risk-taking entrepreneurship, would produce greater prosperity and well-being for more people than any alternative. But this promise appears today as a chimera to the populations of Western countries who are still struggling to escape the aftershocks of the 2008–9 global crisis, a crisis rooted in the deregulation and liberalization extolled by neoliberals. The situation in the Global South appears to support a more favorable judgment of neoliberal development doctrine. In the countries of greatest neoliberal influence – in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa – the neoliberal promise was not kept in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, following 2002, these countries experienced high growth. Poor people consequently constitute a shrinking share of the populations of many countries while the middle class has expanded. This growth, instigated mainly by a commodity boom and inexpensive credit following the crisis-ridden 1990s, was interrupted by the world economic crisis that affected the Global South in 2009–10. The extent to which the earlier neoliberal reforms belatedly spurred the growth surge is debatable. What is clear, however, is the high and continuing costs to society and nature of neoliberal development trajectories.

These costs, gleaned from critiques of the mainstream approach, would include some or all of the following. Privatization, cuts in the civil service, and trade and capital-account liberalization have often led to the loss of jobs in the formal sector since the 1980s, while precarious employment in the informal sector has expanded. Credible threats by large-scale global corporations to relocate production in lower-cost jurisdictions have driven down wages throughout the world. Globalization has thus generated millions of poor-quality jobs. Market crashes and harsh competition for the available jobs and economic opportunities have fostered widespread economic insecurity.