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Neoliberal failures and the managerial takeover of governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2021

Sahil Jai Dutta Open the ORCID record for Sahil Jai Dutta [Opens in a new window] ,
Samuel Knafo  and
Ian Alexander Lovering Open the ORCID record for Ian Alexander Lovering [Opens in a new window]
Sahil Jai Dutta*
Affiliation:
Political Economy Research Centre, Goldsmiths College, University of London, United Kingdom
Samuel Knafo
Affiliation:
Politics and International Relations, Sussex University, Brighton, United Kingdom
Ian Alexander Lovering
Affiliation:
European and International Studies, Kings College, London, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. Email: s.dutta@gold.ac.uk
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Abstract

The history of neoliberalism is a messy attempt to turn theory into practice. Neoliberals struggled with their plans to implement flagship policies of monetarism, fiscal prudence, and public sector privatisation. Yet, inflation was still cut, welfare slashed, and the public sector ‘marketised’. Existing literature often interprets this as neoliberalism ‘failing-forward’, achieving policy goals by whatever means necessary and at great social cost. Often overlooked in this narrative is how far actually existing neoliberalism strayed from the original designs of public choice theorists and neoliberal ideologues. By examining the history of the Thatcher government's public sector reforms, we demonstrate how neoliberal plans for marketisation ran aground, forcing neoliberal governments to turn to an approach of Managed Competition that owed more to practices of postwar planning born in Cold War US than neoliberal theory. Rather than impose a market-like transformation of the public sector, Managed Competition systematically empowered top managers and turned governance into a managerial process; two developments that ran directly against core precepts of neoliberalism. The history of these early failures and adjustments provides vital insights into the politics of managerial governance in the neoliberal era.

Keywords

NeoliberalismNew Public ManagementThatcherismManagerial Governance
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 484 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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