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Brilliant...explains how the rhetoric of competition has invaded almost every domain of our existence.
Evgeny Morozov, author of To Save Everything, Click Here"
In this fascinating book Davies inverts the conventional neoliberal practice of treating politics as if it were mere epiphenomenon of market theory, demonstrating that their version of economics is far better understood as the pursuit of politics by other means."
Professor Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame
"A sparkling, original, and provocative analysis of neoliberalism. It offers a distinctive account of the diverse, sometimes contradictory, conventions and justifications that lend authority to the extension of the spirit of competitiveness to all spheres of social life This book breaks new ground, offers new modes of critique, and points to post-neoliberal futures.
Professor Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster
Since its intellectual inception in the 1930s and its political emergence in the 1970s, neo-liberalism has sought to disenchant politics by replacing it with economics.
This agenda-setting text examines the efforts and failures of economic experts to make government and public life amenable to measurement, and to re-model society and state in terms of competition. In particular, it explores the practical use of economic techniques and conventions by policy-makers, politicians, regulators and judges and how these practices are being adapted to the perceived failings of the neoliberal model.
By picking apart the defining contradiction that arises from the conflation of economics and politics, this book asks: to what extent can economics provide government legitimacy?
Now with a new preface from the author and a foreword by Aditya Chakrabortty.
List of contents
The Disenchantment of Politics: Neoliberalism, Sovereignty and Economics
The Promise and Paradox of Competition: Markets, Competitive Agency and Authority
The Liberal Spirit of Economics: Competition, Anti-Trust and the Chicago Critique of Law
The Violent Threat of Management: Competitiveness, Strategy and the Audit of Political Decision
Contingent Neoliberalism: Financial Crisis and beyond
Afterword: Critique in and of Neoliberalism
About the author
William Davies is a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Centre.
He is author of The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Wellbeing (Verso, 2015) and The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition (SAGE, 2014). His writing is available at www.potlatch.org.uk.
Summary
Examines the efforts and failures of economic experts to make government and public life amenable to measurement, and to re-model society and state in terms of competition. This book explores the practical use of economic techniques and conventions by policy-makers, politicians, regulators and judges and more.
Report
"Brilliant... explains how the rhetoric of competition has invaded almost every domain of our existence." Evgeny Morozov
