Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/179261 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
MaxPo Discussion Paper No. 18/1
Publisher: 
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo), Paris
Abstract: 
Throughout the long postwar period, crisis was a conjectural phenomenon and the exception in a normalcy of growth and social progress. Many key concepts of the social sciences - indeed, our understanding of democracy, embedded markets, enlightened electorates, benevolent political elites, and problem-solving progressive alliances - seem inapt for understanding today's societal upheaval. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, we have witnessed the breakdown of majority alliances, the return of populism on a grand scale both in the Western world and globally, and the eruption into chaotic and sometimes violent social protests. The forces that underpinned the framework of welfare capitalism seem obsolete in the face of financial and political elites who are paradoxically both disconnected from national territory and sometimes in direct alliance with nationalist and populist movements. Politics of resentment, politics of place, and new politics of class interact in ways that we do not yet understand. Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that neoliberalism has spawned authoritarianism. At the same time, these processes are not at all new, but must be put in the context of the socioeconomic and cultural cleavages produced by the shift to neoliberalism since the 1970s. The paper presents arguments by leading scholars in economic history, economic sociology, and political economy in brief thinknotes that were prepared for the MaxPo Fifth-Anniversary Conference on January 12 and 13, 2018, in Paris.
Subjects: 
crisis
neoliberalism
elites
political economy
economic sociology
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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