User:MeUser42/Neoliberalism

Not to be confused with "New liberalism" - Social liberalism

Neoliberalism is a contemporary political movement advocating economic liberalizations, free trade and open markets. Neoliberalism supports the privatization of nationalized industries, deregulation, and enhancing the role of the private sector in modern society. It is commonly informed by neoclassical or Austrian economics. The term neoliberal today is often used as a general condemnation of economic liberalization policies and advocates.

Terminology
The term “neoliberalism” was coined in 1938 by the German scholar Alexander Rüstow at the Colloque Walter Lippmann. The colloquium defined the concept of neoliberalism as “the priority of the price mechanism, the free enterprise, the system of competition and a strong and impartial state.” To be “neoliberal” meant that “laissez-faire” liberalism is not enough and that - in the name of liberalism - a modern economic policy is required. After the colloquium “neoliberalism” became a label for several academical approaches such as the Freiburg school, the Austrian School or the Chicago school of economics.

During the military rule under Augusto Pinochet in Chile opposition scholars took up the expression again without a specific reference to any theoretical revision of liberalism. Rather, it described a set of political and economic reforms being implemented in Chile and imbued the term with pejorative connotations.

In the last two decades, according to the Boas and Gans-Morse study of 148 journal articles, neoliberalism is almost never defined but used in several senses to describe ideology, economic theory, development theory, or economic reform policy. It has largely become a term of condemnation employed by critics of liberalizing economic tendencies. And it now suggests a “market fundamentalism” closer to the “paleoliberals” as opposed to the primary meaning. This leaves some controversy as to the precise meaning of the term and its usefulness as a descriptor in the social sciences, especially as the number of different kinds of market economies have proliferated in recent years.