Why ‘pensée unique’ will be misleading

It has been popular since the global financial crisis in 2008 again to think of neoliberalism as a terminally failed project (‘zombie ideas’), and accordingly to present the current period as an interregnum to post-neoliberalism. Less than a decade after the great crisis of both financialised global capitalism and neoliberalism, the pandemic has brought economic activity to a standstill once again and social systems are on the verge of collapse in many countries. Unlike the financial crisis ten years ago, the present crisis can be seen as a result of an external shock. But the impact of the virus also reflects the poor state of the public health system in many countries adversely affected by decades of austerity and the neoliberal priority of economic efficiency and profitability. The failure of the great powers to meet the global challenge of the pandemic by coordinating vaccine development and distribution demonstrates another shortcoming of the orientation to competitiveness. Instead of joining forces to meet a global challenge under the roof of the United Nations, leading countries and regional blocs are engaging in imperialist vaccine rivalry and health nationalism. Certainly, the neoliberal transformation of welfare state capitalism correctly deserves blame for the growing problems of the destruction of the living environment, growing social inequality and crumbling social infrastructures (Goldman 2005, Malm 2020, Patel and Moore 2017).
Alas, we will have to await the further unfolding of the multiple crises to know if we can indeed speak of a (terminal) crisis of neoliberalism. More likely – and not for the first time –  we may live through crises in neoliberalism rather than leaving neoliberalism behind:One could think of the “pink tide” of left-wing governments from Argentina to Bolivia in Latin America during the commodity boom of the 2000s followed by the turn to authoritarian neoliberalism (Plehwe and Fischer 2019). Or the claims made by “New Labour” to go beyond neoliberalism in the late 1990s in Europe only to extend neoliberal approaches even further in the sphere of labour policy (“activation”, self-employment at the expense of lower benefits for shorter periods of time).
In order to comprehend controversies and struggles post-Covid it is important not to fall into the trap of attacking a neoliberal strawman, the easy to debunk misrepresentation of neoliberalism as market radicalism and anti-étatism. Although Pierre Bourdieu (1998) deserves much credit for his efforts to fight the “neoliberal invasion”, to defend the social and to direct attention to neoliberal authority, his presentation of neoliberalism as ‘pensée unique’, the “only thought authorised by an invisible and omnipresent opinion police”, as Ignacio Ramonet put it, (Ramonet 1995) needs to be seen as problematic and possibly misleading. Like the neoliberal claim of ‘TINA’ according to which there is no alternative to privatisation and marketisation, the claim that ’there is only one neoliberalism’ has not been helpful in recognising neoliberal parties and programmes. Although a neoliberal core does exist, market radicalism turns out not to be an accurate way of summing up neoliberal efforts to protect property rights and to secure market relationships, which requires control of the state and readiness to compete with alternative ideologies in many areas of public policy. Generalisations like pensée unique are difficult to maintain in light of the diversity of neoliberal intellectuals nor do they hold up to historical scrutiny. Much like competing ideologies, the evolution of neoliberalism has been driven by the diversity and versatility of neoliberal actors and agencies. Simplifying neoliberalism in this way also makes it difficult to assess the relative influence exerted by neoliberal ideas and social forces in various arenas, both national and international, such as the EU.
Three future ideal-type scenarios can be distinguished to assess developments in response to the strong political reactions to the Corona pandemic: first, a strong counter-movement managing once again to defend the status quo ante crisis at evidenced by the austerity 2.0 policies after the global financial crisis; second, a selective departure from the prerogatives of austerity capitalism in specific policy areas like public health and public institutions, e.g. an ongoing development of somewhat more progressive European public finance; third, a combination of progressive changes and a lasting momentum of initiatives for greater social equality and solidarity of people and nature within and across borders – the great transformation beyond the Green Deal.
With regard to neoliberal forces they will be among the key actors trying to accomplish outcomes a), surprisingly they may be frequently found to be among those who shape outcome b) and they will certainly belong to the most stubborn and steadfast opponents to outcome c). The real type developments will nowhere conform to the ideal types, always oscillating somewhere in between. In order to understand the utility of individual reforms and trajectories, ideal types do nevertheless provide guidance.
How can we examine neoliberalism in order to appraise the actors involved in political projects and assess the outcomes of policy conflict? Contrary to those who believe organised neoliberals are akin to a conspiracy, neoliberals can be studied much like other social forces, possibly better in terms of international dimensions due to their proclivity to transnational networking inter alia in associations like the Mont Pélerin Society (MPS) or think tank networks like the Atlas Economic Research Network (for the former see Plehwe and Walpen 2006, Mirowski and Plehwe 2009, for the latter see Djelic and Mousavi 2020). These networks of intellectuals, organisations – mainly, but not only think tanks – and ideas allow observers to follow neoliberal activities and conversations in a) all the different countries and b) across many policy areas.
The following graph shows the global distribution of members of the Atlas Economic Research Network. It is easy to see that major efforts have been made to develop a presence in the Global South in addition to the heartland of Europe and the United States. At the same time, it is clear from the numbers that the presence of neoliberal think tanks is notably greater  in Latin America (compare Djelic and Mousavi 2020 for more details). But Atlas is not the only neoliberal game in town. Much like members of the MPS founded by Hayek and others in 1947, neoliberal networks can serve as a proxies to identify additional neoliberal intellectuals – board and staff members of think tanks can be studied with an eye to allies and friends in academia, business, politics, civil society, or the media (see Plehwe, Walpen and Neunhöffer 2006).

A useful way to learn about neoliberal assessments of European legislation is provided by the Centre for European Policy (CEP) in Freiburg, Germany. Founded in 2005, the think tank has become a major resource for neoliberal European policy making. CEP experts examine all European legislation considered relevant in many policy areas to evaluate agendas and proposals from a normative neoliberal perspective. From 2006 until 2019 CEP published 676 documents of various types and content. The following graph shows the distribution of CEP policy papers in different policy areas, and the broad assessment expressed with the traffic light system, with red representing rejection, green endorsement, and yellow neither of these two.

The rather large number of red lights and the considerable amount of yellow lights suggest there is quite a strongly felt need on the side of neoliberals in the EU for debate and influence-peddling with regard to the direction of European policy-making. The red and yellow marks attached to individual legislative proposals will reliably indicate policies that are likely to be popular on the centre-left wing of the political spectrum.