Ruling Ideas: How Global Neoliberalism Goes Local

by Cornel Ban

Neoliberal economic theories are powerful because their domestic translators make them go local, hybridizing global scripts with local ideas. This does not mean that all local translations shape policy, however. External constraints and translators' access to cohesive policy institutions filter what kind of neoliberal hybrids become policy reality. By comparing the moderate neoliberalism that prevails in Spain with the more radical one that shapes policy thinking in Romania, Ruling Ideas explains why neoliberal hybrids take the forms that they do and how they survive crises. Cornel Ban contributes to the literature by showing that these different varieties of neoliberalism depend on what competing ideas are available locally, on the networks of actors who serve as the local advocates of neoliberalism, and on their vulnerability to external coercion.

Ruling Ideas covers an extended historical period, starting with the Franco period in Spain and the Ceausescu period in Romania, discusses the economic integration of these countries into the EU, and continues through Europe's Great Recession and the European debt crisis. The broad historical coverage enables a careful analysis of how neoliberalism rules in times of stability and crisis and under different political systems.

Genres: Economics, Politics

312 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2016

Reviews

[Marius Ghincea · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Cornel Ban makes an inquisitive comparative analysis of the development of the neoliberal thinking and policy hegemony in Romania and Spain. He argues that the economic intellectual elite is the one responsible for the translation of the global neoliberal thinking into the local context of the two countries and that the socio-historical context and intellectual exposure, as well as the time when this exposure took place, represents the main explanatory factors for why the neoliberalism in Spain has been and it is milder in comparison to Romania, even if the two countries share similar historical challenges before the introduction of free-market economies. In the case of Romania, Ban argues that the rapid and limited exposure and re-socialization of the Romanian intellectual elites to the neoliberal thinking resulted in a more radical translation of the global neoliberal script in the local context, while in Spain's case the longer and more substantive exposure, with many Spanish economists obtaining PhDs at prominent U.S. universities, allowed for a more embedded form of neoliberalism to be translated in the local context.

A must-read book for anyone interested in the way economic ideas are translated and become globalized through the use of academic and professional networks, international institutions, and knowledge hegemony.

[Matteo Mugnaini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il libro non è perfetto, l’analisi ha dei limiti soprattutto per quanto riguarda il considerare le forze sociali dei due paesi. In breve si nota molto la formazione economica e i deficit maggiori sono nelle sezioni più prettamente storiche.
Detto questo l’analisi del libro è approfondita ed estremamente preziosa per le conclusioni che porta.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, some modern political economy!! I was so tired of the same old shit of Austrian economics, and neoliberal tradition that tried to pretend that politics and economics are somehow very distinct field that are worth studying on their own. This book was a true breath of fresh air.

This book contains a fascinating comparative analysis between the rise of neoliberalism in Romania, and in Spain. Moreover, it puts forth an interesting theory about how an ideal of neoliberalism (my description, not the author's) is reified into any given local setting by playing on existing local political ideology and on the local political and academic elite's connection to the external neoliberal ideology network.

One of the most tragically comic things made clear in this book is how the poorly trained Romanian economic elite took what was fringe economic theory (Austrian school nonsense), and started whitewashing it as established scientific consensus! This was one of the main reasons why policy makers where more ravenous in their implementations of neoliberalism than even the IMF recommended!

Although mired in economic jargon, it's fairly accessible to the lay person, and is an invaluable resource in understanding the rise of neo-liberalism in Romania. And more than that, there's finally a resource that I can give to my international connections to read about the situation in Romania!

My little pete pieve with this book is that the author tries to hard to fit into academic culture, and refrains from calling the rise of the "libertarian" right ideas in Romanian politics as what it is: an infestation. Sometimes, neoliberalism deserve no less than an academic paper saying "Fuck Neoliberalism".

[Simina-Maria Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

📚 A very well written comparison between Spain and Romania, on how both countries embraced neoliberalism according to each nation's political, economical and social background. The book follows the course of neoliberalism until the second decade of the 21st century, analyzing the economists' and politicians' actions along with the challenges the world had to face (e.g. the management of the 2008's financial crisis). A complex volume where I'd personally been learning many unknown aspects regarding my country and the people who made neoliberalism possible, especially immediately after '89. After coming back to Romania, the economists who managed to study abroad (before the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu decided to cut off all the training opportunities in Western institutions ) had to fight the communists' intolerance, workplace marginalization, layoffs and even prosecutions for speaking up their Western taught ideas. The author also highlights the strong points Spain had and why the neoliberalism built better and stronger roots there, compared to Romania where the knowledge on the ideology were still limited. A book that presents important aspects of history, with its drawbacks, challenges and opportunities that liberalism oriented intellectuals needed to face while trying to establish new policies in their countries.