Schmidt Gives Talk on Neoliberalism at SPERI
Vivien Schmidt, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, gave a July 12, 2017 talk to the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute at The Bank of England, London (SPERI) on “The Big Political Economy Questions of the Next Five Years.”
Schmidt, who is Chair of SPERI’s International Advisory Board, delivered a talk that focused on whether neo-liberalism has gone too far, and if so, where do we go from here.
“Neoliberalism has gone too far: it has undermined democratic capitalism—by which I mean both liberal capitalism and liberal democracy,” Schmidt said. “We are experiencing the backlash today in the rise of populism, reflective of citizen discontent. The question is: what will replace neo-liberalism? Where do we go from here?”
Schmidt went on to examine the neo-liberal sources of current discontents.
“The political economic sources come from the continuing resilience of neo-liberal ideas about how to govern the economy. This began with a focus on global free trade and ended with the triumph of financial capitalism and ‘hyper-globalization.’ Neoliberalism has pushed deregulation too far (viz. the Grenfell tower tragedy), and still lacks adequate international regulation (viz. Apple’s sweetheart tax deals in Ireland, or the very rich in Panama tax havens),” Schmidt said. ” Financial market liberalization is responsible for the financial crisis of 2008—and will be for the next one, coming soon? from shadow banking? It is also to blame for the sovereign debt crisis, where the Eurozone’s ‘ordo-liberal’ response of ‘governing by rules and ruling by numbers’ only made things worse, taking austerity and structural reform much too far.”
Prof. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Boston University. Her research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory. She has published ten books, over 100 scholarly journal articles or chapters in books, and numerous policy briefs and comments, most recently on the Eurozone crisis. Her current work focuses on democratic legitimacy in Europe, with a special focus on the challenges resulting from the Eurozone crisis, and on methodological theory, in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). You can learn more about her here.