Neo-liberalism, Partisanship, and Public Policies

A wide-scholarly and interdisciplinary literature has analyzed neo-liberalism in various facets. Typically, this term is referred to as a new form of “political-economic governance premised on the extension of market relationships” (Larner, 2000:5). On the public policy side, it has been also depicted as Thatcherism or Reaganomics, and it has been identified with a political manifesto in which privatization and liberalization were the essence of public policies, especially for those economic services – namely those delivered in network industries – previously managed by state-owned monopolies. While this first wave of neo-liberalism clearly identifies an ideological divide, as these policies were almost exclusively promoted by right-wing, conservative governments, its later diffusion around the world, progressively lost this original ideological bias.