Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy: The Rise of Transnational Neo-Liberalism in the 1980s

Since the late 1970s, the spread of neo-liberalism and the failure of socialist economies and systems in Eastern Europe have resulted in a virtually unchallenged hegemony of international capital across the globe. Neo-liberalism is now the dominant ideology, legitimizing the privatization of state-controlled economies and the substitution of the market for social provision and basic welfare. InRestructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy, the contributors argue that this process began the defeat of the New International Economic Order, the Euro-Communist ascendancy in Western Europe, and the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile, and culminated in the collapse of practical socialism. They assert that the victory of neo-liberalism is now so complete that its radical features have come to be accepted as the new normality. The contributors to this study represent some of the most stimulating and productive writers currently working in the area of politicaleconomics. While tracing developments in individual countries, they illustrate that these developments are part of an essentially transnational process. The social forces involved in this process, their international linkages, and their responses are all discussed in their global context.