All politics is local, but clearly there are transnational trends that are hard to ignore. One is the revival of the so-called political hard-right in a lot of places Stateside and Europe. But such political labels are a bit misleading. In many places this revival is a coalition between elderly, aging middle-class (and higher) whites, who are protecting privileges conferred by the modern welfare state (mortgage deduction, generous retirement benefits, subsidized education, etc), and culturally alienated (mostly white, but undoubtedly less homogeneous) lower-middle classes, who often have born the brunt of the economic and social costs of rapid changes due to increasing globalization and liberalization of economies (including immigration). This move to the Right has puzzled folk who thought that with financial crisis would benefit the so-called Left.
One of the perverse outcomes of the policies of (so-called?) Enlightened cosmopolitan elites that have formed the backbone of policy in the 90s, is that the costs of well intentioned change have been born by various outsiders, often least educated. Meanwhile, those that have considerable higher education either end up in government (with considerable job protection), or quasi-government bureacracies (of the sort that end up populating university and hospital administrations), or the financial sector (which turns out to have an explicit government guarantee attached to it) and are protected from the vagaries of the market. (They also tend to live in prosperous enclaves. One striking fact about my home-town, supposedly cosmopolitan Amsterdam, is how segregated it is along color and class lines.)
It is too easy, I think, to say that in all these Western countries/states the alienated (white) lower middle classes vote on cultural values against their own interests. For often the right wing governments they elect that expand the welfare state for large parts of the white electorate. (George Bush II is a prime example of this, infact, hard as that is to recall; the same is true in Denmark, Holland, etc.) But they do often curtail it in other respects along color lines (either by preventing immigration or by denying access to welfare state to new citizens in various ways)--again this is a transnational trend. As is the trend toward scapegoating the most vulnerable members of our societies. In France Roma are targeted, in Holland Dutch boys with Morrocan immigrant parents, in the US illegal aliens, etc.
I think "neo-Liberalism" badly captures these trends. Hayek and Friedman (etc) have a lot to account for, but these trends are not related to their programs. I think the major mistake is to think that the language of "efficiency," which is so beloved by modern policy makers, is their language. Efficiency is the language of social engineers--it has its intellectual roots in utilitarianism. But that is quite compatible with the welfare state which is more than ever run on behalf of the influential rather than the least powerful. To be blunt: Foucault, who incidentally understood the varieties of neo-Liberalism better than anyone, has been dead for a while and his analysis needs to be updated, soon.
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