Neoliberalism through the lens of 'embeddedness'

In confronting what neoliberalism is (or was), this chapter uses the idea of ‘embeddedness’ to interrogate neoliberalism as ‘praxis’: a political movement informed by distinctive, and sometimes contradictory, intellectual currents. In practice, the movement’s results have been mixed. The rationale and delivery of public policy has been transformed, leading to significant institutional change. Markets play a much greater role in governance and policy delivery than in the welfare regimes of the post-World War II era. Yet such change has often been ‘hybrid’ in character as welfare state institutions persist. This is because institutions that temper the market’s impact on people and the environment stem not only from moral imperatives but also those of social and economic reproduction. The presence of these mediating institutions reflects the fact that the economic process is, as Karl Polanyi (1944) put it, ‘embedded’ in the non-market fabric of society.