The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order

The late 1970s marked an epochal shift towards neoliberalism – a set of related policies that broadly reduced government's role in society and transferred economic power to private market forces. This transformation, which began in the United States and Great Britain, fundamentally changed the world. Today, the term 'neoliberal' is often used pejoratively to criticize a wide range of policies, from prioritizing free-market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations worldwide.

While neoliberalism has undoubtedly contributed to alarming trends like massive income inequality growth, the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in his book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era (Oxford University Press, 2022) that these indictments fail to fully grasp what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such a persuasive hold on both the right and left for three decades. Gerstle shows that the neoliberal order that emerged in 1970s America fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of increased prosperity for all. He traces how this worldview arose in America and came to dominate globally, exploring the previously unrecognized extent to which its triumph was facilitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist allies. Gerstle is also the first to chart the story of the neoliberal order's decline, originating from the failed reconstruction of Iraq, the Great Recession during the Bush era, and culminating in the rise of Trump and a reinvigorated Bernie Sanders-led American left in the 2010s.

An indispensable and sweeping re-interpretation of the last fifty years, this book illuminates how the ideology of neoliberalism became ingrained in the daily life of an era while probing what remains of that ideology and its political programs as America enters an uncertain future.

Supplementary articles and interviews:

• Owen Bennett-Jones interviewing Gary Gerstle on The Future of...
• Interview with Sunil Sharma in the IMF Blog
• Mario Del Pero's review in the Washington Post
• Kevin Boyle's review in the New York Times
• Shortlisted in 2022 for the Financial Times' Business Book of the Year
• Bradley W. Bateman's review in History of Political Economy (2024) 56 (2): 357–361
• L. Benjamin Rolsky's review in Los Angeles Review of Books

Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus and Paul Mellon Director of Research at the University of Cambridge. He is the author and editor of more than ten books, including two prizewinners, American Crucible (2017) and Liberty and Coercion (2015).

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).