The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism

The financial crisis seemed to present a fundamental challenge to neo liberalism, the body of ideas that have constituted the political orthodoxy of most advanced economies in recent decades.Colin Crouch argues in this book that it will shrug off this challenge.The reason is that while neo liberalism seems to be about free markets, in practice it is concerned with the dominance over public life of the giant corporation.This has been intensified, not checked, by the recent financial crisis and acceptance that certain financial corporations are ‘too big to fail'.Although much political debate remains preoccupied with conflicts between the market and the state, the impact of the corporation on both these is today far more important. Several factors have brought us to this situation: The lobbying power of firms whose donations are of growing importance to cash-hungry politicians and partiesThe weakening of competitive forces by firms large enough to shape and dominate their marketsThe mora