Besieged by the left and the right: The order of liberal globalism
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Besieged by the left and the right: The order of liberal globalism Stefan Kolev 1,2 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract This paper provides a critical reading of Quinn Slobodian’s “Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism”. Slobodian’s narrative centers around the concept of a “Geneva School” of economists and lawyers who, from the 1930s to the 1990s, shaped the international economic order through activities in Genevan institutions. The paper shows in what ways the book constitutes a highly stimulating challenge for readers who align normatively with the characters portrayed by Slobodian. Despite some weaknesses in its historiographical construction, the Geneva School is interpreted as an innovative contribution to the neoliberalism literature. The critical remarks on the book are embedded in posing an overarching question: In what ways can globalists like the author of the paper and moderate critics of globalism like Slobodian enter a fruitful conversation about improving the deficiencies of the global politico-economic order, especially in light of the far-left and far-right critique of globalism in recent years. Keywords Neoliberalism . Ordoliberalism . Globalization . Ideas and institutions . Law and
economics . Role of economists JEL classification B25 . B31 . F53 . F63 . P16
1 Discontent with liberal globalism: Horseshoe theory 2.0? Liberalism is on the defensive today, according to a widely spread diagnosis of global commentators. Historically, this is anything but new or uncommon. Apart from some few decades in the nineteenth and some brief moments in the twentieth century, other * Stefan Kolev [email protected]
1
Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Applied Sciences Zwickau, Dr.-Friedrichs-Ring 2A, 08056 Zwickau, Germany
2
Wilhelm Röpke Institute, Erfurt, Germany
S. Kolev
“isms” have been dominant in the world of ideas. Depending on the country and the period, the competitors to liberalism have varied. It could be the long shadow of feudalism, often combined with varieties of conservatism keen to preserve different parts of the “good old times” prior to the age of modernity, or the allegedly progressive movements of socialism and nationalism, often combined with one another to generate the most devastating blows to the Western civilization. While historically not uniquely tied to modernity, the process of globalization as experienced since “the long nineteenth century” is not only quantitatively different from the integration processes during Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Unlike those earlier times, in the past two hundred years the process of the “Great Enrichment” (McCloskey 2016) has mattered well beyond the ruling elite. Above all, modern globalization since the early nineteenth century has had a gigantic impact on the life of ordinary people – and that not only in the sense of material provisions. In the course of the modernity-related functional differentiation of various orders in society with their distinc
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