Against exceptionalism: the legitimacy of the neoliberal age

ABSTRACT

After the financial crisis of 2007–08, many commentators, adopting a broadly Polanyian logic of reasoning, expected a departure from neoliberalism. The failure of this shift to materialize has typically been accounted for in ‘exceptionalist’ terms: the persistence of neoliberalism is understood not as a function of a specific legitimacy it has itself engendered, but in terms of external interventions by elites who manage to ‘capture’ executive and regulatory institutions and so to bypass democratic pressures. This paper argues that such an approach underestimates the endogenous sources of legitimacy and resilience that neoliberal governance commands. It criticizes the idea that neoliberalism is at its core dependent on a Schmittian exceptionalism and suggests a perspective on Hayek's articulation of neoliberalism that dissociates it from such an exceptionalist approach. The article proceeds to interrogate the rationality of neoliberalism by examining its distinctively secular temporal logic, rooted in speculation, preemption and reaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Karl Polanyi
• Friedrich Hayek
• neoliberalism
• exceptionalism
• legitimacy
• preemption

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martijn Konings

Martijn Konings is Professor of Political Economy and Social Theory at the University of Sydney. His publications include The development of American finance (Cambridge University Press, 2011), The emotional logic of capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2015), Neoliberalism (with Damien Cahill, Polity, 2017), and Capital and time: For a new critique of neoliberal reason (Stanford University Press, 2018).