On the level of economic policy, against the political background of the Cold War and then especially after the breakdown of Keynesian economics in the 1970s, the reference to the economic imaginaries of free markets and the free market mechanism served as the theoretical frame for promoting neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization, and austerity. Although the GFC could have induced a paradigm shift in the field of economic policy, the dominance of neoliberal policies does not seem to be contested. Colin Crouch has described this persistence as the “strange non-death of neoliberalism,” while Mark Blyth has warned of the social and societal consequences of austerity policies.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 609