By definition, theories that postulate free or pure markets per se are not neoliberal, and it is easy for neoliberals to point to the need for the right set of institutions, politics, and nowadays even behavior to allow markets to operate relatively freely, and, more importantly, to set market forces free. The charge of “one size fits all” fails in the face of the documentable shifts in neoliberal approaches to policy problems. Our case studies show that neoliberalism is less a policy orthodoxy than a consistent approach to policy problems. To adapt the famous legal maxim of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, neoliberals hold that the market lives by prerequisites it cannot guarantee itself. Rather than operate with a belief in the “magic” of a putatively “natural” market, neoliberals are avowed interventionists of their own kind, rethinking policies according to context and showing both a capacity for improvisation and an attitude of flexible response.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 22