How does the distinctive form of reason that is neoliberalism become a governing rationality saturating the practices of ordinary institutions and discourses of everyday life? While neoliberal policy was often imposed through fiat and force in the 1970s and 1980s, neoliberalization in the Euro-Atlantic world today is more often enacted through specific techniques of governance, through best practices and legal tweaks, in short, through "soft power" drawing on consensus and buy-in, than through violence, dictatorial command, or even overt political platforms. Neoliberalism governs as sophisticated common sense, a reality principle remaking institutions and human beings everywhere it settles, nestles, and gains affirmation. Of course, there are dust-ups, including protests and political altercations with police, over the privatization of public goods, union busting, benefits reductions, public-service cuts, and more. But neoliberalization is generally more termitelike than lionlike … its mode of reason boring in capillary fashion into the trunks and branches of workplaces, schools, public agencies, social and political discourse, and above all, the subject.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 58