The Resilience of Neoliberalism Throught the 2008 Financial and Sovereign Debt Crisis

This paper looks at the resilience of neoliberalism in the European Union throughout the 2008 crisis. The largest economic and financial crisis since 1929 was thought to be the end of the neoliberal era, putting this ideology in front of its contradictions, as well as showing its empirical inefficiencies. But, it did not happen. Why is neoliberalism still thriving despite empirical and theoretical failures stacking against it?

I will study the resilience of neoliberalism through the lens of Michel Foucault Naissance de la biopolitique. This framework will provide us with an understanding of neoliberalism as a framework for knowledge production. This framework also differentiates neoliberalism from other scholars' definitions. Foucault raises three critiques: (1) it is not a simple return to Mancherism, (2) it is not a simple analysis of exchange between people, and (3) it is  not the extension or generalization of state power to all sphere of society. After defining Foucault's methodology and understanding of what neoliberalism is, I will engage in a process tracing of events of the 2008 European crisis. Then, it will be possible to look at local occurences of neoliberalism and to use Foucault's understanding of neoliberalism to make sense of those events and to help us understand its long-term ramifications. In the end, the analysis shows that neoliberalism is polymorphic and difficult to circumscribe. This is one of its strength and one of the reasons why it is so resilient. But, Foucault's understanding of neoliberalism helps us to shed some light on its limits.