John Iduh Blog

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Neoliberalism as Policy Practice: The D–L–P Formula

Neoliberalism does not exist merely as an abstract economic doctrine or ideological worldview; it manifests itself most visibly as a concrete and coherent set of public policies. These policies are often summarized through what may be called the D–L–P Formula : deregulation , liberalization , and privatization . Together, these three pillars constitute the operational core of neoliberal governance and provide the practical means through which market principles are extended into ever more areas of social life. First, deregulation refers to the systematic removal or weakening of state controls over economic activity. Regulatory frameworks governing labor markets, finance, environmental protection, and industry are relaxed or dismantled in the belief that free markets are inherently more efficient than state oversight. Deregulation is justified by the claim that excessive rules stifle innovation, discourage investment, and reduce competitiveness, even though its social costs—such as fina...

Neoliberalism as New Public Management: Recasting the State in Market Terms

In the early 1980s, neoliberal ideas found a powerful institutional expression in a new model of public administration known as New Public Management (NPM). Emerging first in Anglo-American contexts and rapidly diffusing across the globe, NPM operationalized neoliberal modes of governance within the everyday practices of state bureaucracies. Its central ambition was to remake the public sector in the image of the private market by importing managerial techniques, entrepreneurial values, and competitive logics into government institutions. At the heart of New Public Management lies a fundamental redefinition of the relationship between the state and its citizens. Rather than conceiving citizens as members of a political community entitled to public goods, NPM recasts them as “customers” or “clients” whose needs are to be met through efficient service delivery. Public servants, in turn, are encouraged to abandon traditional bureaucratic norms of neutrality, rule-following, and public du...

Neoliberalism as Ideology, Governance, and Policy: A Threefold Framework

Neoliberalism is a broad and often contested concept, commonly used to describe an economic paradigm that rose to global prominence in the late twentieth century, particularly from the 1980s onward. Rooted in the classical liberal ideal of the self-regulating market, neoliberalism is not a single, uniform doctrine but a complex configuration of ideas, practices, and institutions. A useful way to understand its reach and durability is to conceptualize neoliberalism as operating simultaneously across three interrelated dimensions: as an ideology, as a mode of governance, and as a policy package. First, neoliberalism functions as an ideology. Ideologies are systems of widely shared ideas and patterned beliefs that provide societies with interpretive frameworks for understanding political and economic life. They simplify complex realities into accessible narratives about how the world works and how it ought to work. In doing so, ideologies encourage particular forms of action while discour...

Neoliberalism: Crisis, Ascendancy, and Global Reach

In the three decades following the Second World War, egalitarian liberalism underpinned an era of remarkable economic performance across much of the industrialized world. High growth rates, rising wages, low unemployment, modest inflation, and expanding systems of social security characterized what has often been described as the “golden age” of controlled capitalism. By the early 1970s, however, this postwar settlement began to unravel under the weight of a series of profound economic disruptions. The economic crises of the 1970s exposed vulnerabilities that Keynesian policy frameworks struggled to address. External shocks—most notably the oil crises of 1973 and 1979—dramatically increased energy prices, triggering inflationary pressures across advanced economies. At the same time, these economies experienced the unprecedented combination of rising unemployment and high inflation, a phenomenon that came to be known as “stagflation.” Declining productivity growth and falling corporate ...

Egalitarian Liberalism: Reforming Capitalism through the Active State

The upheavals of the twentieth century cast serious doubt on the core assumptions of classical liberalism. Economic crises, mass unemployment, and social dislocation exposed the limitations of the belief that self-regulating markets, left to their own devices, would naturally produce stability and prosperity. Although elements of classical liberal thought would re-emerge in revised form with the rise of neoliberalism in the late twentieth century, the intervening decades witnessed the ascendance of a different liberal tradition—commonly described as egalitarian liberalism. The decisive turning point was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its depth, duration, and global reach shattered confidence in the classical liberal vision of the state as a mere “night watchman.” Leading thinkers such as John Maynard Keynes and Karl Polanyi concluded that markets were neither self-correcting nor socially neutral. Yet these theorists diverged sharply from Marxist interpretations that viewed recurrin...

Classical Liberalism: Markets, Freedom, and the Limits of the State

Classical liberalism emerged in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a powerful intellectual and political response to the mercantilist order that dominated early modern Europe. Mercantilism rested on the assumption that economic wealth—measured primarily in gold and silver—was finite and that the state, typically under monarchical authority, must exercise extensive control over trade and production to secure national power, often for military ends. Against this backdrop, classical liberal thinkers articulated a radically different vision of economic life, one grounded in individual freedom, market exchange, and limited government. Central to classical liberalism were economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, whose writings challenged the mercantilist fusion of political power and economic control. Smith, writing in The Wealth of Nations (1776), argued that economic prosperity did not arise from state accumulation of bullion, but from the productive labor of individ...