Liberalism versus Neo-Neoliberalism

Abstract

Looking at today's political landscape, it can only be concluded that liberalism is embraced and advocated by many political parties, think tanks, and supra-national institutions, as well as many civil movements around the world. It must be that liberalism is a house with many rooms in which the focus is on different aspects while sharing the same fundamental set of beliefs. That in itself is not surprising, as most political trends are characterized by many different underlying drivers that often have emerged over longer periods of time in history and have helped shaping the many different angles from which political theory can be approached. A good illustration is the fact that most Western democracies are called `liberal democracies', although they tend to deviate significantly from each other in terms of their structure and founding principles, as well as ways of effective functioning, thus pointing towards that political diversity. Despite `liberal' democracy having become (albeit with severe criticism) somewhat of a global default model ever since the collapse of the USSR, countries like China have opened up to market economy principles while adhering to their one-party state principle.1