The myth of the business friendly economy: making neoliberal reforms in the worst state for business

Abstract

From 2010 to 2013, legislators in Rhode Island enacted a series of neoliberal reforms to increase “business friendliness” in the state. Where economistic, electoral, organizational, and diffusion accounts fail to explain the timing and content of these reforms, I synthesize the work of Georges Sorel and Jeffrey C. Alexander to argue they were motivated by the myth of the business friendly economy. More than mere narration, this myth set before lawmakers the vision and the promise that a business friendly economy would return prosperity to the state. It prompted neoliberal legislation by integrating “business unfriendliness” into collective understandings of Rhode Island’s economic failure, defining policy reform as a moral imperative, and projecting a vision of the ends towards which reform should be oriented. This analysis contributes to cultural, economic, and political sociology by reclaiming myth as an alternative framework to assess the symbolic dimensions of political transitions, providing explanation for an otherwise puzzling case of neoliberalization, and suggesting opportunities for future research to problematize political actors’ deployment of economics in their attempts to project possible futures and shape action in the present.