Neoliberalism: The Whys and Wherefores ... and Future Directions

Neoliberalism means many things to many people. Often used indiscriminately to mean anything 'bad', neoliberalism is in need of dissection as an analytical category and a way of understanding the transformation of society over the last few decades. This paper is a brief introduction to neoliberalism and a number of key analytical approaches used to study it, including governmentality, Marxism, ideational analysis, history and philosophy of economics, institutional analysis, state/regulation theory, and human geography. It finishes with some suggestions for areas of further and future research.