Social Economy Policies as Flanking Mechanisms for Neo-Liberalism: Trans-national Policy Solutions, Emergent Contradictions, Local Alternatives

While early assessments of neo-liberalism stressed its destructiveness in rolling back the institutions of the Keynesian welfare state, recent analyses have begun to assess how its consolidation involves creating new institutions and patterns of governance to extend market relations to new spheres of social life, and to stabilize emergent contradictions. Jessop has crafted the expression ‘flanking mechanism’ to describe attempts at shoring up neo-liberalism in the Anglo-American countries through various Third Way policies. These mechanisms may prove unsuccessful in their task should confusion persist over the proper form of support: is the solution to prop up neo-liberalism with institutions based on other logics, or is it to deepen the spread of market metrics ever more broadly over the social world? Moreover, what happens when both flanking strategies are employed at once?