The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis (review)

The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis. Edited by John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen. Princeton University Press, 2001. 288 pp. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $19.95.

One thing that makes The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis unique among edited volumes in general, and edited volumes dealing with institutional analysis in particular, is that it brings together scholars working within different paradigms, or more specifically, from different branches of institutional analysis, namely rational choice, historical, organizational, and discursive analysis. Another is that before sitting down to write their respective contributions, the participating scholars agreed upon a common topic that they have then approached from their respective theoretical perspectives. This has given the book a coherence that is otherwise hard to find among volumes comprising pieces by a number of different authors.

According to the editors, this venture was undertaken in order to present the current state of the art in institutional analysis, thereby providing a basis for a more systematic comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of the different perspectives within this theoretical tradition. The hope of the editors is that such a comparison will point to the benefits of what they call a second movement in institutional analysis, by which they mean an "effort to stimulate dialogue among paradigms in order to explore the possibilities for theoretical cross-fertilization, rapprochement, and integration," and further that "attempts at integration can reveal a wider, more complex range of causal processes than each paradigm alone generally does, as well as areas in which paradigms overlap or complement each other."

The rise of neoliberalism during the last quarter century was selected as the common empirical phenomenon to be analyzed, among other things because "given its significance and institutional implications, neoliberalism is something with which institutional analysts should be concerned and something they ought to be able to explain," and additionally neoliberalism is a "very complex . . . project that involves changes in a plethora of institutional areas: substantive and discursive; formal and informal; political and economic; public and private; global, national, and local."

Besides the introductory and the concluding chapters, which are written by the editors, the volume is divided into four parts, each of which comprises two chapters and represents one of the schools of institutional analysis mentioned above. From a general point of view, the contributions maintain a high standard; each one presents suggestive theoretical ideas in addition to bringing to light various empirical observations relating to a number of aspects of the rise of neoliberalism. In my opinion, however, two chapters stand out, one by Bruce Carruthers, Sarah Babb, and Terence Halliday, and another by John Campbell. In the former chapter, the authors are able, within the context of their study of the central banks and the corporate bankruptcy legislation in France and Mexico, to highlight several of the central empirical contributions made by the volume as a whole. These include the findings that the concept of neoliberalism itself is more full of shades of meaning than is ordinarily recognized, that arguments maintaining that there is a uniform convergence toward a common set of neoliberal institutions are overstatements, and that neoliberalism involves more of a reregulation than a deregulation of economic activities.

By drawing on insights from historical as well as organizational institutionalism, John Campbell's contribution provides a brilliant illustration of the main theoretical and methodological findings of the volume, showing how bringing different institutional perspectives together may result in cross-fertilization and thereby generate significant theoretical payoffs. Campbell achieves this by first developing a fourfold typology of ideas based on two structural dimensions; whether they are operating primary at a cognitive or a normative level, and whether they constitute the explicit argument or just the implicit assumptions of political debates. Second, he signifies the utility of his typology by showing that it may be employed as a partial explanation of why conservative supply-side economics came to dominate the conceptual framework of macro-economic policy making in the U.S. during...