Introduction: How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy

From its very inception, neoliberalism has been a reluctant companion to democracy. Economists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, for example, viewed with anxiety the achievement of universal suffrage and were convinced that market mechanisms had to be protected from popular involvement. However, neoliberalism was not only a program aimed at “undoing” the demos but also a way to invest it with new meaning, to “redo the demos.” And it’s this reinvestment of the marketplace with a democratic legitimacy that guides this special issue of The Tocqueville Review with contributions of Daniel Luban, Niklas Olsen, Jacob Jensen, Jenny Andersson, Stephen Sawyer and William Novak.