Neoliberalism was designed to encase national states, limiting their sovereignty over their own economies

Evidence

Neoliberalism operates at several levels, and the first is global. Its early proponents, especially the “Geneva School”—theorists like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and others who did important work in the Swiss city—had a deep appreciation for how the first liberal era had created a worldwide capitalist economy, and they also harbored deep anxieties that the era of mass democracy and decolonization would get in its way. They wanted to impose limits on what national states could do to govern their own resources and economies—it was more important to ensure that an investor in London or New York could buy and sell copper mines in the Congo, for example, than to grant the Congolese people the full power to determine their ownership. Recently, Canadian historian Quinn Slobodian has employed the metaphor of a global “encasement” of the world’s countries—the way the slices of an orange are encased by its peel—to describe these intentional limits on national sovereignty. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 116

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Slobodian’s ‘encasement’ metaphor as the defining frame for the global tier of neoliberalism.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of the economist interest in extralegal regimes and institutional design (e.g., law merchant research) as parallels to intentionally engineered economic orders. — connects to: Neoliberal founders sought to limit national sovereignty over resources — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 116; Neoliberalism sought institutions balancing the world economy against political sovereignty — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 53; Early neoliberals sought to radically shrink national sovereignty in service of free trade. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 440 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal founders sought to limit national sovereignty over resources #expands (0.93) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 116
• Early neoliberals sought to radically shrink national sovereignty in service of free trade. #expands (0.88) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 440
• Neoliberals wanted international rules to discipline states, not just markets #expands (0.86) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 266
• Neoliberalism emerged partly as a critique of national sovereignty and democratic budgeting. #expands (0.85) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 399
• Neoliberals wanted an international order forcing anti-inflationary policy onto states #exemplifies (0.84) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 425
• Neoliberalism sought to encase markets in extra-economic rules, not unleash them #qualifies (0.82) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 70
• Neoliberalism subordinates the state to capital rather than freeing markets #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1720
• Neoliberalism claims to liberate while actually eroding political sovereignty #corroborates (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 211
• Neoliberalism sought institutions balancing the world economy against political sovereignty #contradicts (0.78) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 53
• Neoliberals theorized peace as the separation of ownership from sovereignty #expands (0.77) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 258
• Leading neoliberals defended restricting political freedom to preserve economic freedom #expands (0.75) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 500
• Neoliberals coined and repurposed consumer sovereignty to rival national sovereignty #expands (0.72) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 401