neoliberalism

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a political and economic philosophy that prioritises market mechanisms, private enterprise, free trade, deregulation, and reduction of the state's role in the economy as the primary means of achieving prosperity and freedom; emerging from the work of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and the Mont Pelerin Society in the postwar decades, neoliberalism became the dominant policy paradigm in major economies under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and was institutionalised globally through the conditionality programmes of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; its policies include privatisation of public enterprises, fiscal austerity, labour market deregulation, trade liberalisation, and cuts to welfare provision; neoliberalism has been associated by its critics with rising inequality, financialisation, erosion of public services, and the political backlash that produced populist movements across the ideological spectrum in the early twenty-first century