Gary Gerstle

Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast

Professor Gary Gerstle enters the arena to join our ongoing debate about neoliberalism. Gary, a leading historian of the United States, is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus and Paul Mellon Director of Research in American History at the University of Cambridge. On today’s episode, we discuss his brilliant new book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era.

To begin, Gary defines a political order and discusses what happened in the shift from the New Deal political order to the recent neoliberal order. We then debate capitalism’s role in political orders – whether it’s something outside of a political order or rather the source of political order.

After establishing this framing, we analyze, as we often do, modern neoliberalism. David questions if there even was a neoliberal political order, given that recent decades were also marked by increases of government regulation in some areas, such as land use. If there a neoliberal political order, will we look back on it as good, as there have not been world wars and global poverty has fallen? Gary and Sam address David’s concerns, and talk about how it was taboo to even use the term neoliberal to describe the political moment until a few years ago.

Throughout our discussion, we situate this book against other scholars and existing theories (see the lengthy reading list)! This is a fascinating topic and we know you’ll enjoy hearing about Gary’s latest scholarship.

Referenced Readings

• The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, by Gary Gerstle
• Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present, by Gary Gerstle
• “The Rise and Fall(?) of America’s Neoliberal Order,” by Gary Gerstle
• “How ‘Neoliberalism’ Became the Left’s Favorite Insult of Liberals,” by Jonathan Chait
• “The Uses and Abuses of Neoliberalism,” by Daniel Rodgers
• Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism, by Paul Sabin
• The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism, by Fritz Bartel
• Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, by Melinda Cooper
• The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama
• “Regulation and the Collapse of the New Deal Order, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Market,” by Reuel Schiller