The Neoliberal Sort: Liberalism’s Recompositions in the United States

Abstract

This review essay rethinks “neoliberalism” in U.S. history. Rather than treating neoliberalism as a rupture, it proposes analyzing successive “sorts”, or recompositions, of liberal rule – formulas that stabilize the governance of capitalism by relocating authority among public and private institutions, redefining property, and reorganizing coalitions and justificatory languages. Set within the longer history of the liberalism of fear, the essay isolates a recomposition that consolidated in the immediate post–World War II period and made possible a later neoliberal sort in the late 1990s. In both instances, liberal rule incorporated technocratic insulation, marketcraft, and policy tools that secured private capital’s investment discretion while limiting democratic contestation. The essay traces how this neoliberal configuration began to strain in the twenty-first century, after the Iraq War and the global financial crisis of 2008. The conclusion interprets the Biden administration’s attempt to renew liberal repertoires under the threat to liberalism posed by Donald Trump.