Neoliberalism has become a dirty word. In political discourse, it stigmatizes a political opponent as a market fundamentalist; in academia, the concept is also mainly wielded by its critics, while those who might be seen as actual neoliberals deny its very existence.

Yet, the term remains necessary for understanding the varieties of capitalism across space and time. Arguing that neoliberalism is widely misunderstood when reduced to a doctrine of markets and economics alone, this book shows that it has a political dimension that we can reconstruct and critique.

By examining the views of state, democracy, science, and politics in the work of six major figures - Eucken, Röpke, Rüstow, Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan - it offers the first comprehensive account of the varieties of neoliberal political thought.

Ordoliberal perspectives, in particular, emerge in a new light. Turning from abstract to concrete, the book also interprets recent neoliberal reforms of the European Union to offer a diagnosis of contemporary capitalism more generally. The latest economic crises hardly brought the neoliberal era to an end. Instead, as Thomas Biebricher shows, we are witnessing an authoritarian liberalism, whose reign has only just begun.

The book is published by Stanford University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

Praise for the book:

"This is a brilliant book - one of the most illuminating I have read in a long time...at once deeply scholarly and profoundly relevant, it is a model of what political theory should be." (Margaret Kohn, professor at University of Toronto)

"A timely and formidable intervention in current political theory..." (Yves Winter, associate professor at McGill University)

"A powerful corrective to the existing scholarship." (Andrew Dilts, professor at Loyola Marymount University)