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The many contradictory interpretations of neoliberalism raise doubts about the value of this concept. This article discusses the literature on neoliberalism for identifying a "minimum common core" that warrants preserving this concept. I argue that neoliberalism entails an ideology and a political practice that aim to subordinate the state and all social domains to the market—to its logic and to the economic powers within it—thereby undermining democracy. This conceptualization emerges as a "common lowest denominator" among many otherwise incompatible scholarly definitions of neoliberalism, reflects central neoliberal ideas (despite their own inconsistencies), and illuminates crucial features of contemporary neoliberal society. I discuss the implications of this interpretation for established democracies and for those countries that experienced democratization processes during the neoliberal era, for the debates on postneoliberalism, and for the political identity of the Left.

This essay proposes a theory of post-neoliberal social citizenship, re-imagining the work-welfare nexus with a view to articulating individual freedom and social solidarity; democratic renewal and environmental sustainability. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, the essay first interrogates the relationship between work and freedom, problematizing the neoliberal understanding of emancipation as labour market empowerment. It then suggests, drawing from the feminist literature, a conceptualization of work beyond paid employment as the "practice of taking care of the world". This conceptualization is politicized: it demands democratic deliberation for establishing its precise meaning and can provide the basis for both new solidarities and democratic renewal. The essay thus sketches a model of post-neoliberal eco-social citizenship, which reconciles individual emancipation (from and within the labour market) with democratization and environmental sustainability. In this context, participatory-deliberative democracy partially substitutes the market mechanism as a system for evaluating the value of human activities and for coordinating individuals' freedoms. This allows increasing the democratic control over the economy for directing it towards the promotion of sustainable social welfare, enhancing human flourishing opportunities for all within planetary boundaries.

Within the welfare state literature, critics of social investment have argued that its economic logic replaces 'social' considerations (for example, focused on rights/needs) and that this could reinforce the marginalisation of vulnerable populations, as they are unattractive 'human capital'. Against this background, this article focuses on the counterintuitive case of the social investment approach to homelessness promoted by the European Commission. Through the comparison with previous EU initiatives in the homelessness field, the analysis reveals that while social investment partially replaces values-based logics with the economic rationale, it involves the same 'solutions' as values-oriented approaches, that is, preventing/combating homelessness can be justified interchangeably following an 'economic' or a 'social' logic. To explain this paradoxical result, the article draws from the political economy literature, which shows how disadvantage can be transformed into an investment object. Overall, this study suggests understanding social investment as a paradigm that attempts to promote the 'social' through its economisation.

Spätestens seit dem Anfang der Finanzkrise im Jahre 2008 verliert der Neoliberalismus an Legitimität – was die Möglichkeit eröffnet eine progressive Alternative zu entwickeln. In akademischen Debatten im Bereich der Sozialpolitik bietet die Sozialinvestition jetzt die normative Orientierung für die Entwicklung einer post-neoliberalen Sozialpolitik. Der Artikel stellt die Gültigkeit von folgenden zwei Argumenten in Frage: dass die Sozialinvestition eine Alternative zu Neoliberalismus darstellt und, dass sie auf einer Neuformulierung der sozialpolitischen Ziele basiert, die Amartya Sens Capability-Ansatz verfolgt. Während sich die Sozialinvestition vom Rückzug des Wohlfahrtstaats auf der Ebene der Policy-Vorschläge unterscheidet, sind die normativen und epistemologischen Grundannahmen der Sozialinvestition zum Großteil die gleichen wie die vom Neoliberalismus und stehen im Gegensatz zum Capability Ansatz. Dies hat auch konkrete Folgen für die Formulierung und Implementierung von Sozialpolitik.

Social investment has become the dominant approach to welfare reform in Europe and elsewhere. Scholars supporting this perspective have argued that it represents a paradigm shift from neo-liberalism – defined as the ideology of the minimal state and welfare retrenchment. This article challenges this claim, arguing that this definition of neo-liberalism is simplistic and empirically weak. It states that under a more accurate definition, social investment reflects four characteristics of neo-liberalism: the de-politicisation of the economy and of welfare reform; the economic understanding of the state; the extension of economic rationale to non-economic domains; and the anthropology of human capital. Taking this view, while social investment is preferable to welfare retrenchment, it promotes the same kind of citizenship as neo-liberalism, especially in terms of the marginalisation of the role of democracy in regulating the economy.

In this article, we study the political project promoted by the European Commission (EC) for tackling simultaneously socioeconomic and environmental issues. Based on a detailed analysis of the most relevant EC policy documents (adopted between 2000 and 2020) that explicitly articulate ecological and socioeconomic questions, we offer two contributions to the literature on eco-social policy. First, we identify the nature of what we call the 'European Eco-Social Model'. This political project subordinates social-ecological goals to the economic rationality of growth, competitiveness and profits and de-politicizes the efforts to promote more sustainable societies and economies. Second, we show how the Commission is repositioning itself as a global leader in the transformation to sustainability, attempting to extend its particular eco-social model to the whole world. Overall, we argue that this 'model' is based on self-contradictory assumptions and cannot demonstrate how it should be able to solve problems of social inequality and climate change on a global level.

AbstractThis paper explores how 'social market economy' became a quasi‐constitutional principle of the EU, highlighting the crucial role played in this process by the European Parliament. Based on multiple archival sources, we show that social market economy came to function as a limited repertoire: While it was advocated for various reasons by different actors, increasingly including social‐democrats, it nevertheless also solidified certain ways of conceiving the EU and its economic model. So doing, this article not only illuminates the role of the EP in the definition of a constitutionalized economic model for the EU; it also challenges the view of Europeanization as the progressive convergence around national preexisting models. Finally, two paradoxes emerge from the analysis: while supporters of the discourse of social market economy aimed at promoting the European social dimension and at addressing the EU democratic deficit, the adoption of this principle may have actually contributed to the subordination of both the 'social' and the 'political' to the 'economic'.