It seems generally to be agreed that this term refers to the liberalizing of global markets associated with the reduction of state power: state interventions in the economy are minimized; privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized; capital controls and trade restrictions are eased; free markets, free trade, and free enterprise are the buzzwords. Beyond that, definitions become more partial; D. Harvey (2005), for example, speaks of ‘the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action…[the reduction of] the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens…unfettered individual rights’. Harvey further argues that privatization writ large, financialization (sic), the skilful manipulation of crises practically and discursively to spread ‘market rule’, and state redistributions to the private sector and the rich have been neoliberalism’s modus operandi. Thus, mainstream scholars depict neoliberalism as an innovation of capitalism, while political economists view the rise of neoliberalism as a response to a capitalist crisis of accumulation. Additionally, Birch and Mykhnenko (2009) J. Econ. Geog. 9, 3, 355 argue that whereas neoliberal ideology—based on abstract economic concepts such as free market efficiency—represents a global discourse that developed at diverse sites around the world, neoliberalism as a state-led project produced national varieties of neoliberalism in which deregulation, privatization, and trade liberalization were pursued for different political reasons, in different ways, and to different extents.

Case studies of the impacts of neoliberalism abound; see, for example: Budds (2004) Sing. J. Trop. Geog. 25 on Chile; McCarthy (2006) AAAG 96, 1 on British Columbia; Ryan and Herod (2006) Antipode 38, 3 on Australia and Aotearoa; Gökarkisel and Mitchell (2005) Global Networks 5, 2 on Turkey; Fisher (2006) Soc. Justice 33 on race, neoliberalism, and ‘welfare reform’ in Britain; and Emery (2006) Soc. Justice 33, 3 on contesting neoliberalism in South Africa. See Liverman and Vilas (2006) Ann. Rev. Env. & Resources 31 on neoliberalism and the environment.

Attention has also been paid to governance/governmentalities of neoliberalism: see Larner and Butler (2005) Studs Polit. Econ. 75 on New Zealand; McCarthy (2004) Geoforum 35, 3. Spaces of neoliberalism are addressed by N. Brenner and N. Theodore, eds (2003), R. Basu (2004), W. Larner and W. Walters (2004); and scales of neoliberalism by Kohl and Warner (2004) Int. J. Urb. & Reg. Research 28, 4.