American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization
Abstract
Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are two distinct political rationalities in the contemporary United States. They have few overlapping formal characteristics, and even appear contradictory in many respects. Yet they converge not only in the current presidential administration but also in their de-democratizing effects. Their respective devaluation of political liberty, equality, substantive citizenship, and the rule of law in favor of governance according to market criteria on the one side, and valorization of state power for putatively moral ends on the other, undermines both the culture and institutions of constitutional democracy. Above all, the two rationalities work symbiotically to produce a subject relatively indifferent to veracity and accountability in government and to political freedom and equality among the citizenry.
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The United States may be an exception rather than the rule, given the persistent alliance between neoconservatism and neoliberalism in the United States.
“This may seem paradoxical from the American perspective, given the persistent alliance between neoconservatism and neoliberalism in the United States (see Brown 2006), but the United States may be an exception rather than the rule.”
From Gender as “Ebola from Brussels”: The Anticolonial Frame and the Rise of Illiberal Populism (2018) · cites this paper as Brown 2006
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- Authors
- Brown, W.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Brown, Wendy
- ORCID
- Brown, Wendy
- Venue
- Political Theory
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2006-12
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 690-714
- ISSN
- 0090-5917 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7476
- OpenAlex
- W2113761180
- Cited by
- 1,077
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 55 · 2025: 53 · 2024: 50 · 2023: 64 · 2022: 75 · 2021: 63 · 2020: 93 · 2019: 92 · 2018: 67 · 2017: 71 · 2016: 88 · 2015: 44 · 2014: 57 · 2013: 36 · 2012: 54
- FWCI
- 97.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Political Theory (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Globalization and political ideologies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Economic and Social Issues
- Keywords
- neoliberalism, neoconservatism, de-democratization, constitutional democracy, political freedom, equality, citizenship, rule of law, market governance, state power, political accountability, political rationality, American politics
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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