Dieter Plehwe
Biographic Data
| ID | 415228 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dieter Plehwe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dieter |
| FAMILY NAME | Plehwe |
| SIGNATURE | PLEHWE D |
| AFFILIATIONS | WZB Berlin Social Science Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8563-0946 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 5 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
After Neoliberalism? Interregnum, Polycrisis and the Principle of Expansive Democratisation
In this paper, we contribute to the debate on the end of neoliberalism and on possible alternatives to the latter. We start by clarifying the relationship between neoliberalism, globalisation and the state as well as between neoliberalism, "populism", and far-right conservatism. We argue that, despite important political-economic changes, we are still in an "interregnum", whereby neoliberalism is increasingly challenged and dysfunctional but stil…
Challenging energy transition and green jobs: Climate Policy Obstruction Across Borders
Critical policy mobility literature still does not usually account for transnational opposition dedicated to push back against policy transfer. To address this gap, we examine the case of policy instruments and discourses in support of energy transition and green jobs. In the 2000s, countries such as Spain, Germany, and Denmark adopted policies to fund renewable energy expansion. The success of feed-in-tariff and other policies served as an examp…
Think tank output as media input: A Case Study of Transnational Climate Obstructionism
Transnational networks of neoliberal think tanks have invested time and resources in creating cross-country strategy mobility to oppose climate action. Building on strategy mobility research directed against renewable energy policy, we ask how think tank studies circulate in media outlets both within and across borders, and what role the media plays in the effort to shape the energy transition. We examine the role of a US-based think tank, the In…
Opposition “strategy mobility” – a dimension still missing in the critical policy mobility literature
Critical policy mobility research has transformed the field of policy transfer and diffusion studies. Scholars from critical epistemological traditions in different disciplines such as geography, sociology, political economy and public policy have examined the politics of policy transfer for more than a decade. Apart from challenging the affirmative normative assumptions underlying traditional policy transfer research ("policy learning"), scholar…
The Economic State and the Ordoliberal Critique of Keynesianism: Anti-economic state or just a different type of economic state?
Keynesianism and Ordoliberalism differ with regard to labour markets and collective bargaining in particular. Contrary to Foucault’s claims, however, Walter Eucken conditionally supported Wilhelm Lautenbach’s proto-Keynesian proposal to use public investment to overcome economic stagnation in the early 1930s. And the late 1960s witnessed a pragmatic realignment of modern (Keynesian) macroeconomics and Ordoliberal objectives advanced by economists…
Whither Energiewende Strategies to manufacture uncertainty and unknowing to redirect Germany's renewable energy law
Germany's Renewable Energy Act of 2000 has been subject to several reforms. Feed-in tariffs for renewables originally provided a stable environment for investment. The strongly increasing market share of renewables threatened incumbent electricity producers and led to legal and regulatory challenges. The mandated feed-in tariff eventually has been replaced by auctioning in 2014, breaking the momentum of decentralised electricity production from r…
Market Civilizations: Neoliberals East and South
Reluctant transformers or reconsidering opposition to climate change mitigation? German think tanks between environmentalism and neoliberalism
Germany is known as a leader in energy transition, but the country keeps falling short of meeting stated objectives. While attention has been high on climate change related policy leadership, the competing domestic alliances in the field of energy transition have received scant attention. In Germany, the strong momentum of the conversion to renewable energy has been stalled in the second half of the 2010s. Enabled by an increasing weight of neoli…
Markedsliggørelsens markedsføring - Neoliberale ekspert-, rådgivnings og lobbynetværker
This article takes stock of the current literature on neoliberalism and discusses its conceptual benefits, challenges, and avenues for further research. In particular, the article focuses on the transnational network around the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) and its activities in marketing the marketization of formerly non-market spheres. Rather than taking for granted pre-existing shared norms, interests, and principled beliefs, this focus helps us …
Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture
Critical policy studies and the politics of authoritarian neoliberalism
Critical policy studies and the politics of authoritarian neoliberalism." Critical Policy Studies, 13(1), pp. 1–2
Continuidade e variedade do neoliberalismo: Reconsiderando maré rosa na América Latina
In this article we critically engage with the term and concept of "post-neoliberalism", delineate different meanings in the literature and arrive at the conclusion that the term leaves more questions open than it answers. We therefore draw on literature that investigates the departure from (or persistence) of neoliberalism on a careful study of social power relations, i.e. Barry Cannon`s work on the rise of the right in Latin America. In taking h…
Saving the dangerous idea: Austerity think tank networks in the European Union
Austerity has become a key term in economic and social policy debates. Although austerity has been contested both in terms of economic theory and policy-making, it has been remarkably resilient. This resilience has been explained, for example, in structural and institutional terms by the rise of the ‘debt state’. Other explanations have emphasised the strength of austerity ideas rooted in ‘ordo-liberal’ economic theory. Following the insights of …
Liberalism and the Welfare State
The welfare state has, over the past 40 years, come under increasing attack from liberals who consider comprehensive welfare provision inimical to liberalism. Yet many of the architects of the post–World War II welfare states were liberals. Taking as examples three cases not often considered together—Britain, Germany, and Japan—this volume investigates the thinking of liberal economists about welfare. The first part explores the early history of …
The Initiative for a New Social-Market Economy and the Transformation of the German Welfare Regime after Unification: Economists and Arguments for the Welfare State
This chapter focuses on how business interests and neoliberal ideas have come together in Germany during the past two decades. It is based on a detailed analysis of the INSM, a large-scale campaign founded and funded by the metal industry employers’ association Gesamtmetall in 2000 to shape public opinion. Since its origination, the INSM has launched a systematic attack on the German welfare state. As part of a business-led public relations campa…
Landscapes of Unrest: Herbert Giersch and the Origins of Neoliberal Economic Geography
This article bridges the gap between the intellectual history and critical geography of neoliberalism through a study of the overlooked figure of the German economist Herbert Giersch. As a public economist and director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from 1969 to 1989, Giersch blended German traditions of location theory with liberal globalism to lay the foundation of a neoliberal economic geography. We show the origins of globalism a…
The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, With a New Preface
Think tank networks and the knowledge–interest nexus: The case of climate change
An increasing complexity and heavy reliance on research in the formulation of public policy is the backdrop to the ongoing politicization of science. Issues and problems around the accessibility, credibility, legitimacy and accountability of expertise are greatly aggravated in supranational policy arenas. While antidemocratic dangers have traditionally been emphasized with regard to technocratic policy-making, such dangers coexist with the perils…
Think tanks in America
Thomas Medvetz has added another volume to the impressive library on US think tanks. Unlike previous authors, who are political scientists or historians by training, Medvetz is a sociologist. He ha
Transnational discourse coalitions and monetary policy: Argentina and the limited powers of the ‘Washington Consensus’
Why, in the era of neoliberalism, Argentinean monetary policymakers rejected the kind of flexible monetary exchange rates recommended by the ‘Washington Consensus’ remains a puzzle. The literature has mainly contrasted external and internal factors of influence and constraints to explain the country's peculiar road to neoliberalism. In this paper, discourse coalition theory is developed further to more fully capture the transnational configuratio…
The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective
Mirowski explores neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. He presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy.
Neoliberal Hegemony
Neoliberalism is fast becoming the dominant ideology of our age, yet politicians, businessmen and academics rarely identify themselves with it and even political forces critical of it continue to carry out neoliberal policies around the globe. How can we make sense of this paradox? Who actually are "the neoliberals"? This is the first explanation of neoliberal hegemony, which systematically considers and analyzes the networks and organizations of…
A Global Knowledge Bank? The World Bank and Bottom-Up Efforts to Reinforce Neoliberal Development Perspectives in the Post-Washington Consensus Era
In the late 1990s, in reaction to growing protests against its insistence on the universal applicability of market-oriented development programs (the ‘Washington Consensus’), the World Bank reinvented itself as a ‘global knowledge bank’. The Bank has gone to considerable effort to improve and decentralize its knowledge management, aiming to increase sensitivity and responsiveness. Critical scholars argue that the Bank continues to be run by small…
Neoliberal Hegemony
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Wissenschaftliche und wissenschaftspolitische Produktionsweisen im Neoliberalismus.: Beiträge der Mont Pèlerin Society und marktradikaler Think Tanks zur Hegemoniegewinnung und -erhaltung
Employing Gramsci’s concept of hegemony the rise of neoliberalism to the dominant force in the present hegemonic constellation is scrutinized. The origin and development of the Mont Pèlerin Society of right wing liberals around Hayek is traced and the network of think tanks stretching from the British Institute of Economic Affairs to the Heritage Foundation in the U.S. is examined with regard to the working relations of neoliberal discourse coali…
Think tank networks and the knowledge–interest nexus: The case of climate change
An increasing complexity and heavy reliance on research in the formulation of public policy is the backdrop to the ongoing politicization of science. Issues and problems around the accessibility, credibility, legitimacy and accountability of expertise are greatly aggravated in supranational policy arenas. While antidemocratic dangers have traditionally been emphasized with regard to technocratic policy-making, such dangers coexist with the perils…
A Global Knowledge Bank? The World Bank and Bottom-Up Efforts to Reinforce Neoliberal Development Perspectives in the Post-Washington Consensus Era
In the late 1990s, in reaction to growing protests against its insistence on the universal applicability of market-oriented development programs (the ‘Washington Consensus’), the World Bank reinvented itself as a ‘global knowledge bank’. The Bank has gone to considerable effort to improve and decentralize its knowledge management, aiming to increase sensitivity and responsiveness. Critical scholars argue that the Bank continues to be run by small…
Saving the dangerous idea: Austerity think tank networks in the European Union
Austerity has become a key term in economic and social policy debates. Although austerity has been contested both in terms of economic theory and policy-making, it has been remarkably resilient. This resilience has been explained, for example, in structural and institutional terms by the rise of the ‘debt state’. Other explanations have emphasised the strength of austerity ideas rooted in ‘ordo-liberal’ economic theory. Following the insights of …
Reluctant transformers or reconsidering opposition to climate change mitigation? German think tanks between environmentalism and neoliberalism
Germany is known as a leader in energy transition, but the country keeps falling short of meeting stated objectives. While attention has been high on climate change related policy leadership, the competing domestic alliances in the field of energy transition have received scant attention. In Germany, the strong momentum of the conversion to renewable energy has been stalled in the second half of the 2010s. Enabled by an increasing weight of neoli…
Transnational discourse coalitions and monetary policy: Argentina and the limited powers of the ‘Washington Consensus’
Why, in the era of neoliberalism, Argentinean monetary policymakers rejected the kind of flexible monetary exchange rates recommended by the ‘Washington Consensus’ remains a puzzle. The literature has mainly contrasted external and internal factors of influence and constraints to explain the country's peculiar road to neoliberalism. In this paper, discourse coalition theory is developed further to more fully capture the transnational configuratio…
Opposition “strategy mobility” – a dimension still missing in the critical policy mobility literature
Critical policy mobility research has transformed the field of policy transfer and diffusion studies. Scholars from critical epistemological traditions in different disciplines such as geography, sociology, political economy and public policy have examined the politics of policy transfer for more than a decade. Apart from challenging the affirmative normative assumptions underlying traditional policy transfer research ("policy learning"), scholar…
Landscapes of Unrest: Herbert Giersch and the Origins of Neoliberal Economic Geography
This article bridges the gap between the intellectual history and critical geography of neoliberalism through a study of the overlooked figure of the German economist Herbert Giersch. As a public economist and director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from 1969 to 1989, Giersch blended German traditions of location theory with liberal globalism to lay the foundation of a neoliberal economic geography. We show the origins of globalism a…
Challenging energy transition and green jobs: Climate Policy Obstruction Across Borders
Critical policy mobility literature still does not usually account for transnational opposition dedicated to push back against policy transfer. To address this gap, we examine the case of policy instruments and discourses in support of energy transition and green jobs. In the 2000s, countries such as Spain, Germany, and Denmark adopted policies to fund renewable energy expansion. The success of feed-in-tariff and other policies served as an examp…
Think tanks in America
Thomas Medvetz has added another volume to the impressive library on US think tanks. Unlike previous authors, who are political scientists or historians by training, Medvetz is a sociologist. He ha
Wissenschaftliche und wissenschaftspolitische Produktionsweisen im Neoliberalismus.: Beiträge der Mont Pèlerin Society und marktradikaler Think Tanks zur Hegemoniegewinnung und -erhaltung
Employing Gramsci’s concept of hegemony the rise of neoliberalism to the dominant force in the present hegemonic constellation is scrutinized. The origin and development of the Mont Pèlerin Society of right wing liberals around Hayek is traced and the network of think tanks stretching from the British Institute of Economic Affairs to the Heritage Foundation in the U.S. is examined with regard to the working relations of neoliberal discourse coali…
Neoliberal Hegemony
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Neoliberal Hegemony
Neoliberalism is fast becoming the dominant ideology of our age, yet politicians, businessmen and academics rarely identify themselves with it and even political forces critical of it continue to carry out neoliberal policies around the globe. How can we make sense of this paradox? Who actually are "the neoliberals"? This is the first explanation of neoliberal hegemony, which systematically considers and analyzes the networks and organizations of…
A Global Knowledge Bank? The World Bank and Bottom-Up Efforts to Reinforce Neoliberal Development Perspectives in the Post-Washington Consensus Era
In the late 1990s, in reaction to growing protests against its insistence on the universal applicability of market-oriented development programs (the ‘Washington Consensus’), the World Bank reinvented itself as a ‘global knowledge bank’. The Bank has gone to considerable effort to improve and decentralize its knowledge management, aiming to increase sensitivity and responsiveness. Critical scholars argue that the Bank continues to be run by small…
The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective
Mirowski explores neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. He presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy.
Transnational discourse coalitions and monetary policy: Argentina and the limited powers of the ‘Washington Consensus’
Why, in the era of neoliberalism, Argentinean monetary policymakers rejected the kind of flexible monetary exchange rates recommended by the ‘Washington Consensus’ remains a puzzle. The literature has mainly contrasted external and internal factors of influence and constraints to explain the country's peculiar road to neoliberalism. In this paper, discourse coalition theory is developed further to more fully capture the transnational configuratio…
Think tanks in America
Thomas Medvetz has added another volume to the impressive library on US think tanks. Unlike previous authors, who are political scientists or historians by training, Medvetz is a sociologist. He ha
Think tank networks and the knowledge–interest nexus: The case of climate change
An increasing complexity and heavy reliance on research in the formulation of public policy is the backdrop to the ongoing politicization of science. Issues and problems around the accessibility, credibility, legitimacy and accountability of expertise are greatly aggravated in supranational policy arenas. While antidemocratic dangers have traditionally been emphasized with regard to technocratic policy-making, such dangers coexist with the perils…
The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, With a New Preface
Liberalism and the Welfare State
The welfare state has, over the past 40 years, come under increasing attack from liberals who consider comprehensive welfare provision inimical to liberalism. Yet many of the architects of the post–World War II welfare states were liberals. Taking as examples three cases not often considered together—Britain, Germany, and Japan—this volume investigates the thinking of liberal economists about welfare. The first part explores the early history of …
The Initiative for a New Social-Market Economy and the Transformation of the German Welfare Regime after Unification: Economists and Arguments for the Welfare State
This chapter focuses on how business interests and neoliberal ideas have come together in Germany during the past two decades. It is based on a detailed analysis of the INSM, a large-scale campaign founded and funded by the metal industry employers’ association Gesamtmetall in 2000 to shape public opinion. Since its origination, the INSM has launched a systematic attack on the German welfare state. As part of a business-led public relations campa…
Landscapes of Unrest: Herbert Giersch and the Origins of Neoliberal Economic Geography
This article bridges the gap between the intellectual history and critical geography of neoliberalism through a study of the overlooked figure of the German economist Herbert Giersch. As a public economist and director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from 1969 to 1989, Giersch blended German traditions of location theory with liberal globalism to lay the foundation of a neoliberal economic geography. We show the origins of globalism a…
Saving the dangerous idea: Austerity think tank networks in the European Union
Austerity has become a key term in economic and social policy debates. Although austerity has been contested both in terms of economic theory and policy-making, it has been remarkably resilient. This resilience has been explained, for example, in structural and institutional terms by the rise of the ‘debt state’. Other explanations have emphasised the strength of austerity ideas rooted in ‘ordo-liberal’ economic theory. Following the insights of …
Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture
Critical policy studies and the politics of authoritarian neoliberalism
Critical policy studies and the politics of authoritarian neoliberalism." Critical Policy Studies, 13(1), pp. 1–2
Continuidade e variedade do neoliberalismo: Reconsiderando maré rosa na América Latina
In this article we critically engage with the term and concept of "post-neoliberalism", delineate different meanings in the literature and arrive at the conclusion that the term leaves more questions open than it answers. We therefore draw on literature that investigates the departure from (or persistence) of neoliberalism on a careful study of social power relations, i.e. Barry Cannon`s work on the rise of the right in Latin America. In taking h…
Markedsliggørelsens markedsføring - Neoliberale ekspert-, rådgivnings og lobbynetværker
This article takes stock of the current literature on neoliberalism and discusses its conceptual benefits, challenges, and avenues for further research. In particular, the article focuses on the transnational network around the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) and its activities in marketing the marketization of formerly non-market spheres. Rather than taking for granted pre-existing shared norms, interests, and principled beliefs, this focus helps us …
The Economic State and the Ordoliberal Critique of Keynesianism: Anti-economic state or just a different type of economic state?
Keynesianism and Ordoliberalism differ with regard to labour markets and collective bargaining in particular. Contrary to Foucault’s claims, however, Walter Eucken conditionally supported Wilhelm Lautenbach’s proto-Keynesian proposal to use public investment to overcome economic stagnation in the early 1930s. And the late 1960s witnessed a pragmatic realignment of modern (Keynesian) macroeconomics and Ordoliberal objectives advanced by economists…
Whither Energiewende Strategies to manufacture uncertainty and unknowing to redirect Germany's renewable energy law
Germany's Renewable Energy Act of 2000 has been subject to several reforms. Feed-in tariffs for renewables originally provided a stable environment for investment. The strongly increasing market share of renewables threatened incumbent electricity producers and led to legal and regulatory challenges. The mandated feed-in tariff eventually has been replaced by auctioning in 2014, breaking the momentum of decentralised electricity production from r…
Market Civilizations: Neoliberals East and South
Reluctant transformers or reconsidering opposition to climate change mitigation? German think tanks between environmentalism and neoliberalism
Germany is known as a leader in energy transition, but the country keeps falling short of meeting stated objectives. While attention has been high on climate change related policy leadership, the competing domestic alliances in the field of energy transition have received scant attention. In Germany, the strong momentum of the conversion to renewable energy has been stalled in the second half of the 2010s. Enabled by an increasing weight of neoli…
Opposition “strategy mobility” – a dimension still missing in the critical policy mobility literature
Critical policy mobility research has transformed the field of policy transfer and diffusion studies. Scholars from critical epistemological traditions in different disciplines such as geography, sociology, political economy and public policy have examined the politics of policy transfer for more than a decade. Apart from challenging the affirmative normative assumptions underlying traditional policy transfer research ("policy learning"), scholar…
Challenging energy transition and green jobs: Climate Policy Obstruction Across Borders
Critical policy mobility literature still does not usually account for transnational opposition dedicated to push back against policy transfer. To address this gap, we examine the case of policy instruments and discourses in support of energy transition and green jobs. In the 2000s, countries such as Spain, Germany, and Denmark adopted policies to fund renewable energy expansion. The success of feed-in-tariff and other policies served as an examp…
Think tank output as media input: A Case Study of Transnational Climate Obstructionism
Transnational networks of neoliberal think tanks have invested time and resources in creating cross-country strategy mobility to oppose climate action. Building on strategy mobility research directed against renewable energy policy, we ask how think tank studies circulate in media outlets both within and across borders, and what role the media plays in the effort to shape the energy transition. We examine the role of a US-based think tank, the In…
After Neoliberalism? Interregnum, Polycrisis and the Principle of Expansive Democratisation
In this paper, we contribute to the debate on the end of neoliberalism and on possible alternatives to the latter. We start by clarifying the relationship between neoliberalism, globalisation and the state as well as between neoliberalism, "populism", and far-right conservatism. We argue that, despite important political-economic changes, we are still in an "interregnum", whereby neoliberalism is increasingly challenged and dysfunctional but stil…
Political science (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Economics (13 works) · Law (9 works) · Public Administration (6 works) · Hegemony (5 works) · Neoliberalism (international relations (5 works)