Critically examine the neo-liberal theory of the State.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 market-centred theory → not abolition but rollback of welfare → state as facilitator of markets
Route 2 revival of 19th-c liberalism → rose late 1970s against welfare-state crisis → “market fundamentalism”
individual + market primacy → Hayek (The Road to Serfdom: planning → lost liberty; social justice a mirage) → Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia: minimal night-watchman, redistribution illegitimate) → programme (privatisation, deregulation, free trade, austerity) → Thatcher’s TINA → Thatcherism / Reaganism / LPG 1991 / Washington Consensus
Polanyi (markets need the state to exist) → 2008 crisis → inequality / wealth concentration → Stiglitz “failed ideology”
Route 1 minimal state utopian → market rests on state enforcement → not state vs market but what kind of state
Route 2 social-liberal synthesis (Rawls / Sen / Dworkin) → private growth + state capacity + civil-society accountability
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
Also asked on this head
Theories of the State — 9 questions in the Vault.
- What is the Marxist and liberal approach towards the state? On what grounds are the theoretical differences between them premised? Explain.
- Comment on the pluralist theory of the state in about 150 words.
- Examine the liberal theory of the State in contemporary politics.
How this is taught
The same flow snapshot, built for every head of the syllabus, with the answer written in class.
The first session of Foundation 2027 is published in full.
Six programmes across three levels.