Book Summary: Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism

This book, written by Quinn Slobodian (Professor of International History at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies), was published by Harvard University Press in paperback on April 7, 2020 (ISBN: 9780674244849). It spans 400 pages and includes illustrations, photos, and graphs.

The book offers the first comprehensive intellectual history of neoliberal globalism. Slobodian traces the origins of neoliberal thought from the collapse of the Habsburg Empire through to the establishment of the World Trade Organization. Contrary to the common view that neoliberals simply want to “shrink the state” and eliminate regulations, he argues that key thinkers (often associated with the “Geneva School,” including figures like Wilhelm Röpke, Alexander Rüstow, Michael Heilperin, alongside Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek) aimed to redeploy government and legal institutions at a supranational level to encase and protect global capitalism from democratic pressures, national sovereignty, and populist threats.

Neoliberalism, in this account, emerged as a response to the end of empires and the rise of nation-states, seeking to create binding global rules that would insulate markets from political interference. The project profoundly shaped the modern world economy but has been challenged by the social injustices and instability it has produced.

The book has received critical acclaim, including:

• Winner of the George Louis Beer Prize (2019)
• Finalist for the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize
• Named a Marginal Revolution Book of the Year

Praise highlights it as a groundbreaking, lucid, and essential reconstruction of neoliberalism’s genealogy, correcting misconceptions and revealing its conservative roots and hostility to unchecked democracy. Reviewers such as Adam Tooze, Pankaj Mishra, and Stephen Wertheim have called it “intellectual history at its best” and “the definitive history of neoliberalism as a political project.”

Expanded Book Overview: Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

Publication Details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Original hardcover: 2018
• Paperback edition: April 7, 2020
• Pages: 400 (including 3 photos, 2 illustrations, and 2 graphs)
• Dimensions: 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches
• ISBN: 9780674244849 (paperback)

Author
Quinn Slobodian is Professor of International History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University (previously at Wellesley College). His work focuses on the history of ideas, particularly in relation to global economics, Germany, and international institutions.

Awards and Recognition

• Winner of the George Louis Beer Prize (American Historical Association, 2019)
• Finalist for the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize
• Named a Marginal Revolution Book of the Year

Core Thesis and Extended Summary
Slobodian’s book challenges the widespread caricature of neoliberalism as a doctrine aimed at dismantling the state in favor of unfettered free markets and laissez-faire economics. Instead, he argues that key neoliberal thinkers—primarily from the “Geneva School” (a lesser-known strand distinct from the more famous Chicago or Austrian schools)—sought to encase and protect global capitalism through supranational institutions, laws, and rules that would insulate markets from democratic politics, national sovereignty, and populist interventions.

The intellectual roots trace back to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire after World War I, which many of these thinkers (Austrian-born figures like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Michael Heilperin, and others) experienced firsthand. They viewed the multi-ethnic empire as a model of economic integration without full political unity—a “double government” separating cultural/political matters from economic ones. The rise of nation-states, economic nationalism, protectionism, and later decolonization threatened this vision by empowering democracies to interfere with property rights and capital flows.

Neoliberals, in Slobodian’s account, did not want to “shrink the state” but to redeploy governance at the global level: creating binding international frameworks (e.g., the European Economic Community, GATT, and eventually the WTO) that prioritized the security of private property and capital mobility over national democratic will. This “ordoglobalism” (ordered globalism) was a conservative project, often hostile to unchecked democracy, which they saw as a threat to economic order. Some figures, like Röpke, even displayed racist views, endorsing apartheid in South Africa as a way to maintain racial and economic hierarchies.

The narrative spans from the 1920s Vienna intellectual scene, through the interwar period, post-WWII reconstruction, responses to decolonization and Third World demands for a New International Economic Order, to the 1990s triumph of the WTO. Slobodian shows how these ideas succeeded in shaping the modern global economy but also generated backlash due to rising inequality, instability, and social injustice.

Key Concept: Encasement
Neoliberals aimed to “encase” the market in impermeable legal and institutional barriers, protecting it from political encroachment—like placing the global economy in a protective shell beyond the reach of voters or nations.

Table of Contents (Partial, based on available sources; full lists are limited in public previews)

• Introduction: Thinking in World Orders
  (The book is structured chronologically and thematically, with chapters covering the Habsburg legacy, interwar crises, postwar institutions, decolonization challenges, and the rise of the WTO. Exact chapter titles beyond the introduction are not fully detailed in publisher materials, but the structure follows the historical evolution of these ideas.)

Selected Praise and Reviews

• “A groundbreaking contribution…Intellectual history at its best.” —Stephen Wertheim, Foreign Affairs
• “Slobodian’s lucidly written intellectual history traces the ideas of a group of Western thinkers who sought to create, against a backdrop of anarchy, globally applicable economic rules. Their attempt, it turns out, succeeded all too well.” —Pankaj Mishra, Bloomberg Opinion
• “Fascinating, innovative…Slobodian has underlined the profound conservatism of the first generation of neoliberals and their fundamental hostility to democracy.” —Adam Tooze, Dissent
• “The definitive history of neoliberalism as a political project.” —Boston Review
• Additional acclaim from sources like The New Republic, The Guardian, and American Prospect highlights its role in correcting misconceptions and tracing neoliberalism’s anti-democratic tendencies.

This book is widely regarded as a landmark in rethinking neoliberalism, emphasizing its focus on global governance and law rather than pure deregulation. It draws on extensive archival research into lesser-known figures and networks centered in Geneva.