| Summary: | Konings successfully mobilizes social theory to demonstrate how various
post-Marxist, Polanyian, and Foucauldian analyses fail to make sense of
financialization and neoliberal governance as persistent societal formations. In
their place he offers an analysis focused on the logic of ‘leverage’, which he
sees as a source of not only private gain but also governmental power. I fully
endorse Konings' turn to social theory, and in particular to the work of Niklas
Luhmann. But I suggest that, since Konings leaves out Luhmann's broader theory
of society, he can neither capture the tight couplings between the economy and
politics presupposed in neoliberal governance, nor contextualize this governance
as a ‘provincial’, US-centred project.
|
|---|