How successful is neo-liberalism in explaining why states cooperate - Essay Example

The concept of neoliberalism has been used in order to interpret the behaviour of people or states under specific conditions. It is even expanded in the area of organizational behaviour and planning. Regarding this issue, it is noticed by Bourdieu (2008, online article) that ‘the neoliberal programme draws its social power from the political and economic power of those whose interests it expresses: stockholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social-democratic politicians; high-level financial officials eager to impose policies and so on’.

Current paper focuses on the role of neoliberalism when having to explain the reasons for which states cooperate. The various aspects of neo-liberalism as a social and political concept will be analyzed in order to identify their role in the formulation of specific political behaviour with a special reference to the cooperation among states within the international community. Neoliberalism is a significant concept related with a variety of social and political fields; in the economic sector also the above concept can be effectively applied.

In this paper neoliberalism is used under its form of an important criterion for the development of strategic cooperations among states; in other words the political ‘dimension’ of neoliberalism is likely to be employed for the development of this study. However, it is necessary to refer primarily to the various aspects and forms of neoliberalism in order to justify its presence in the evaluation of specific political behaviour – cooperation – by states internationally. In this context, we could refer to the study of Kilmister (2004, online article) who noticed that ‘neo-liberal economics is based around three main elements; firstly, there is a re-conceptualisation of the role of government expenditure; state spending is explicitly seen as justified only by the need to make domestic capital more