COVID-19 AND THE CASE AGAINST NEOLIBERALISM IBD

Sinopse

This book seeks to better understand the meaning and implications of the UKs calamitous encounter with the COVID-19 global pandemic for the future of British neoliberalism.Construing COVID-19 as a political pandemic and mobilising a novel applied political philosophy approach, the authors cultivate fresh intellectual resources, both analytical and normative, to better understand why the UK failed the COVID-19 test and how it might âÇÖfail forwardâÇÖ so as to strengthen its resilience. COVID-19 they argue, has intercepted the UK governmentâÇÖs decades-long experimentation with neoliberalism at what appears to be a threshold moment in this modelâÇÖs life course. Neoliberalism has served as a key progenitor of the countryâÇÖs vulnerability: the pandemic has cruelly unveiled the failings of neoliberal logics and legacies which have placed the country at elevated risk and hampered its response. The pandemic in turn has attenuated underlying systemic maladies inherent in British neoliberalism and served as a great disruptor and potential accelerant of history, a consequential episode in the tumultuous life of this politico-economic model. áTo meaningfully âÇÖbuild back betterâÇÖ, a true renaissance of social democracy is needed. Drawing upon the neorepublican tradition of political philosophy, the authors confront neoliberalismâÇÖs hegemonic but parochial áconcept of human freedom as non-interference and place the neorepublican idea of freedom as non-domination in the service of building a new UK social contract.This book will be of interest to political philosophers, political geographers, medical sociologists, public-health scholars, and epidemiologists, to stakeholders engaged in the public inquiry processes now gathering momentum globally and to architects of build back better programmes, especially in western advanced capitalist economies.