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In the entries in this series I am writing about my current readings on left writings relating to neoliberalism in Canada.

William Carroll and Murray Shaw’s essay “Consolidating Policy Neoliberal Bloc in Canada, 1976 to 1996”¹ interrogates the activism of five prominent organizations that led, and continue to lead, the “consolidation of neoliberal hegemony in Canadian public policy”(195). These five organizations are the Conference Board of Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Business Coalition on National Issues, the Fraser Institute, and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. Carroll and Shaw outline political and policy backgrounds of these five organizations, with a focus on the contexts that gave rise to each organization, and on the particular niche role that each organization plays in advancing neoliberal policy. For example, the Fraser Institute functions to create more legitimacy for far-right views by publishing a lot of material and disseminating it widely; the C.D. Howe Institute, in contrast, has an image of more academic rigour and functions as a mainstream legitimator of the economic principles of neoliberalism (fiscal responsibility, international competitiveness, etc.). In the final section of the paper, Carroll and Shaw, both sociologists, undertake to map the connections in the “corporate policy network,” particularly the instances of interlocking directorships between the five main policy activist groups and leading corporations. This is reminiscent of Ryerson’s analysis in ___, but with a focus on connections to neoliberal policy leaders. The study is also situated within a Gramscian framework, which the authors describe on pp 196-197, specifically outlining “four concepts which converge on a view of neoliberalism as a political and cultural accomplishment: a hegemonic accomplishment” (196).

1. Carroll, William and Murray Shaw. “Consolidating a Neoliberal Policy Bloc in Canada, 1976 to 1996.” Canadian Public Policy 27, no. 2 (2001). [↩]