Neoliberalism and the Opportunodemic

Abstract

It would be far too unkind to suggest that academics and journalists have presented the COVID-19 pandemic in isolation from its broader economic context. However, it would be less unkind to suggest that its location in a triptych of major crises – the Great Financial Crash and its subsequent neoliberal austerity programmes, climate change, and the imminent deglobalisation signaled by the Ukraine-Russia conflict –could do with a little more clarity and accuracy. I want to make a small contribution to that emerging clarity by focusing on a specific interface between the pandemic, economic thinking and the role of the nation-state.