Austerity without Neoliberals: Reappraising the Sinuous History of a Powerful State Technology

Abstract:Since the 1980s, austerity has become synonymous with neoliberal “free” markets and the retreat of the state. With case studies from early Stalinist Russia, interwar corporatist Portugal, and late socialist Romania, we offer an alternative historical geography of austerity in the twentieth century. Significantly, we argue that austerity was not a corollary of neoliberalism but fulfilled the crucial functions of state-building, state transformation, and state maintenance in systems falling outside the liberal framework. The regimes under study resorted to austerity to drive deep structural change, expand state capacity, and pursue utopian promises of future-oriented progress and national independence. Focusing on places on the margins of the global capitalist economy, we uncover often-overlooked tool kits—both theoretical and technical—that state officials used to implement austerity. Collectively, we show how austerity is, at its core, a technology of the state and a mode of governance, widely adopted across political ideologies and economic systems in the past century.