Globalisation, neoliberalism and the trajectories of public policy: closing (and reopening?) political possibilities

'Globalisation talk' has played a key role in constructing a new, contemporary common sense – even if many of the claims made for globalising processes are exaggerated, undertheorised, and undersupported. Propagated by economic and political elites, and institutionalised through practice, the net effect of such talk has been to close off a range of policy alternatives to neoliberal political options. This common sense and closing of policy alternatives ascribes an almost moral element to private capital. However, the recently constructed hegemony is relatively fragile and fraught with contradiction, and thus open to potential challenge. A precondition of any challenge is the recognition that, contra claims of economic determinism, there remain important spaces for political choices to be made: governments and nation-states do retain room for manoeuvre, and politics matters a great deal.