Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-lfk5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-13T18:00:09.679Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neoliberalism in law and society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2026

Justin L. Sola
Justin L. Sola*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and School of Data Science and Society, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
*
Email: jlsola@unc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Neoliberalism, once an economic doctrine responding to the failures of liberalism, has become a widely used concept in sociolegal scholarship. Law and society scholars often invoke it to explain sociolegal and punitive phenomena such as mass incarceration, inequality, and state transformation. But the concept’s analytic power is undermined when scholars conflate neoliberalism as a sociohistorical process with neoliberalism as a universal cause. Drawing on an intellectual history of neoliberalism’s evolving meanings, I identify two problems – ubiquity and a lack of counterfactual imagination – that limit its theoretical utility in sociolegal research. I argue that neoliberalism should be theorized as a contingent, sociohistorical process; only then can it function as a theory with meaningful consequents.

Keywords

neoliberalismcounterfactualsoperationalizationscope conditionspolitical economy

Information

Type
Article
Information
Law & Society Review , First View , pp. 1 - 33
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abbott, Kenneth W., Levi-Faur, David and Snidal, Duncan. 2017. “Theorizing Regulatory Intermediaries: The RIT Model.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 670: 14–35. doi:10.1177/0002716216688272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abel, Richard L. 2010. “Law and Society: Project and Practice.” Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 6 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102209-152851.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anzia, Sarah F. 2025. “Business, Labor, and Local Government.” Paper presented at the George Rabinowitz Seminar Series, American Politics Research Group (APRG), University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Bailey, N A. 1965. The Colombian “Black Hand”: A Case Study of Neoliberalism in Latin America. Rev Pol, 27 (4): 445–464. doi:10.1017/S0034670500005726CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballakrishnen, Swethaa S. 2021. Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility among India’s Professional Elite. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 1992 [1986]. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 2001. “Interview with Ulrich Beck.” J. of Consumer Culture 1 (2): 261–77. doi:10.1177/146954050100100209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1968. “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach.” J. of Political Economy 76 (2): 169–217. doi:10.1086/259394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1976. The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226217062.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1997. “What Latin America Owes to the ‘Chicago Boys.’” Hoover Institution. Retrieved February 28 , 2022.Google Scholar
Berman, Paul Schiff 2012. Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law beyond Borders. Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139028615CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berrey, Ellen. 2015. The Enigma of Diversity: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226246376.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besbris, Max and Khan, Shamus. 2017. “Less Theory. More Description.” Sociological Theory 35 (2): 147–53. doi:10.1177/0735275117709776.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blumer, Herbert. 1954. “What Is Wrong with Social Theory?” American Sociological Review 19 (1): 3–10. doi:10.2307/2088165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, Taylor C. and Gans-Morse, Jordan. 2009. “Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan.” Studies in Comparative International Development 44 (2): 137–61. doi:10.1007/s12116-009-9040-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogen, James and Woodward, James. 1988. “Saving the Phenomena.” The Philosophical Rev. 97 (3): 303–52. doi:10.2307/2185445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre Trans. by Loïc Wacquant & Samar Farage. 1994. “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.” Sociological Theory 12 (1): 1–18. doi:10.2307/202032.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braithwaite, John. 2008. Regulatory Capitalism: How It Works, Ideas for Making It Work Better. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.10.4337/9781848441262CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandariz, J A. 2023. I González Sánchez, Neoliberalismo y castigo. Punishment & Society, 25 (4): 1138–1140. doi:10.1177/14624745221078999CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronfenbrenner, Martin. 1955. “Two Concepts of Economic Freedom.” Ethics 65 (3): 157–70. doi:10.1086/290998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronner, Stephen Eric. 1980. “The Socialist Project: In Memory of Rudi Dutschke.” Social Research 47 (1): 11–35.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2019. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burgin, Angus. 2012. The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cahill, Damien, Cooper, Melinda, Konings, Martijn and Primrose, David. 2018. The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: SAGE Publications.10.4135/9781526416001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cao, Yang. 2024. “The Cultural Consequences of Market Transition: An Empirical Examination of Rising Materialism in Twenty-First-Century China.” American Sociological Rev. 89 (3): 449–87. doi:10.1177/00031224241240497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Jennifer D. 2014. “States, Subjects and Sovereign Power: Lessons from Global Gun Cultures.” Theoretical Criminology 18 (3): 335–53. doi:10.1177/1362480613508424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrington, Kerry, Hogg, Russell, Scott, John, Sozzo, Máximo and Walters, Reece. 2019. Southern Criminology. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Centeno, Miguel A. and Cohen, Joseph N.. 2012. “The Arc of Neoliberalism.” Annual Rev. of Sociology 38 (1): 317–40. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarivate. 2024. “Social Science Citation Index.” Web of Science Group. Retrieved September 16 , 2024.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jean L. 1983. “Rethinking Social Movements.” Berkeley J. of Sociology 28: 97–113.Google Scholar
Collier, Stephen. 2005. “The Spatial Forms and Social Norms of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’: Toward a Substantive Analytics.” Working Paper.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall. 1979. The Credential Society: A Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John. 1986. “Christianity and Colonialism in South Africa.” American Ethnologist 13 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1525/ae.1986.13.1.02a00010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L.. 2000. “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming.” Public Culture 12 (2): 291–343. doi:10.1215/08992363-12-2-291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011. “The Rights of Noncitizens in the United States.” Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 7 (1): 289–308. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102510-105525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowley, Ronald W. 1969. “A Comment on Professor Macpherson’s Interpretation of Friedman’s ‘Capitalism and Freedom.’” Canadian J. of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 2 (2): 256–61. doi:10.1017/S0008423900024926.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darian-Smith, Eve. 2015. “Global Studies—The Handmaiden of Neoliberalism?” Globalizations 12 (2): 164–68. doi:10.1080/14747731.2014.954775.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Robert William and Khlevnyuk, Oleg. 2002. “Stakhanovism and the Soviet Economy.” Europe-Asia Studies 54 (6): 867–903. doi:10.1080/0966813022000008447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denord, François. 2001. “Aux Origines Du Néo-Libéralisme En France Louis Rougier et Le Colloque Walter Lippmann de 1938.” Le Mouvement Social 195: 9–34. doi:10.3917/lms.195.0009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dezalay, Yves and Garth, Bryant. 1995. “Merchants of Law as Moral Entrepreneurs: Constructing International Justice from the Competition for Transnational Business Disputes.” Law & Society Rev. 29 (1): 27–64. doi:10.2307/3054053.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dezalay, Yves and Garth, Bryant G.. 2002. The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duckett, Jane. 2020. “Neoliberalism, Authoritarian Politics and Social Policy in China.” Development and Change 51 (2): 523–39. doi:10.1111/dech.12568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erie, Matthew S. 2021. “Chinese Law and Development.” Harvard International Law J. 62 (1): 67.Google Scholar
Ermakoff, Ivan. 2017. “Shadow Plays: Theory’s Perennial Challenges.” Sociological Theory 35 (2): 128–37. doi:10.1177/0735275117709774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feenan, Dermot. 2013. “Exploring the ‘Socio’ of Socio-Legal Studies.” In Exploring the ‘Socio’ of Socio-Legal Studies, Palgrave Macmillan Socio-Legal Studies, edited by Feenan, Dermot, 3–19. London: Macmillan Education UK.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2010. “The Uses of Neoliberalism.” Antipode 41 (s1): 166–84. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00721.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandes, April D., Cadigan, Michele, Edwards, Frank and Harris, Alexes. 2019. “Monetary Sanctions: A Review of Revenue Generation, Legal Challenges, and Reform.” Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 15 (1): 397–413. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101518-042816.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernandez, Luis A. 2019. “Presidential Address: Abolitionist Approaches to Social Problems.” Social Problems 66 (3): 321–31. doi:10.1093/socpro/spz012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fligstein, Neil and McAdam, Doug. 2015. A Theory of Fields. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fonseca, David S. 2018. “Reimagining the Sociology of Punishment through the Global-South: Postcolonial Social Control and Modernization Discontents.” Punishment & Society 20 (1): 54–72. doi:10.1177/1462474517740888.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Burchell, Graham and Davidson, Arnold, edited by London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.Google Scholar
Fourcade‐Gourinchas, Marion and Babb, Sarah L.. 2002. “The Rebirth of the Liberal Creed: Paths to Neoliberalism in Four Countries.” American J. of Sociology 108 (3): 533–79. doi:10.1086/367922.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 2017. “From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump—and Beyond.” American Affairs J. I (4): 46–64.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 2019. The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond. London; New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Freese, Jeremy and Peterson, David. 2017. “Replication in Social Science.” Annual Rev. of Sociology 43 (1): 147–65. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Brittany and Pattillo, Mary. 2019. “Statutory Inequality: The Logics of Monetary Sanctions in State Law.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation J. of the Social Sciences 5 (1): 174–96. doi:10.7758/RSF.2019.5.1.08.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frost, L and Schaaf, S D. 2024. Citizenship in the shadow of law: identifying the origins, effects, and operation of legal ambiguity in Jordan. Law soc. rev., 58 (4): 573–606. doi:10.1017/lsr.2024.39CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, Marc. 1974. “Why the ‘Haves’ Come out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change.” Law & Society Rev. 9 (1): 95–160. doi:10.2307/3053023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland, David. 1990. Punishment and Modern Society. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226922508.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland, David. 1996. “The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society.” The British J. of Criminology 36 (4): 445–71. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a014105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland, David. 2001. The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226190174.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glinavos, Ioannis. 2008. “Neoliberal Law: Unintended Consequences of Market-Friendly Law Reforms.” Third World Quarterly 29 (6): 1087–99. doi:10.1080/01436590802201055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gong, Neil. 2019. “Between Tolerant Containment and Concerted Constraint: Managing Madness for the City and the Privileged Family.” American Sociological Rev. 84 (4): 664–89. doi:10.1177/0003122419859533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gong, Neil. 2025. Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gusterson, Hugh. 1997. “Studying Up Revisited.” Political and Legal Anthropology Rev. 20 (1): 114–19. doi:10.1525/pol.1997.20.1.114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. A. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” The American Economic Rev. 35 (4): 519–30.Google Scholar
Hessler, Julie. 2000. “Cultured trade: the Stalinist turn towards consumerism.” Stalinism: New Directions Fitzpatrick, Sheila 182–209 London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Heyer, Katharina, Rubin, Ashley and Talesh, Shauhin. 2025. “From the Editors.” Law & Society Rev. 59 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1017/lsr.2025.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillyard, P. 2007. Law’s Empire: Socio‐legal Empirical Research in the Twenty‐first Century. Journal of Law and Society, 34 (2): 266–279. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6478.2007.00391.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holzmeyer, C. 2009. Human Rights in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization: The Alien Tort Claims Act and Grassroots Mobilization in Doe v. Unocal. Law Soc Rev, 43 (2): 271–304. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5893.2009.00373.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, A. 1985. The Ideology of Law: Advances and Problems in Recent Applications of the Concept of Ideology to the Analysis of Law. Law Soc Rev, 19 (1): 11–37. doi:10.2307/3053393CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Jeffrey C. 2019. “Beyond Trump? A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Call for a New Left Hegemony.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 45 (9–10): 1157–69. doi:10.1177/0191453719872293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Paul and Steger, Manfred B.. 2014. “A Genealogy of ‘Globalization’: The Career of a Concept.” Globalizations 11 (4): 417–34. doi:10.1080/14747731.2014.951186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenness, Valerie. 2004. “Explaining Criminalization: From Demography and Status Politics to Globalization and Modernization.” Annual Rev. of Sociology 30 (1): 147–71. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.30.012703.110515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaidi, Wu and Talhelm, Thomas. 2024. “Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile: A Review of How Collectivistic Cultures Compete More Than Individualistic Cultures.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Competition, edited by Garcia, S. M., Tor, A. and Elliot, A. J.. New York: Oxford University Press 611–642.Google Scholar
Karp, Aaron. 2018. Estimating Global Civilian-Held Firearms Numbers. Geneva, Switzerland: Small Arms Survey.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2007. “Neoliberalism Reified: Suzhi Discourse and Tropes of Neoliberalism in the People’s Republic of China.” J. of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (2): 383–400. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00432.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, Gabriela, Fernandes, April and Friedman, Brittany. 2020. “Who Pays for the Welfare State? Austerity Politics and the Origin of Pay-to-Stay Fees as Revenue Generation.” Sociological Perspectives 63 (6): 921–38. doi:10.1177/0731121420967037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lageson, Sarah E., Webster, Elizabeth and Sandoval, Juan R.. 2021. “Digitizing and Disclosing Personal Data: The Proliferation of State Criminal Records on the Internet.” Law & Social Inquiry 46 (3): 635–65. doi:10.1017/lsi.2020.37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lara‐Millán, Armando. 2021. Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780197507896.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lascoumes, Pierre and Galès, Patrick Le. 2007. “Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through Its Instruments—From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation.” Governance 20 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0491.2007.00342.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lempert, R. 2013. Growing Up in Law and Society: The Pulls of Policy and Methods. Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 9 (1): 1–32. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102612-134032CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lepage, Henri. 1977. “The ‘New Economists’: A Scientific and Ideological Revolution.” Diogenes 25 (100): 218–35. doi:10.1177/039219217702510012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi Faur, David and Starobin, Shana. 2014. “Transnational Politics and Policy: From Two-Way to Three-Way Interactions.” Jerusalem Papers in Regulation and Governance Paper No. 62 (February 2014).Google Scholar
Levi-Faur, David. 2005. “The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598 (1): 12–32. doi:10.1177/0002716204272371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liazos, Alexander. 1972. “The Poverty of the Sociology of Deviance: Nuts, Sluts, and Preverts.” Social Problems 20 (1): 103–20. doi:10.2307/799504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lippmann, Walter. 1937. The Good Society. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Lundberg, Ian, Johnson, Rebecca and Stewart, Brandon M.. 2021. “What Is Your Estimand? Defining the Target Quantity Connects Statistical Evidence to Theory.” American Sociological Rev. 86 (3): 532–65. doi:10.1177/00031224211004187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macpherson, Crawford Broug. 1969. “Interpretation vs. Criticism: A Rejoinder to Professor Crowley.” Canadian J. of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 2 (3): 356–58. doi:10.1017/S0008423900025117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Majone, Giandomenico. 1997. “From the Positive to the Regulatory State: Causes and Consequences of Changes in the Mode of Governance.” J. of Public Policy 17 (2): 139–67. doi:10.1017/S0143814X00003524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maldonado-Denis, Manuel. 1966. “Ideologies and Attitudes Among the Spanish-Speaking Intelligentsia in the Caribbean.” Social Research 33 (4): 593–610.Google Scholar
McKenzie, Richard B. 1978. “On the Methodological Boundaries of Economic Analysis.” J. of Economic Issues 12 (3): 627–45. doi:10.1080/00213624.1978.11503557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 1988. “Legal Pluralism.” Law & Society Rev. 22 (5): 869–96. doi:10.2307/3053638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert King. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. 3rd (Enlarged) ed. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Miller, A. S. 1960. The Corporation as a Private Government in the World Community. Virginia Law Review, 46 (8): 1539. doi:10.2307/1070994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirowski, Philip and Plehwe, Dieter, eds. 2009. The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674054264CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mokhtari, Mitra. 2024. “Markers of Entanglement: Survival Strategies within the Neoliberal University and the Promise of Carceral Futures.” Punishment & Society 26 (1): 128–46. doi:10.1177/14624745231189242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mokhtari, Mitra. 2025. “‘Who Better to Be Training Them?!’: Renewed Moments of Liberal Carceral Expansion and the Role of Higher Education.” The British J. of Criminology. (online first). 10.1093/bjc/azaf020.10.1093/bjc/azaf020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mongardini, Claudio. 1980. “Ideological Change and Neoliberalism.” International Political Science Rev./Revue Internationale de Science Politique 1 (3): 309–22. doi:10.1177/019251218000100304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrill, Calvin and Mayo, Kelsey. 2015. “Charting the ‘Classics’ in Law and Society.” In The Handbook of Law and Society, 18–36. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.10.1002/9781118701430.ch2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muller, Christopher and Roehrkasse, Alexander F.. 2025. “Falling Racial Inequality and Rising Educational Inequality in US Prison Admissions for Drug, Violent, and Property Crimes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122 (4): e2418077122. doi:10.1073/pnas.2418077122.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muñiz, Ana. 2020. “Secondary Ensnarement: Surveillance Systems in the Service of Punitive Immigration Enforcement.” Punishment & Society 22 (4): 461–82. doi:10.1177/1462474519900325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1972. “Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained From Studying Up.” In Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Hymes, Dell H., 284–311. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Ogus, A. I. 1989. Law and Spontaneous Order: Hayek’s Contribution to Legal Theory. Journal of Law and Society, 16 (4), 393. doi:10.2307/1410327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Pat. 2009. “Risk, Crime and Prudentialism Revisited.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. ID 1492477. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.Google Scholar
O’Malley, Pat. 2011. “Politicizing the Case for Fines.” Criminology & Public Policy 10 (3): 547–53. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00736.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Pat. 2014. “Prisons, Neoliberalism and Neoliberal States: Reading Loïc Wacquant and Prisons of Poverty.” Thesis Eleven 122 (1): 89–96. doi:10.1177/0725513614530068.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Omori, Marisa, Shamserad, Faraneh and Boessen, Adam. 2025. “The local context of racial inequalities in mass (de)carceration.” Paper presented at the 80th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Washington, DC, November 12 2025.Google Scholar
Österblom, Henrik and Folke, Carl. 2015. “Globalization, Marine Regime Shifts and the Soviet Union.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 370 (1659). doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osterhammel, Jürgen and Petersson, Niels P.. 2005. Globalization: A Short History. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400824328CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otte, Richard. 1987. “Indeterminism, Counterfactuals, and Causation.” Philosophy of Science 54 (1): 45–62. doi:10.1086/289352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Emily, Schut, Rebecca Anna and Boen, Courtney. 2025. “The Promise and Limits of Inclusive Public Policy: Federal Safety Net Clinics and Immigrant Access to Health Care in the U.S.” Social Forces 103 (3): 992–1017. doi:10.1093/sf/soae111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peck, Jamie and Tickell, Adam. 2012. “Apparitions of Neoliberalism: Revisiting ‘Jungle Law Breaks Out.’” Area 44 (2): 245–49. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2012.01091.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment. Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. 2nd ed. London; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 1987. “The Law and Economics Movement.” The American Economic Rev. 77 (2): 1–13.Google Scholar
Randall, Amy E. 2000. “‘Revolutionary Bolshevik Work’: Stakhanovism in Retail Trade.” The Russian Rev. 59 (3): 425–41. doi:10.1111/0036-0341.00131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reagan, Ronald. January 20 1981. “Inaugural Address.”Google Scholar
Richland, Justin B. 2009. “On Neoliberalism and Other Social Diseases: The 2008 Sociocultural Anthropology Year in Review.” American Anthropologist 111 (2): 170–76. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01110.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riles, Annelise. 2011. Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226719344.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel. 2018. “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Neoliberalism.’” Dissent Magazine.10.1353/dss.2018.0010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodrik, Dani. 2017. “The Fatal Flaw of Neoliberalism: It’s Bad Economics.” The Guardian, November 14 .Google Scholar
Rogers, Joel. 1987. ““Another Brief for Business” edited by R. Neely.” Law & Society Rev. 21 (5): 753–63. doi:10.1017/S0023921600028024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohlfing, Ingo and Zuber, Christina Isabel. 2019. “Check Your Truth Conditions! Clarifying the Relationship between Theories of Causation and Social Science Methods for Causal Inference.” Sociological Methods & Research 50 (4).Google Scholar
Rubin, Ashley T. 2025. “Normativity is Not a Replacement for Theory.” Theory and Society 54 (5): 795–850. doi:10.1007/s11186-025-09633-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Ashley T. and Shalaby, Alena K.. 2025. “Stagnated, on the Verge of Breakthrough, or Both? The State of Big Theories of Legal Phenomena.” Law & Social Inquiry 50 (3): 791–822.10.1017/lsi.2025.26CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruggiero, Vincenzo and Vass, Antony A.. 1992. “Heroin Use and the Formal Economy: Illicit Drugs and Licit Economies in Italy.” The British J. of Criminology 32 (3): 273–91. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a048218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sánchez, Ignacio González. 2021. Neoliberalismo Y Castigo. Barcelona: Bellaterra Edicions.Google Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni. 1970. “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics.” American Political Science Rev. 64 (4): 1033–53. doi:10.2307/1958356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savelsberg, Joachim J., Halliday, Terence, Liu, Sida, Morrill, Calvin, Seron, Carroll and Silbey, Susan. 2016. “Discussion Law & Society Review at Fifty: A Debate on the Future of Publishing by the Law & Society Association.” Law & Society Rev. 50 (4): 1017–36. doi:10.1111/lasr.12246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Jeff. 2001. Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Schoon, Eric W. 2022. “Operationalizing Legitimacy.” American Sociological Rev. 87 (3): 478–503. doi:10.1177/00031224221081379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Seim, Josh. 2020. Bandage, Sort, and Hustle. Oakland, California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip, Philippe Nonet and Howard M. Vollmer. 1969. Law, Society, and Industrial Justice. Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Silbey, Susan S. 2005. “After Legal Consciousness.” Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 1 (1): 323–68. doi:10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.1.041604.115938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Jonathan. 2007. Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195181081.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Jonathan. 2010a. “Consuming Obsessions: Housing, Homicide, and Mass Incarceration since 1950.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1: 165–204.Google Scholar
Simon, Jonathan. 2010b. “Do These Prisons Make Me Look Fat? Moderating the USA’s Consumption of Punishment.” Theoretical Criminology 14 (3): 257–72. doi:10.1177/1362480610373073.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sola, Justin Lucas. 2021. “Transmitting Desire: An Experiment on a Novel Measure of Gun Desirability in a Pandemic.” Sociological Perspectives 64 (5): 939–69. doi:10.1177/07311214211007179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solecki, Jan J. 1979. “A Review of the U.S.S.R. Fishing Industry.” Ocean Management 5 (2): 97–123. doi:10.1016/0302-184X(79)90024-6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sozzo, Máximo. 2019. “Beyond the Image of an Epochal Change? Thinking about Penality in Contemporary Societies across the Global North and South.” American Society of Criminology Annual Conference 2019: San Francisco.Google Scholar
Sparavigna, Amelia C. and Marazzato, R.. 2015. “Using Google Ngram Viewer for Scientific Referencing and History of Science.” ArXiv:1512.01364 [Cs].Google Scholar
Springer, Simon, Birch, Kean and MacLeavy, Julie, eds. 2016. The Handbook of Neoliberalism. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
St‐Pierre, Pascale Cornut. 2019. “Investigating Legal Consciousness through the Technical Work of Elite Lawyers: A Case Study on Tax Avoidance.” Law & Society Rev. 53 (2): 323–52. doi:10.1111/lasr.12397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suchman, Mark C. 1995. “Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches.” The Academy of Management Rev. 20 (3): 571–610. doi:10.2307/258788.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suddaby, Roy, Bitektine, Alex and Haack, Patrick. 2017. “Legitimacy.” Academy of Management Annals 11 (1): 451–78. doi:10.5465/annals.2015.0101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, John R. 2001. Law/Society: Origins, Interactions, and Change. SAGE Publications, Inc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sykes, Bryan L., Ballard, Meghan, Giuffre, Andrea, Goodsell, Rebecca, Kaiser, Daniela, Mata, Vicente Celestino and Sola, Justin L.. 2022. “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Public Assistance, Monetary Sanctions, and Financial Double-Dealing in America.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation J. of the Social Sciences 8 (1): 148–78. doi:10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.07.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talesh, S. A. 2009. The Privatization of Public Legal Rights: How Manufacturers Construct the Meaning of Consumer Law. Law Soc Rev, 43 (3): 527–562. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5893.2009.00381.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talesh, Shauhin and Pélisse, Jérôme. 2019. “How Legal Intermediaries Facilitate or Inhibit Social Change.” In Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, edited by Sarat, Austin, 111–45. Vol. 79. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited.10.1108/S1059-433720190000079007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teubner, Gunther. 1983. “Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law.” Law & Society Rev. 17 (2): 239–85. doi:10.2307/3053348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, Patricia H., Ocasio, William and Lounsbury, Michael. 2012. The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199601936.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valdés, Juan Gabriel. 2008. Pinochet’s Economists: The Chicago School of Economics in Chile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana. 2010. “Specters of Foucault in Law and Society Scholarship.” Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 6 (1): 45–59. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102209-152951.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Venugopal, Rajesh. 2015. “Neoliberalism as Concept.” Economy and Society 44 (2): 165–87. doi:10.1080/03085147.2015.1013356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loic. 2002. “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration.” New Left Rev. 13: 41–60. doi:10.64590/kge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2012a. “The Punitive Regulation of Poverty in the Neoliberal Age.” Criminal Justice Matters 89 (1): 38–40. doi:10.1080/09627251.2012.721980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2012b. “Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism.” Social Anthropology 20 (1): 66–79. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.2011.00189.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2014. “The Global Firestorm of Law and Order: On Punishment and Neoliberalism.” Thesis Eleven 122 (1): 72–88. doi:10.1177/0725513614536136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, John P. and Seidelman, James E.. 2019. “The Last Gasp of Neoliberalism.” J. of Economic Issues 53 (2): 363–69. doi:10.1080/00213624.2019.1594512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max. 1946. “.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by New York: Oxford University Press Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. W..Google Scholar
Wiley, Norbert. 1967. “America’s Unique Class Politics: The Interplay of the Labor, Credit and Commodity Markets.” American Sociological Rev. 32 (4): 529–41. doi:10.2307/2091022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, William Julius. 2012. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. 2nd ed. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226924656.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, William Julius. 2014. “Marginality, Ethnicity and Penality: A Response to Loïc Wacquant.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (10): 1712–18. doi:10.1080/01419870.2014.931985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolley, John T. 1982. “Monetarists and the Politics of Monetary Policy.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 459: 148–60. doi:10.1177/0002716282459001012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xenakis, Sappho and Cheliotis, Leonidas K.. 2019. “Whither Neoliberal Penality? The Past, Present and Future of Imprisonment in the US.” Punishment & Society 21 (2): 187–206. doi:10.1177/1462474517751911.CrossRefGoogle Scholar