The 21st-century world is a fundamentally interdependent place. Globalization has expanded, intensified, and accelerated social relations across world-time and world-space. The digital revolution has served as a catalyst for the creation of sprawling information and communication networks that enmesh individuals, states, and businesses alike. Transnational terrorist cells capable of acting anywhere have targeted symbols of secular power and prompted Western political leaders to declare a ‘global war on terror’. Global climate change and global pandemics have become a frightening reality, forcing countries to work out a common strategy aimed at preventing a catastrophe of planetary proportions. The bursting of the US housing bubble has triggered a global financial crisis that has wiped out trillions of dollars of assets worldwide and pushed the international community to the brink of yet another Great Depression. Triumphalist voices who once saw the collapse of Soviet communism as the ‘end of history’ and the beginning of the unchallenged rule of American-style free-market capitalism have been silenced as the new century has remained an ideological battlefield where all kinds of competing political ideologies vie for the hearts and minds of a global audience.

Anchored in the principles of the free-market economics, "neoliberalism" has been associated with such different political leaders as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Augusto Pinochet, and Junichiro Koizumi. In its heyday during the late 1990s, neoliberalism emerged as the world's dominant economic paradigm, stretching from the Anglo-American heartlands of capitalism to the former communist bloc all the way to the developing regions of the global South. Today, however, neoliberalism has been discredited as the global economy, built on its principles, has been shaken to its core by the worst financial calamity since the 1930s. Is neoliberalism doomed or will it regain its former status? Will the new U.S. President Barack Obama embrace or reject the neoliberal agenda of his predecessors in the White House? And how will his decision impact the current global economic order? Is there a viable alternative to neoliberalism? Exploring the origins, core claims, and various forms of neoliberalism, this Very Short Introduction offers a concise and accessible introduction to one of the most debated "isms" of our time.