Neoliberal sermons: European Christian democracy and neoliberal governmentality

Responsibilization is a central theme in the literature on neoliberal governmentality. An underexplored element therein role of Christian democracy. The single most important source for Michel Foucault’s famous lectures governmentality were writings German ordoliberals, who allied with West-German Democratic Union (CDU) and combined economic doctrine social ethics. This paper discusses similar crossover: Dutch market-oriented reforms 1980s. Appeal (CDA) defended these quite literally as strategy responsibilization, an attempt to create ‘responsible society’. While leading scholars have described economistic, individualistic anti-moralistic, here we find that reform can go hand moralistic communitarian discourse.