Neoliberalism in southern Europe: The ideological correlates of social structure and institutions in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece

The specific empirical questions that lie at the heart of the study correspond to three interrelated but distinct thematic axes. The first deals with the ideology of neoliberalism itself and the broad empirical question concerning its suggested status of present-day 'hegemonic' ideology. The second one investigates the explanatory and predictive power of socioeconomic factors (mostly associated with concepts that can be found in various forms of class analyses) vis-a-vis questions pertaining to ideological trends. The third and last thematic axis refers to the examination of the diffusion of neoliberal ideas within European societies, with a special focus on the countries of southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece).;The overall framework of the dissertation constitutes a synthesis of themes and propositions derived from the critical theory literature with more empirically oriented social scientific approaches. The methodological design incorporates both quantitative and qualitative techniques with the goal to create and use empirical indicators that evaluate the validity of theoretical propositions that are rarely empirically tested (e.g. the formative effects of institutional discourses). The findings of the study reveal, among other things, that there are surprisingly low levels of support for neoliberal ideas across Europe, that differences between northern and southern Europe also exist at the ideological level, and that the concept of 'class' when adjusted appropriately continues to be a very useful tool for predicting ideological dispositions.