Abstract

The ongoing economic crisis has variously influenced the relative strength and bearing of the major systems of political beliefs and it is not yet fully clear in what shape they will come out of the turmoil. However, at first glance, relevant ideological debates have so far continued to unfold along familiar trajectories. Thus, the neoliberal diagnosis of the economic debacle and the corresponding response to it appear to mirror the claims that were repeatedly made by enthusiasts of free market capitalism in the past. Likewise, the discursive reactions to the crisis by rivals of neoliberalism do not seem entirely new. This article sheds a tentative light on the crystallizing ideological interpretations of the crisis and the extent to which the emerging schemes of coping with it are determined by conventional parameters of the established systems of political beliefs.