Rollover Neoliberalism: Extending Market Rule Beyond the Roll-Back/Roll-Out State in the Trump Era

 Rollover Neoliberalism: Extending Market Rule Beyond the Roll-Back/Roll-Out State in the Trump Era

David McKay

Abstract

This paper revisits the well-known “roll-back/roll-out” framework of neoliberalization and proposes a related extension: rollover neoliberalism. If roll-back describes the dismantling of Keynesian/social-democratic protections and roll-out describes the building of new market-conforming institutions, rollover names a later tendency: neoliberal logics spilling into domains that were not previously central battlegrounds of market rule—a kind of “map rolling” beyond its old edges. Rollover neoliberalism is not merely privatization or deregulation; it is the proliferation of market metrics, contracting, quasi-markets, risk scoring, and managerial discipline into spheres such as immigration detention, platform-mediated work, digital information ecosystems, and administrative governance itself. The paper argues that Trump-era governance—across the first term (2017–2021) and the second (2025– )—is best understood not as a clean break from neoliberalization but as a rearticulation: nationalist-populist styling paired with intensified deregulatory, fiscal, and administrative strategies consistent with “authoritarian neoliberalism.” The result is a volatile political economy in which market rule is expanded through coercive state capacities rather than through broad consent. cbo.gov+3Semantic Scholar+3Taylor & Francis Online+3

Keywords: neoliberalization; roll-back/roll-out; authoritarian neoliberalism; Trump; deregulation; administrative state; carceral state; platform capitalism

Introduction: From Roll-Back/Roll-Out to Rollover

Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell’s formulation—roll-back neoliberalism (dismantling) followed by roll-out neoliberalism (rebuilding market-friendly governance) remains one of the most useful ways to periodize neoliberal restructuring. Semantic Scholar Yet it also invites a question that has become harder to ignore since the Great Recession, the platform economy, and the normalization of “permanent crisis” politics: what do we call the phase in which neoliberal logic pushes into new institutional terrains, including those not previously imagined as “economic sectors” at all?

I propose rollover neoliberalism as a descriptive term for this tendency. The metaphor matters. Neoliberalization does not simply intensify where it already exists; it “rolls over” into adjacent spaces—governance domains, legal categories, administrative norms, information systems—bringing with it the familiar toolkit: contractualization, competition proxies, performance metrics, risk governance, austerity rationales, and marketized accountability. This does not replace roll-back or roll-out; it sits downstream from them, often feeding on their unfinished business.

This is not presented as a claim that neoliberalism is the only force shaping the present. The point is narrower: rollover neoliberalism helps name a pattern that many scholars describe piecemeal—variegation, mutation, “zombie” persistence, or authoritarian turns—while giving it a specific spatial-institutional emphasis: expansion across the boundary of what counts as “the market.” Semantic Scholar+2Semantic Scholar+2

Conceptual Anchors

Roll-back and roll-out neoliberalism

Peck and Tickell framed neoliberalism as a process that first dismantles social protections and regulatory limits (roll-back), then builds new regulatory forms that actively produce markets and discipline populations (roll-out). Semantic Scholar This is crucial: neoliberalism is not anti-state; it is statecraft oriented toward market rule.

Variegated neoliberalization and “zombie” persistence

Brenner, Peck, and Theodore emphasize that neoliberalization is geographically uneven and institutionally hybrid—“variegated” rather than uniform. Semantic Scholar Peck’s “zombie neoliberalism” adds that neoliberal ideas can persist even after their credibility is damaged, continuing to animate policy through inertia, institutional lock-in, and elite interest. Taylor & Francis Online

Authoritarian neoliberalism

Bruff’s concept of authoritarian neoliberalism highlights how neoliberal projects increasingly rely on coercive or insulated governance—legal and constitutional “hardening,” reduced democratic responsiveness, and executive power—especially after crises undermine popular consent. Taylor & Francis Online

Rollover neoliberalism fits here: when legitimacy is thin, expansion can proceed not by persuasion but through administrative redesign, executive action, and coercive capacities, while still pursuing market-conforming ends.

What “Rollover” Adds

Rollover neoliberalism is best understood as a boundary-crossing pattern with four recurring features:

  1. New domains become governable as markets (or as quasi-markets).
    Examples include schooling as “choice architecture,” health coverage as compliance systems, and climate governance as tradable regulatory instruments—often mediated by private expertise.

  2. Contracting and vendorization become default state capacity.
    The state shifts from direct provision to procurement, with accountability reframed as “performance management.”

  3. Behavior is governed through scoring, risk, and surveillance.
    Digital platforms extract behavioral data and monetize prediction; governments increasingly adopt similar logics for eligibility, enforcement, and “fraud” control. Harvard Business School+1

  4. Coercive and disciplinary arms expand alongside marketization.
    Wacquant’s “workfare/prisonfare” frame captures how punitive governance can be tightly braided with neoliberal labor and welfare restructuring. Duke University Press+1

Empirical Arenas Where “Rollover” Is Visible

The carceral–administrative nexus

In the United States, punitive governance is not just a parallel development; it frequently becomes the mechanism through which social insecurity is managed. Wacquant’s analysis of the neoliberal state highlights the coupling of restrictive welfare governance and expansive penal governance. Duke University Press+1

Under Trump’s second term, immigration detention provides an especially clear “rollover” case: detention becomes a central administrative technology for scaling deportation capacity, with rapid institutional growth and high reliance on bureaucratic throughput. The Migration Policy Institute reported a rise from roughly 39,000 detainees at the start of the second term (January 2025) to a record ~61,000 by late August 2025, with projections that capacity pressures could push far higher by early 2026. migrationpolicy.org TRAC reported 65,735 people in ICE detention as of November 30, 2025, and noted that a large share had no criminal convictions. Tra Reports

Whatever one’s normative view of these policies, analytically they illustrate rollover dynamics: governance expands through detention logistics, contracts, metrics (beds, removals), and administrative acceleration.

Platform capitalism and the marketization of daily life

The platform economy takes rollover neoliberalism into the micro-structure of everyday coordination. Srnicek’s “platform capitalism” framework describes how digital platforms reorganize markets and labor relations through data, network effects, and infrastructural control. Harvard Business School+1 Zuboff’s “surveillance capitalism” argument further describes a political economy in which behavioral data extraction becomes a core accumulation strategy, enabling prediction and influence at scale. Harvard Business School+1

The relevance here is not “tech is big,” but that market rationality expands by redefining what is measurable, tradable, and optimizable—attention, movement, emotion, compliance—often outside traditional regulatory categories.

Environmental governance as deregulation + reconfiguration

Neoliberalization in environmental policy is often framed as deregulation alone, but rollover emphasizes institutional redesign: who decides, by what procedures, with what evidentiary standards, and under what administrative constraints.

In March 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced 31 actions characterized by EPA as the “biggest”/most consequential deregulatory initiative in its history. US EPA+2Reuters+2 Reuters described the effort as targeting dozens of air and water rules and signaled attempts to reconsider foundational climate-regulatory infrastructure (including the 2009 endangerment finding). Reuters+1 This illustrates rollover not merely as “less regulation,” but as a push to redraw the legal-scientific underpinnings of entire policy domains.

Trumpism as Rollover Neoliberalism Plus an Authoritarian Turn

Trump is sometimes narrated as “anti-neoliberal” due to rhetorical attacks on trade and globalist elites. But in policy terms, much of Trump-era governance is more plausibly described as neoliberalization with a different political style and an intensified executive/administrative strategy.

First term: classic neoliberal levers

A straightforward example is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which reduced the corporate income tax rate to 21% (from 35%) and restructured large parts of the tax code. Wikipedia (This paper does not argue that tax cuts are uniquely neoliberal, but they are historically central to neoliberal fiscal strategy: weakening revenue capacity and legitimizing downstream austerity or retrenchment.)

Second term: reconciliation, welfare discipline, and administrative redesign

In 2025, Congress enacted H.R. 1 (Public Law 119-21)—widely branded as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—with CBO estimating large deficit increases over the 2025–2034 window. cbo.gov+1 CBO also produced distributional analyses indicating resource gains skewed upward in the income distribution. cbo.gov On the programmatic side, analysis of Medicaid work requirement provisions highlights the administrative-bureaucratic character of discipline: KFF describes an 80-hours-per-month requirement for certain Medicaid expansion adults under the reconciliation law. KFF Washington Post reporting around the same legislative push framed it as an expansion of work requirements across programs such as Medicaid and SNAP. The Washington Post

From a rollover lens, this is not merely “cuts” but governance through conditionality: the creation of compliance infrastructures that reorganize state–citizen relations as eligibility management.

The civil service: “Schedule Policy/Career” (formerly Schedule F)

Rollover neoliberalism often travels through administrative form. On January 20, 2025, the White House issued an executive order reinstating the prior “Schedule F” framework (renamed “Schedule Policy/Career”), aiming to reclassify certain policy-influencing positions and reshape civil service protections. The White House+1 The Federal Register published the executive order and related administrative actions. federalregister.gov+1 OPM guidance documents further describe implementation expectations. U.S. Office of Personnel Management

Even if one brackets normative judgments, the analytical point is sharp: neoliberalization can proceed through organizational capacity and personnel regime redesign, not only through “market” policy.

Discussion: Why This Framing Helps

Calling the present simply “neoliberalism” can become too blunt; calling it “post-neoliberal” can be premature. Rollover neoliberalism is a mid-level term that tries to stay honest about what changed:

  • The project persists (often “zombie-like”) even when its legitimacy is contested. Taylor & Francis Online

  • Its geography is uneven and hybrid (“variegated”), producing different mixes of coercion, concession, and marketization across regions and institutions. Semantic Scholar

  • Where consent is fragile, coercive and executive mechanisms become more central—consistent with authoritarian neoliberalism. Taylor & Francis Online+1

In short: rollover neoliberalism helps describe a governance landscape where the state is simultaneously (1) more interventionist in enforcement and administrative control, and (2) more market-conforming in the logics it uses to define success, allocate resources, and manage populations.

Conclusion

Rollover neoliberalism names a phase in which neoliberal logics expand beyond their earlier institutional territories, rolling into new governance terrains: detention systems, digital information infrastructures, eligibility regimes, and personnel systems. The Trump era—particularly the second term’s combination of deregulation initiatives, reconciliation-driven restructuring, and civil service redesign—provides concrete illustrations of how neoliberalization can intensify through executive and administrative channels rather than through broad-based consent. US EPA+2cbo.gov+2

For political geography, the implication is that “the market” is not a bounded domain but a moving boundary—produced through law, administration, and coercive capacity. Rollover neoliberalism is one way to keep that boundary in view.

References (APA style)

Brenner, N., Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2010). Variegated neoliberalization: Geographies, modalities, pathways. Global Networks, 10(2), 182–222. Semantic Scholar

Bruff, I. (2014). The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism. Rethinking Marxism, 26(1), 113–129. doi:10.1080/08935696.2013.843250 Taylor & Francis Online

Congressional Budget Office. (2025, July 21). Estimated budgetary effects of Public Law 119-21, to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14. cbo.gov

Congressional Budget Office. (2025, August 11). Distributional effects of Public Law 119-21. cbo.gov

Congress.gov. (2025). H.R. 1 (119th Congress): An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14 (Public Law 119-21). Congress.gov+1

Harvey, D. (2007). Neoliberalism as creative destruction. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 610(1), 21–44. doi:10.1177/0002716206296780 SLU Kursvärdering

Kaiser Family Foundation. (2025, July 30). A closer look at the work requirement provisions in the 2025 federal budget reconciliation law. KFF

Migration Policy Institute. (2025, October 29). U.S. immigrant detention grows to record. migrationpolicy.org

Office of Personnel Management. (2025, January 27). Guidance on implementing President Trump’s executive order titled “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce”. U.S. Office of Personnel Management

Peck, J. (2010). Zombie neoliberalism and the ambidextrous state. Geoforum, 41(2), 153–156. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.11.002 Taylor & Francis Online

Peck, J., & Tickell, A. (2002). Neoliberalizing space. Antipode, 34(3), 380–404. Semantic Scholar

Reuters. (2025, March 12). EPA moves to unwind over two dozen U.S. air, water regulations. Reuters

Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. Polity Press. Axios

TRAC Immigration. (2025). Immigration detention quick facts. Tra Reports

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2025, March 12). EPA launches biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history (Press release). US EPA

U.S. House of Representatives & U.S. Senate (via Federal Register). (2025, January 31). Executive Order 14171: Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce. federalregister.gov

U.S. White House. (2025, January 20). Restoring accountability to policy-influencing positions within the federal workforce (Presidential action). The White House

Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity. Duke University Press. Duke University Press+1

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs. Harvard Business School

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