I am interested in most things having to do with political economy, intellectual history, history of economic thought and economic- and political history. I did my PhD in History and Civilisation at the European University Institute from 2013 to 2017, with a thesis in intellectual micro-history on early neoliberalism. It won the History of Economics Society's annual dissertation prize and was published as the book Reinventing Liberalism - The Politics, Philosophy and Economics of Early Neoliberalism (1920 - 1947) by Springer in 2020. After finishing my PhD, I wrote a monograph in Norwegian on the history of market reforms in Norway, entitled Markedsvendingen - Nyliberalismens historie i Norge (Fagbokforlaget, 2020).
I am currently employed on a project related to the role of the Norwegian state as the largest owner in publicly listed companies, and I continue to publish research on topics related to neoliberalism and the history of economic thought.
In 1980s Norway, a group committed to libertarian ideology became influential within Fremskrittspartiet. This new party became known for its opposition not only to taxation and public spending, but also to non-western immigration. The libertarians within the same party, however, advocated open borders. The libertarians were ousted from the party in 1994, but libertarianism has remained a key plank in the party’s otherwise national-conservative ideology. Crossovers and alliances between cosmopolitan libertarians and nationalistic anti-immigration groups have become commonplace, and through an analysis of the Norwegian libertarian movement, I argue that these are possible due to the idea of open borders only holding a peripheral position within libertarian ideology. The issue of open borders was given some attention in debates between libertarians and populists within FrP, but was not an important ideological concept for the intellectuals behind the libertarian journal Ideer om Frihet. The article thus argues that a commitment to what we may call cosmopolitanism does exist within libertarianism and may be used to make sense of core concepts such as individualism, freedom and markets, but is nonetheless expendable for most libertarians, as they were for the Norwegian libertarians who found a home in the country’s most nativist political party.
Innset, Ola (2023)
Context and the Neoliberalism Wars
[Article in business/trade/industry journal]. Œconomia – Histoire/Epistémologie/Philosophie, 13(1), s. 101- 114. Doi: 10.4000/oeconomia.14061
Innset, Ola (2023)
Dual Argument, Double Truth: On the Continued Importance of the State in Neoliberal Thought.
It has been established that the neoliberal creed arising in the interwar and early postwar years, despite its strong rejection of economic planning, also entailed a rejection of laissez-faire liberalism. This article argues that recent attempts at construing early neoliberalism as thus being a more nuanced or moderate creed than later iterations are nonetheless flawed. The “dual argument” of early neoliberalism indicated a new approach to market liberalism in which the state was not seen as the market’s opposite but rather its precondition. This important move is obscured by the language of moderation and nuance. In place of “the radicalization thesis,” the second part of the article considers Philip Mirowski’s concept of a “double-truth doctrine” and argues that an appreciation of the state for social and economic governance is a common feature of different neoliberalisms, which nonetheless differ in their preferred policy suggestions for the use of state power.
Innset, Ola (2020)
Markedsvendingen. Nyliberalismens historie i Norge
Fagbokforlaget.
Innset, Ola (2020)
Reinventing Liberalism. The Politics, Philosophy and Economics of Early Neoliberalism (1920 - 1947)
Springer.
Innset, Ola (2024)
Tor Bjørklund i samarbeid med Axel Fjeldavli Norske partier og velgere. Valgresultatenes historiske røtter
Metahistory as Public History: On Introducing Metahistorical Perspectives in Events about Events
History: The Journal of the Historical Association, s. 392- 407. Doi: 10.1111/1468-229X.13265
This article argues that the introduction of ‘metahistorical perspectives’ can greatly enrich the practice of public history. Through the example of a series of public events about important historical events held at the National Library of Norway, it is argued that an attention to microhistory, pedagogical theory and especially William Sewell Jr.’s theory of events can be beneficial when programming events for the general public. This focus on ‘metahistorical perspectives’ in the practice of public history stands in contrast to widely held notions of public history as entailing simplifications and ‘dumbing down’ of academic knowledge.
Innset, Ola (2021)
An Army of Fighters for Freedom. The social environment of the first Mont Pélerin-Society conference
In 1944, Friedrich Hayek gave a lecture at Stanford University where he referred to the organization he was planning to set up as “an army of fighters for freedom”. This article investigates the social environment of “Hayek’s army” by looking specifically at the founding conference of the Mont-Pèlerin Society, some three years later. An exploration of this famous 10-day conference in the Swiss Alps shows that the transnational group of neoliberal thinkers was characterized by social privilege, something that contributes to contextualising their rightleaning political views. Several of the American conference attendees hailed from more modest backgrounds than their European counter parts, however, and the views on display during the conference were far from uniform. This was especially the case when discussions centred on redistribution and poverty, where, to widespread criticism, Milton Friedman presented his famous proposal for a negative income tax.
Innset, Ola (2020)
Review of Janek Wasserman’s The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019, 354 pp.
Det har blitt hevdet at Høyres økonomiske politikk i etterkrigsårene stort sett bestod i å «stabbe imot» men la seg trekke med av Arbeiderpartiets økonomiske politikk. I denne artikkelen viser vi imidlertid at Høyre aktivt støttet statseid industri i flere tilfeller, og at Høyre formulerte begrunnelser for dette i tråd med sine konservative idealer. Dette beviser dermed ikke floskelen om at «alle nordmenn er sosialdemokrater», men forteller oss isteden noe om hvordan merkelapper som «konservativ» og «sosialdemokratisk» er sterkt foranderlige. I etterkrigsårene var det høyst uklart for de fleste hva en konservativ økonomisk politikk egentlig innebar, og denne artikkelen kontrasterer og sammenligner Høyres forsøk på å definere dette med den samtidige utviklingen av nyliberalisme som et transnasjonalt politisk prosjekt. De tidlige nyliberalistene ønsket en sterk stat for å legge til rette for markedsmekanismer, noe som eksemplifiserer hvordan bildet av økonomisk politikk som en pendel mellom stat og markeder er forenklende og tidvis misvisende.
Innset, Ola (2017)
Markets, Knowledge and Human Nature: Friedrich Hayek, Karl Polanyi and Twentieth-century Debates on Modern Social Order