Economic Expertise in Neoliberal Governance: Alberto Alesina as a Case Study

This paper investigates the relationship between academic expertise and public authority under neoliberal governance through the case of Alberto Alesina (1957–2020). Combining bibliometric and co-authorship network analysis of Scopusindexed publications with a systematic examination of Gale media sources and the editorial archives of major Italian newspapers, it compares Alesina’s academic standing with his role in public debate. The findings show that these two dimensions were only weakly aligned: while his scholarly influence was concentrated in work on culture, trust, diversity, institutions, and governance, his public authority was activated around fiscal discipline, austerity, market-oriented reform, and the critique of political discretion. This activation was not a direct consequence of his academic trajectory, but varied across political and institutional contexts, emerging in Italy at moments of policy urgency and intensifying internationally during the Eurozone crisis, when his work on ‘expansionary austerity’ was widely mobilised. Overall, the paper advances the literature on economists and neoliberal governance by showing that economists’ public authority depends not primarily on scholarly prominence, but on when and how selected elements of their work become politically useful in legitimising contested policy choices.