From 2010 to 2013, legislators in Rhode Island enacted a series of neoliberal reforms to increase “business friendliness” in the state. Where economistic, electoral, organizational, and diffusion accounts fail to explain the timing and content of these reforms, I synthesize the work of Georges Sorel and Jeffrey C. Alexander to argue they were motivated by the myth of the business friendly economy. More than mere narration, this myth set before lawmakers the vision and the promise that a business friendly economy would return prosperity to the state. It prompted neoliberal legislation by integrating “business unfriendliness” into collective understandings of Rhode Island’s economic failure, defining policy reform as a moral imperative, and projecting a vision of the ends towards which reform should be oriented. This analysis contributes to cultural, economic, and political sociology by reclaiming myth as an alternative framework to assess the symbolic dimensions of political transitions, providing explanation for an otherwise puzzling case of neoliberalization, and suggesting opportunities for future research to problematize political actors’ deployment of economics in their attempts to project possible futures and shape action in the present.

中文翻译：

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商业友好型经济的神话：在商业最糟糕的状态下进行新自由主义改革

从 2010 年到 2013 年，罗德岛州的立法者实施了一系列新自由主义改革，以提高该州的“商业友好度”。在经济学家、选举、组织和传播方面的解释未能解释这些改革的时间和内容的地方，我综合了乔治·索雷尔和杰弗里·C·亚历山大的工作，论证他们受到商业友好型经济神话的推动。不仅仅是叙述，这个神话还向立法者展示了商业友好型经济将恢复国家繁荣的愿景和承诺。它通过将“商业不友好”纳入对罗德岛经济失败的集体理解中，将政策改革定义为道德要求，并投射出改革目标的愿景，从而推动了新自由主义立法。这种分析有助于文化、