This article explores a possible link between ‘neo-democratic’ states (the subject of a recent book by the author) and the underlying politico-economic ideology of our post-1989 world, neo-liberalism. Taking the United Kingdom and the United States as examples, it argues that the shift in our way of looking at the world that neo-liberalism represents involves a forsaking of many of the assumptions of the social democratic polity of the 20th century. However, this is not a leap into an unknown future so much as it is a return to a particular past. In the threatened transition to fully fledged neo-liberalism, ‘neo-democracy’ fulfils a useful role as mask that hides from us the great political, ethical and legal changes entailed in such a move.