From democratic socialism to neoliberalism: the metamorphoses of the people's national party in Jamaica

Why are leftist parties in government abandoning their state-led, redistributive economic development models in favor of market-determined neoliberal ones? Conventional explanations emphasize conditionality of international financial institutiosn. This argument, though, fails to account for differences in economic policy choices across countries or within a country over time. Analyzing the social democratic People's National Party of Jamaica during two periods when it accepted IMF-mandated neoliberal economic reform measures (1977–80 and 1989-present), an alternative approach is presented to illuminate why and how leftist governments switch economic policy programs. The two time periods show that IMF conditionality might be a necessary motivation for the adoption of neoliberal economic measures, but it is not sufficient motivation. I argue that the actual policies the PNP governments employed reflect changes in the relative influence of competing factions within the party. This approach, focusing on domestic actors rather than international ones to account for economic policy shifts, highlights the ways in which politicians can manipulate institutional rules to change the relative weight of different factions within the party to gain support for policy decisions that contradict the party's traditional social democratic ideology.     

Jordan: Model Reformer Without Upgrading?

Jordan has been praised as one of the best reformers among middle-income countries. Renewed growth during recent years has raised expectations that the reforms are finally bearing fruit. This article argues that growth in Jordan is not based on structural transformation and is not sustainable in the absence of firm-level upgrading. Growth has been driven by the expansion of non-tradable activities, while the country has not been able to modify its production structure or achieve noticeable productivity improvements under neoliberal policies. Higher value added and technology-intensive production has not evolved concomitantly with the development of social capabilities, impeding the emergence of a virtuous cycle leading towards economy-wide upgrading. Uneven development of social capabilities has also constrained the upgrading potential. The macroeconomic context has not been conducive to generating incentives for investment aiming at enhancing firm-level capabilities and promoting economic diversification. Upgrading will not take place spontaneously by the free functioning of market forces alone, and in its absence Jordan will not be able to confront the middle-income trap. This requires a more active state intervention, beyond building a business friendly environment, which in turn demands the development of institutional capabilities The Jordanian experience offers important insights for other small countries that have embraced the neoliberal recipe for development.     

Global inequality: Bringing politics back in

Data on contemporary global inequality are dramatic, widely known and a new conventional backdrop. In research and policy economists lead the way and the emphasis is on global poverty rather than inequality. Within nations poverty is a challenge, while inequality is not; on a world scale, arguably it is the other way round. The international policy focus on poverty alleviation coexists with neoliberal policies that widen inequality domestically and internationally. A strategic question is where the data depart from the conventional wisdom. Thus a general assumption is that inequality within countries is largest in poor countries; the widest inequality, however, is found within the USA and UK. The conventional assumption is that neoliberal policies and free trade lift all tides; those countries and periods, however, where this policy has been most consistently implemented show the steepest increase in inequality. Global inequality helps sustain domestic privilege. The belief that the risks that global inequality poses can be contained in the global margins is contradicted by the cross-border effects of environmental degradation, migration, transnational crime and terrorism. In explaining global inequality, economic accounts ignore inequal relations of power. The combined policies of developmental discipline, global integration, and marginalisation and containment may be viewed as part of a single process of hierarchical integration, which has turbulence built in.     

Governing International Migration through Partnership

Partnerships in international migration governance promise a cooperative approach between countries of origin, transit and destination. The literature has generally conceptualised migration partnerships as a policy instrument. This article suggests that understanding the broader transformations taking place in international migration governance under the rubric of partnership demands a novel analysis. Using a governmentality perspective, I interpret migration partnerships as an instance of neoliberal rule. Focusing on the convergence of international migration governance between the international realm and the European and North American region in particular, I demonstrate that the partnership approach frames international migration governance so as to enlist governments, migrants and particular experts in governing international migration, and invokes specific technologies of neoliberal governing which contribute to producing responsible, self-disciplined partners who can be trusted to govern themselves according to the norms established by the partnership discourse. The partnership approach is not a mere policy instrument; it goes beyond the European region and has become an essential element of the governance of international migration.     

Neoliberal restructuring and scenarios of democratic consolidation in Latin America

The “free-market” policies and neoliberal restructuring widely experienced by Latin American in recent years have contended with a wide array of economic problems, and the results have been somewhat problematic. The consequences for the process of democratic consolidation have become the subject of increasing theorizing. At the same time, certain generalizations can be advanced. These are enriched by examination of the diverse paths to neoliberal restructuring followed by different countries. This leads to elaboration of several alternative scenarios that may eventually prevail, including consideration of variations in posttransition democratic regimes in the 1990s. The policies and developments schematically discussed here support the contention that Latin America is following a developmental trajectory distinct from anything known in its past.     

Agriculture and rural out-migration in Central Asia, 1960-91

"This article seeks to analyse agrarian structure and policy in the Soviet period and discuss their effect on migration from rural to urban areas. In the case of [Soviet] Central Asia, neither the various steps to bring down labour intensity in the farm sector, nor the falling standard of living in rural areas, could bring about migration from rural to urban areas. This was because in traditional societies economic mechanisms are not effective unless they are complemented by appropriate social and cultural policies. All policies were oriented towards the state's goal of vertical integration of regions with the central economy. In Central Asia in particular this policy resulted in serious distortions in the social and economic spheres."     

From global workers to local entrepreneurs: Sri Lanka’s former global factory workers in rural Sri Lanka

Abstract

Working in Sri Lanka’s urban free trade zones (FTZs) introduces Sri Lanka’s rural women to neoliberal ways of fashioning selves, which subsequently not only shape village entrepreneurial activities but also initiate negotiations in kinship, marriage, domestic arrangements, and community relations. The knowledges and networks that they develop while at the FTZ allow former workers to connect with global production networks as subcontractors, making them part of the cascading system of subcontracting that furthers the precarity of regular FTZ work. This article explores how these former workers manipulate varied forms of capital – social, cultural and monetary – to become local entrepreneurs and community leaders, while simultaneously initiating changes in rural social hierarchies and gender norms. When neoliberal economic restructuring manifests within local contexts it results in new articulations of what it is to be an entrepreneur and what it is to be a worthy, young, married woman. Overall, the paper sheds light on the fragmented and uneven manner in which neoliberal ethos take root in rural South Asia.     

Can opposites attract? Monetary union and the social market

This article evaluates the proposition that European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) can provide a solid foundation for the establishment of a 'Social Market' version of capitalism throughout the new Euro-land, or whether their fundamental precepts are fundamentally inconsistent. An initial discussion of the elements essential to a social market is followed by an analysis of the extent to which these factors are currently identifiable, or their future development is plausible within an economic environment dominated by globalization and EMU across the EU. The article concludes by commenting upon the likely development of a social market within Euro-land within the constraints imposed by EMU, and therefore upon the strategies pursued by groups of the social democratic persuasion whose future strategy is to a large extent based upon this belief. Surviving the political consequences of neoliberal policies     

Going Underground: the political economy of the ‘left turn’ in South America

This article argues that South America’s ‘revolutionary’ left turn can be best explained by its assertion of state property over natural resource extraction. The recent history of the leftist movements in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador relates to the failures of the neoliberal reforms applied in the region decades before, hence the dismantling of core orthodox policies has been critical for them once in power. This has been possible through the expansion of state action in the economy, but mainly through the governance of hydrocarbon extraction and the control of subsoil rents. Resource extraction has been central to the political economy of Andean left-wing revolutionaries, responsible for many of their successes but also their impending challenges. This rearticulation of underground governance is linked to global transformations that give prominence to emerging economies and reinforces these countries’ position in the world economy as providers of primary commodities.     

Is social concertation a viable alternative under globalization? Reconsidering the case of Ireland

By exploring how the Irish social partnership was established and evolved, this article highlights the validity of a social concertation model, and takes a critical look at hasty attempts to identify the causes of its breakdown. The article holds that the collapse of Irish social partnership in the current economic crisis does not suggest the irrelevancy of social concertation under globalization, as neoliberals argue, nor does it confirm a predetermined path generated by the absence of supportive institutions or the structural nature of neoliberal social partnership. To the contrary, the social concertation model remains viable as an alternative to the neoliberal free market under globalization, and it can be used even in the absence of strong institutional arrangements. Contesting the accounts of neoliberals and Marxist-inspired structuralists, the article argues that social partnership has achieved a greater success in Ireland than neoliberal Britain, under similar globalization challenges. Against institutionalist accounts, it holds that social partnership was able to survive over two decades even in the absence of supportive corporatist institutions. The article's core argument is that domestic politics, rather than institutional and structural determinism, are needed to form social consensus in building and sustaining social concertation.     

New directions in welfare: rights-based social policies in post-neoliberal Latin America

What happens to the politics of welfare in the Global South when neoliberal values are questioned? How is welfare re-imagined and re-enacted when governments seek to introduce progressive change? Latin America provides an illustration and a valuable entry point to debates about ‘interruptions’ of neoliberalism and the changing nature of social policy. Drawing on examples of disability policies in Ecuador and care provision in Uruguay, we argue that there is a ‘rights turn’ in welfare provision under the left that reflects a recognition that previous welfare models left too many people out, ethically and politically, as well as efforts to embed welfare more centrally in new patterns of respect for socio-economic and identity-based human rights. Given Latin America’s recent contestation of neoliberal development as well as its history of sometimes dramatic welfare shifts, the emergence of rights-based social provision is significant not just for the region but also in relation to global struggles for more equitable governance.     

Social housing under the Workers’ Party government: an analysis of the private sector in Brazil

This article examines the patterns of government intervention in social housing in Brazil to analyse the role of the private sector in the elaboration and implementation of social housing policies during the Workers’ Party government. It draws on case study research, and I examine areas which impact on the way social housing has been implemented since 2003 to study the concentration of decision power the private construction sector has on social housing policymaking, which sets the tone of government intervention on social housing. I argue this was part of the Workers’ Party’s approach to neoliberal policies in a more moderated style, a type of intervention repeated on numerous occasions under previous administrations. This article concludes by noting the prominent role of the private sector in social housing developments.     

Gendered Morality Tales: Discourses of Gender,Labour, and Value in Globalising Asia

Across Asia, the pursuit of national and global capital accumulation has relied on flexible, feminised work forces and patriarchal models of social reproduction. These gendered patterns of production and reproduction, while central to Asia’s neoliberal ‘miracle’ economies, have also generated powerful discourses that devalue women and their work. Drawing on case studies from across the region, this paper examines the links between these globalising dynamics and provocative local depictions of Asian women as active, desiring, and immoral. These ‘gendered morality tales’ reveal the complex cultural and ideological work that sustains neoliberal models of national economic development. At the same time, these moralising narratives offer insight into the localised negotiations through which marginalised and gendered citizens confront their subordination within the region’s hierarchically ordered political economies.     

Exhaustion and Exclusion in the African Village: The Non-State Social Welfare of Informal Reciprocity in Rural Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire

This paper examines the consequences for equity of different patterns of non-state social welfare provision, specifically the informal institutions of reciprocity among families, friends, and village neighbors in rural West Africa. Based on over 18 months of fieldwork in similar regions on either side of the Ghana-Cote d’Ivoire border, this paper challenges many existing assumptions in the literature, revealing that the informal institutions of reciprocity were not only less vibrant overall, but also differed strikingly in terms of who was helping who and how in particular localities. The paper argues that the informal institutions of reciprocity were more exhausted in the Ghanaian villages and more exclusive in the Ivoirian ones. The study highlights that the informal system of non-state social welfare provided by the family, friends, and neighborhood did not simply expand to fill the functional gaps left by the neoliberal retrenchment of the state. The paper concludes that when policies are designed based on an overly romanticized image of kinship and communal reciprocity in Africa, it is the very poor that increasingly fall through the gaps of the state and non-state system of social welfare.     

Globalization: Captors and captive

Globalization studies are not really global. Rather, globalization research mainly centres on, and emanates from, the OECD countries. To begin to change the balance, it is important to pose a set of pertinent and penetrating research questions. Animated by theoretical and empirical research undertaken largely in southeast Asia, these questions call for painstaking analyses of dominant moral codes, various actors' attempts to turn the globalization scenario to advantage, cultural and political struggles to assert some control over market forces, and tensions within a framework based on neoliberal values and policies. The act of capturing establishes a hierarchy between the captor and the captive. This hierarchy is not a dichotomy, but an ordering of power and a division of labour. The captors of course seek to remain on top, and the captured attempt to ascend from the bottom of the heap. Such structural and dynamic relationships must be contextualized and, today, are integral to the epochal transformation known as globalization.     

The Aims and Methods of Liberal Education: Notes from a Nineteenth Century Pan-Africanist

Liberal education is in crisis as neoliberal logics continue to shape the purpose and practice of higher education. But despite invocations of its contemporary ‘global’ context, very few commentators engage the current crisis through the provocations of postcolonial studies. A key element of postcolonial critique draws attention to the ways in which the modern humanities and social sciences are colonially inflected traditions of knowledge production. Taking this critique as a point of departure, I aim to show that the critical response to the crisis prompted by the neoliberal agenda is inadequate in so far as there has been insufficient acknowledgement that modern liberal education wishes to suture and save a public culture that is racially exclusionary. To open up this space of inquiry, I focus on the thought and practice of Edward Blyden. Born in St Thomas, Danish West Indies, Blyden migrates to Liberia. A prolific writer and educator, Blyden delivers, in 1881, his inaugural address as President of Liberia College entitled ‘The Aims and Methods of a Liberal Education for Africans’. What lessons for the present crisis might we draw from a nineteenth century Pan-Africanist advocate of liberal education?     

What if diasporas didn't think about development?: a critical approach of the international discourse on migration and development

Abstract

This paper explores the links between migration and development emphasized by international organizations. This discourse, which encourages migrants to work at their level, toward the development of their country has become consensual. But if one looks closely, these natural links seem fragile, both in international migration policies and social experiments of migration. By studying the case of the Togolese migration, this article shows that the institutionalization of this new paradigm is weak and that the recent implementation of migration policies in Togo just seems to be an answer to the requirements of international partners. More than a real programmatic issue, the role of the diaspora in development becomes an obligatory resource in negotiations with sponsors. Then, if the discourse on development began to emerge among migrants themselves, it is not necessarily synonymous with the growth of a strong culture of transnational or diasporic commitment. Few associative structures are actually created and migration trajectories and histories are first and foremost thought of in an individual or familial frame, far from social imperatives of community development. Finally, if we analyze the more general logic of these migrations in Togo, while they seem to foster identity transformations they may primarily function as a driving force behind reproduction of social inequalities in the country of origin.     

The geopolitical economy of social policy in the Philippines: securitisation,emerging powers and multilateral policies

Recent geopolitical and economic changes have altered global social policy formation. The Bretton Woods multilateral development agencies (MDAs) have selectively incorporated ideas emerging from developing country states and decision makers, with a recent increased acceptance of social transfers as part of renewed efforts at poverty alleviation based on social risk management. There has been an instance in the use and promotion of conditional cash transfer (CCT) policies by MDAs. CCTs were a product of the emergence of a neo-structuralist welfare regime (understood as an ideal type) in Latin America – an attempt to reconcile neoliberal strategies of development with aspirations for guaranteed minimum incomes. The Bretton Woods and regional development bank MDAs have facilitated the adoption of CCTs in other developing countries, including the Phillipines. Here, a combination of actions by national political actors and MDAs has resulted in the implementation of a securitised and compliance-focused version of CCTs derived from the Colombian security state. Although poor Philippine households welcome income assistance, CCTs have acted to enforce further state monitoring without altering the national-based political and economic processes that replicate poverty.     

Globalising Russia? The neoliberal/ nationalist two-step and the Russification of the West

This paper argues that the major ideological dynamic of the post-cold war era is the conflictive complicity of neoliberalism and various authoritarian and racist nationalisms. This is nowhere more apparent than in post-Soviet Russia. Indeed, far from being 'exceptional', contemporary Russia actually provides an exemplary instance of where the neoliberal road to the market is really taking a great number of countries - in the first instance, the debt-ridden countries of the so-called 'Third World'. But perhaps the lessons of Russia's experience extend somewhat further. Might it not be the case that, in an epoch in which IMF-style 'structural adjustment' policies are extended to all and sundry, those pathologies which at first seemed the exclusive preserve of 'backward nations', are coming increasingly to install themselves in the very heartlands of the 'West'? If this describes an important aspect of the historical process today, it is a process that has an additional, often neglected, negative condition of possibility: the more-or-less comprehensive defeat of the Left world-wide: the defeat, in other words, of progressive anti-capitalist models of modernisation and development. Any viable challenge to neoliberal globalisation and racist nationalism will therefore depend, to begin with, on an accurate diagnosis of that defeat. Here the case of Russia is once again significant, above all for what Russian history dramatises, especially over the past decade, about the 'subjective factor' in political and social change. My exploration of these issues is pursued here with reference to the recent impressive account of globalisation advanced by Russian political scientist Boris Kagarlitsky. However, the mismatch in Russia between the huge scale of the recent social catastrophe and the small size of the popular protest points to what Kagarlitsky's account misses. To begin to advance an alternative to the neoliberal/nationalist two-step, to disarticulate a progressive response to neoliberal globalisation from racist nationalist responses, it will be necessary to develop a more careful relationship to another two-step, that of Marxism/'postmodern identity politics'. We can make a start in this respect by foregrounding the psychoanalytic dimension of fantasy.     

Locating black feminist resistance through diaspora and post-diaspora in Edwidge Danticat’s and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short stories

ABSTRACT

Migrating to the US is transformative in the short stories in Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak! and Chimamanda Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck. The currents of Blackness, gender and class alter their characters' experiences of the world, shaped by the global flows of migration taking place under neoliberal capitalism. This essay explores the nuanced and conflicting ways diaspora and post-diaspora spaces can facilitate Black feminist resistance in Danticat's ‘Caroline's Wedding' and Adichie's ‘Imitation'. I offer a Black feminist analysis, paying attention to the literary body as the site where tensions are dramatised. My reading of Danticat's and Adichie’s short stories leads to a progressive reconsideration of diaspora.