LATIN AMERICAN NEOPOPULISM

This article assesses recent counter-intuitive arguments that political populism and economic liberalism have had unexpected affinities in contemporary Latin America. In this line of reasoning populist tactics have furthered the enactment of drastic market reform, while neoliberal attacks on established political and economic interests have strengthened the hand of personalistic, plebiscitarian leaders. I defend these arguments against critical claims that neoliberalism is by nature exclusionary and therefore unpopular, foreclosing any opportunity for populist politics. Contrary to these claims, neoliberal neopopulism has significant inclusionary features as well. Undeniably, however, the postulated affinities were especially strong during the initial, bold phase of market reform, when neoliberalism offered a politically promising recipe for quickly confronting acute economic crises and thus proving the charisma of populist leaders. As stabilisation succeeds and crises ease, the main task turns from imposing bold reforms to reliably administering the institutional rules of the new development model. Personalistic plebiscitarian leaders are less well suited to this task and the alliance between neoliberal experts and neopopulist leaders therefore tends to weaken. Yet external and internal constraints make stark deviations from market-orientated economic policies unlikely, and deep economic crises and neopopulist experiences have weakened the organisational infrastructure of democracy in many countries, allowing for the rise of new personalistic plebiscitarian leaders. In the foreseeable future, neoliberalism and neopopulism are therefore likely to co-exist with considerable frequency in the region.     

“Neoliberalism,Class, Gender and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender and Queer Politics in Poland”

While the growth of visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) political struggles in Poland, and illiberal neo-populist reactions to the queer presence in public space and the public sphere since 2004 has spawned much academic debate, there has been less critical discussion of LGBTQ politics in relation to class and neoliberalism. This article seeks to make two key contributions to understandings of the relationships between gender, sexuality and political economy. The first is recognition of the tensions and contradictions inherent within practices of neoliberalisation. It is suggested that neoliberalism can be both generative and hostile towards LGBTQ politics. Processes of neoliberalisation produce queer winners and losers, and it is suggested that if sexually progressive alternatives to neoliberalism are to be developed, they need to recognise the tensions and contradictions inherent within processes of neoliberalism. In so doing, the class dimensions of neoliberal sexualities need to be made visible and examined critically. Secondly, it is argued that discussions of classed sexualities are often framed within specific national contexts, and thereby fail to recognise the transnational dimensions of classed sexualities. Discussions of the sexual politics of neoliberalism are often grounded in Anglo-American contexts and sometimes fail to recognise how neoliberal sexualities are framed outside of the West. These two key objectives are addressed by an examination of the economic and class dimensions of contemporary LGBTQ political struggles in Poland—specifically the organisation of marches for equality and tolerance within Polish cities since 2001.     

Neopopulism and neoliberalism in Latin America: Unexpected affinities

Why have political populism and economic liberalism coexisted under Presidents Menem in Argentina, Collor in Brazil, and Fujimori in Peru? In order to elucidate this surprising convergence, which established conceptions of populism did not expect, this article stresses some underlying affinities between neoliberalism and the new version of populism emerging in the 1980s. Both neopopulism and neoliberalism seek to win mass support primarily from unorganized people in the informal sector, while marginalizing autonomous organizations of better-off strata and attacking the “political class.” They both apply a top-down, state-centered strategy of wielding political power. Finally, neoliberal efforts to combat Latin America’s deep economic crisis yield some benefits for poorer sectors, to which neopopulist leaders appeal, while imposing especially high costs on many of the better-off opponents of neopopulism.     

Economic faith,Social project and a misreading of African society: the travails of neoliberalism in Africa

This article is interested in the nature of the neoliberal project's expansion in Africa. The starting point for this exploration is a need to reflect on how the concept of neoliberalism is defined, especially the way it signals an economic doctrine which can only be realised as a broader sociopolitical project. The article goes on to show how, inasmuch as neoliberalism has consolidated itself in African states, it has done so by expanding its boundaries from macroeconomic fundamentals into broader concerns of state reconstruction. Most profoundly the full realisation of neoliberal social transition relies on expectations about the way societies behave. Here neoliberal approaches reveal themselves as nothing so much as faith statements, or convictions about the market-like sociability of African communities. The article ends by reflecting on more historical and structuralist approaches to the way markets have evolved within societies, concluding with an entreaty to ‘bring accumulation back in’ as a way of understanding markets and their developmental possibilities.     

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.     

Promoting neoliberal ideology in Finnish rural community development: the creation of new moral actors

ABSTRACT

Today’s political ambitions are based on the neoliberal aspiration to diminish the state’s role and responsibilities, and to transfer those responsibilities to local communities and individuals in ways that idealise those communities, promising to ‘give power to the people’. Instead of highlighting individualism, neoliberalism now celebrates communities and participation. This article deals with the effects of this ideology with regard to Finnish rural policy objectives. Drawing on Finnish village action programmes as data, we argue that these ideological views aim to transform individuals and create new moral actors. Our research indicates that Finland’s rural policy objectives invoke actors that are responsible for their communities, have an ‘enterprising spirit’, and are change-friendly and innovative. However, the ideology disregards the economic and social preconditions and resources necessary for building affluent communities and villages, which are difficult to attain when there is less government involvement. Thus, rural communities face increasing demands and less government involvement.     

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.     

The politics of neoliberal economic reform in South America, 1980–1994

What political conditions facilitate market-oriented reform? Prior research suggests that neoliberal policies are inherently unpopular, politically hazardous, and consequently dependent upon the existence of strong and relative autonomous governments. This study reassesses the political costs and benefits of market-oriented reform and attempts to offer insights for future theory building by exploring five hypotheses on the basis of the post-1980 South American experience. The findings suggest that the political obstacles to reform have been exaggerated and theoretically misspecified. Neoliberal policies are less the product of the triumph of technocratic expertise over political calculus than of the structure of political incentives and opportunities created by broader sets of factors, including economic circumstances, structural conditions, pluralist pressures, institutional constraints, and international linkages.     

Globalization, Neoliberalism and the Exercise of Human Agency

Globalization as a development model is generally now regarded as the sine qua non for development policy with little room for alternative theorising on capitalist development. Neoliberalism, as the supporting ideology of globalization, inflates the social significance of the market and mystifies human relations. It therefore, gives a distorted view of reality, how people are living and their agential capacity to improve their lives. Critical to human agency is it the way it is exercised—does it reduce inequality or does it exacerbate inequality? How is this human agency exercised by different groups of people? The paper provides a discussion on the relationship between neoliberal ideology, globalization and the exercise of human agency. It examines the social reality of globalization and neoliberalism and how this affects the agential capacity of human beings to direct their development, as individuals, communities and as nations.     

Who Are the Neoliberals in Central and Eastern Europe? Assessing Public Support for Neoliberalism in 11 New EU Member States

Abstract

Which groups in Central and Eastern Europe are more likely to support neoliberal ideas? This article uses quantitative evidence from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Life in Transition surveys (2010 and 2016) in order to sketch the contours of public support for neoliberalism in the 11 new member states of the European Union. First, cross-country differences in economic attitudes are not very large. Second, consistent differences can be located within a single country. Neoliberal attitudes are more likely among business owners and people with a university education. The potential foundations for resistance to neoliberalism can also be located: churchgoers, for instance, are much more likely to be sceptical of neoliberalism.     

Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin America’s neoliberal era

Social inequalities have deepened in Latin America over the past several decades, yet an erosion of class cleavages has occurred in the political arena. During the era of import-substitution industrialization (ISI), “stratified” cleavage structures based on class distinctions emerged in a subset of Latin American countries where party systems were reconfigured by the rise of a mass-based, labor-mobilizing party. These nations typically experienced more severe economic crises during the transition from ISI to neoliberalism than nations that retained elitist party systems with “segmented,” cross-class cleavage structures. They also experienced greater political upheaval, as neoliberal critical junctures produced an erosion of stratified cleavages along their structural, organizational, and cultural dimensions in the labor-mobilizing cases, while leaving the segmented cleavages of elitist systems relatively unscathed. The Latin American experience differs from that of Europe, where strong labor movements and labor-backed parties were associated with superior economic performance during periods of economic adjustment. It also challenges Duverger's notion of an organizational “contagion from the Left,” as the dramatic weakening of labor movements and the shift away from mass-based party organizations have caused party systems to converge on elitist organizational models during the neoliberal era.     

From protectionism towards neoliberalism: Ecuador across four administrations (1981–1996)

Ecuador since 1980 illustrates many features of Latin America’s neoliberal transsition. Ecuador shifted from a state-oriented development model and towards a neoliberal approach across four ideologically-diverse administrations. Although the four presidents implemented reforms inconsistently, they have reoriented the country’s development strategy towards neoliberalism. Four contextual factors explain this sustained transition: (1) financial problems, (2) global ideological factors, (3) a perceived lack of alternatives, and (4) weakness of popular opposition. These factors are mutually reinforcing and each need not bear directly on each decision for neoliberal reforms to be chosen. Their combined force sustains the neoliberal transition despite considerable negative social and economic effects. [There is a] change in ideas, a change in reality, an ideological change produced in the world… that discredits socialism, that discredits statism, that discredits interventionism that discredits formal economic planning, and as a consequence liquidates the Latin American model of economic growth, which while not socialist, has had many of [socialism’s] elements. And [this change] legitimizes the conservative revolution of Reagan and Thatcher, and legitimizes another economic model that is based on market force —Osvaldo Hurtado, Ecuadoran President 1981–1984, founder of the left-of-center Democracia Popular party, and founding member of Socialist International; speaking in 1994     

Subnational Economic Nationalism? The contradictory effects of decentralization in Peru

Across the third world, transnational corporations (TNCs) and subnational governments (SNGs) are coming into new forms of contact as a result of liberalization and decentralization. Despite scholarly expectations that subnational governments will respond by seeking out foreign direct investment, in much of Latin America these governments are confronting rather than courting transnational corporations. Conceptualizing this phenomenon as ‘subnational economic nationalism’, the article explores both how subnational governments are challenging neoliberalism and why these challenges often fail to subvert neoliberal outcomes. By examining two struggles against transnational capital that had different outcomes but that took place within a single subnational jurisdiction (Arequipa, Peru), the article argues that decentralization can work at cross purposes. While voters are increasingly demanding that elected subnational officials adopt nationalist positions vis-à-vis TNCs, these same officials often seek financial support from TNCs so that they can compete successfully in the subnational elections that have been introduced by political decentralization.     

Corrupt Intermediaries in Post-Socialist Russia: Mutations of Economic Institutions

Using the example of intermediaries in business–state relations, this essay addresses the evolution of corruption in Russia which has been facilitated by the introduction of a neoliberal system of market relations. Based on empirical studies of small and medium-sized enterprises in Russia, the essay demonstrates how intermediaries (which are also present in Western market economies and serve the function of reducing firms' transaction costs) have adapted to the local system in order to serve as providers of both legal and illegal (corrupt) services. Disputing the pervasive claim that neoliberalism and corruption are mutually exclusive phenomena, we argue that in ‘incoherent’ democracies like Russia, where properly functioning democratic institutions and a developed civil society are lacking, neoliberalism has led to the expansion of corruption.     

The Militarization of Urban Marginality: Lessons from the Brazilian Metropolis

This article examines the workings and effects of the penalization of poverty in urban Brazil at century's turn to uncover the deep logic of punitive containment as state strategy for the management of dispossessed and dishonored populations in the polarizing city in the age of triumphant neoliberalism. It shows how ramifying criminal violence (fed by extreme inequality and mass poverty), class and color discrimination in judicial processing, unchecked police brutality, and the catastrophic condition and chaotic operation of the carceral system combine to make the aggressive deployment of the penal apparatus in Brazil a surefire recipe for further disorder and disrespect for the law at the bottom of the urban hierarchy and steers the country into an institutional impasse. The policy of punitive containment pursued by political elites as a complement to the deregulation of the economy in the 1990s leads from the penalization to the militarization of urban marginality, under which residents of the declining favelas are treated as virtual enemies of the nation, tenuous trust in public institutions is undermined, and the spiral of violence accelerated. Brazil thus serves as a historical revelator of the full consequences of the penal disposal of the human detritus of a society swamped by social and physical insecurity. Drawing parallels between penal activity in the Brazilian and the U.S. metropolis further reveals that the neighborhoods of urban relegation wherein the marginal and stigmatized fractions of the postindustrial working class concentrate are the prime targets and proving ground upon which the neoliberal penal state is concretely being assembled, tried, and tested. Their study is therefore of urgent interest to analysts of international politics and state power at the dawn of the twenty-first century.     

New Public Management and Administrative Reforms in Nigeria

This study examines the Nigerian attempts to implement the New Public Management (NPM) reform. The paper aims at identifying the strand, the extent of progress made and the reason(s) for success/failure recorded. The author finds that the poor success story of the reform is as a result of the preference of the more attractive cost-saving neoliberal economic aspect to the more involving and demanding bureaucratic aspect, the inconsistencies in program implementation, and lack of strong political will common to adopting reform in developing countries. The article recommends that reforms require dealing with the critical challenges of institutionalization, inconsistency and legitimization.     

Hungary's punitive turn: The shift from welfare to workfare

The Hungarian post-communist welfare state was created under the neoliberal influence of international organisations while retaining lots of elements of solidarity. The growing social tensions in the mid-2000s due to a second economic crisis in the new millennium led first the left then the right wing governments to shift the post-communist welfare state into a punitive type of workfare system. The article concludes that the political populism of the mid-2000s leading to an undemocratic governance by the 2010s better explains this paradigm shift than – as many authors argue - the neoliberal influence frame.     

Globalisation masculinities,empire building and forced prostitution: a critical analysis of the gendered impact of the neoliberal economic agenda in post-invasion/occupation Iraq

Adopting a transnational feminist lens and using a political economy approach, this article addresses both the direct and indirect consequences of the 2003 war in Iraq, specifically the impact on civilian women. Pre-war security and gender relations in Iraq will be compared with the situation post-invasion/occupation. The article examines the globalised processes of capitalism, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism and their impact on the political, social and economic infrastructure in Iraq. Particular attention will be paid to illicit and informal economies: coping, combat and criminal. The 2003 Iraq war was fought using masculinities of empire, post-colonialism and neoliberalism. Using the example of forced prostitution, the article will argue that these globalisation masculinities – specifically the privatisation agenda of the West and its illegal economic occupation – have resulted in women either being forced into the illicit (coping) economy as a means of survival, or trafficked for sexual slavery by profit-seeking criminal networks who exploit the informal economy in a post-invasion/occupation Iraq.     

Structural change and neoliberalism in Mexico: 'Passive revolution' in the global political economy

This article examines an enduring context of 'passive revolution' in the making of modern Mexico by developing an account of the rise of neoliberalism during a period of structural change since the 1970s. It does so by analysing and understanding both the unfolding accumulation strategy and the hegemonic project of neoliberalism in Mexico since the 1970s as emblematic of the survival and reorganisation of capitalism through a period of state crisis. This is recognised as a strategy of 'passive revolution', the effects of which still leave an imprint on present development initiatives in Mexico. Therefore, through the notion of 'passive revolution', the article not only focuses on the recent past circumstances, but also on the present unfolding consequences, of neoliberal capitalist development in Mexico. This approach also leaves open the question of 'anti-passive revolution' strategies of resistance to neoliberalism.