Smallholder Livelihood Adaptation in the Context of Neoliberal Policy Reforms: A Case of Maize Farmers in Southern Veracruz,Mexico

Governments around the world have embraced trade liberalisation as a means of enhancing efficiency to realise economic growth and alleviate poverty. Likewise, the Mexican government implemented neoliberal policy reforms, the NAFTA in particular, to stimulate sustainable development. Using the Mexican maize sector as illustration, this article describes the adaptation process of smallholders to market changes shaped by these reforms. Going beyond the aggregated level, we have investigated smallholders' livelihood strategies. Contrary to what economic models estimated, our data suggests that farmers intensified the cultivation of maize rather than switch to sectors in which Mexico has a comparative advantage.     

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     

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.     

Lessons from Georgia's neoliberal experiment: A rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats

Between 2004 and 2012, Georgia implemented one of the most comprehensive packages of neoliberal economic reforms ever. These reforms have certainly helped to spur growth, but their social effects remain under-researched. To narrow this gap, this article investigates the effects of growth on poverty in Georgia using the official household survey data. The analysis shows that contrary to popular expectations, poverty has decreased only slightly throughout this period and remains high despite a number of progressive measures adopted by a successor coalition government. These findings provide further evidence on the inappropriateness of the neoliberal model as a poverty reduction strategy.     

Postcommunist divergence: A comparative analysis of the transition to capitalism in Poland and Russia

This article critiques the dominant neoliberal transition paradigm. The implementation of neoliberal reforms in the postcommunist world has fostered the creation of two different types of capitalism. Rather than enabling a transition to Western European-style capitalism, these reforms have produced divergence within the postcommunist world. This article uses comparative firm-level case studies from Russia and Poland to construct a “neoclassical” sociological alternative to neoliberal theory that can explain this divergence. In this account, intra-dominant class structure (the pattern of alliances between the Party bureaucracy, the technocracy, and humanistic intellectuals) at the time of the transition produces different “paths to capitalism,” or policy regimes, which, in turn, have different effects on the ability of firms to restructure. In Russia, this creates a system of “patrimonial capitalism” that will produce long-term economic stagnation. In Poland, a variety of modern rational capitalism emerges. This latter system is distinguished by its very high levels of dependence on capital imports in comparison to the advanced capitalist countries. As a result, this type of economy will be quite vulnerable to economic shocks. Lawrence King is an assistant professor of sociology at Yale University. His book includeThe Basic Features of Postcommunist Capitalism in Eastern Europe (2001) andAssessing New Class Theory (with Ivan Szelenyi, forthcoming). He is currently working on a book entitledPostcommunist Capitalisms. I am grateful for a Yale Junior Faculty Research Fellowship, and the support of the Yale Center for Comparative Research, the Social Science Research Fund at Yale, and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. I would also like to thank Aleksandra Sznajder and Evgenia Gvozdeva for their invaluable research assistance, and Ivan Szelenyi, Andrew Schrank, Hannah Brueckner, Alison Pollet, and the editors and anonymous reviewers atStudies in Comparative International Development for their comments and suggestions.     

Crises,What Crises? New Evidence on the Relative Roles of Political and Economic Crises in Begetting Reforms

Crises beget reforms is a powerful hypothesis. But which type of crises – economic or political – are the main drivers of structural reforms? To answer this question, we construct measures of labour market and trade liberalisation and the two types of crises for a panel of about 100 developed and developing countries between 1960 and 2000. We find that political crises are more important determinants of structural reforms than economic crises. This finding is robust to the inclusion of interdependencies between crises, feedbacks between reforms, different estimators and various alternative measures of crises.     

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.     

Surviving the political consequences of neoliberal policies

In many countries in Latin America and also western Europe, leftist parties have succeeded in winning repeated re-election even though they have implemented neoliberal economic policies when in government. According to the existing literature, these parties should suffer electoral punishment since they are diverging from their traditional policy course and their electoral promises, and their neoliberal policies are potentially costly for their core support groups. Analysing the cases of left-of-centre parties in Spain and Costa Rica, this article argues that policy implementation strategies, together with strategic use of institutional rules, help to obfuscate the policies' impact, deflect blame, and make re-election possible. The reform of welfare and the way we live now: a critique of Giddens and the Third Way     

Divergent politico-legal responses to past presidential corruption in Zambia and Kenya: catching the ‘big fish’, or letting him off the hook?

The criticisms of globalisation and international institutions often confuse the current state of multilateralism and its asymmetrical organisation; the economic theories it uses (the ‘Washington consensus’); and the reforms it promotes, such as liberalisation. Economic stagnation, however, has many causes other than the multilateral organisations’ reforms, which may have little impact on growth. These reforms may be efficient, irrelevant or powerless vis-à-vis the other determinants of growth. The paper discusses the several determinants of growth other than policy reforms, such as countries' structural and institutional characteristics, and analyses the consequences of reforms, in particular trade liberalisation. These consequences constitute a challenge to the credibility of reforms, but may also lead to deeper thinking about the determinants of economic growth and further developmental reforms.     

Neoliberal Law: unintended consequences of market-friendly law reforms

This paper offers a critical evaluation of the interrelation of law and economics in the context of development. The paper describes the current promotion of law reform by international institutions like the World Bank as the product of neoliberal economic theory. The analysis examines the role of law historically as an expression of economic orthodoxy, arguing that the Washington Consensus has determined the shape of law reforms, pointing them to the definition and protection of private property rights, aiming to separate politics from economics. The relative failure of these policies in their application to countries emerging from communism led to the expansion of the reform agenda to include market-supporting institutions, among them the rule of law. The paper assesses the extent to which this expansion means that the role of the law and the relationship of regulation to market have changed sufficiently to denote a Post-Washington Consensus. It concludes that the use of law reform to impose what neoliberalism considers ‘rational’ solutions undermines the legitimacy of democratic institutions in developing and transitional countries.     

Overcoming apartheid's legacy: The ascendancy of neoliberalism in South Africa's anti-poverty strategy

Poverty in South Africa is intertwined with a host of social and economic issues. The burden of poverty is exacerbated by limited access to basic services, poor housing, limited employment opportunities and inadequate infrastructure, which are an outcome of the terrible legacies of apartheid. During its first year in office, the ANC-dominated government officially endorsed a policy of 'growth from redistribution', whereby a strong state and a strong market were expected to serve as vehicles for generating growth and reducing poverty and inequality. By 1996, however, the government had embraced a standard neoliberal strategy as a central piece of its anti-poverty strategy. This article examines the potential contradictions between what appears to be on the surface progressive social policy on the one hand, and on the other, the implementation of aggressive neoliberal strategies of privatisation, liberalisation and deficit reduction to stimulate the economy and create jobs. This heavy reliance on market-led solutions is a high risk strategy, since there exists no example internationally where neoliberal adjustment of the sort championed by President Thabo Mbeki and Finance Minister Trevor Manual has produced a socially progressive outcome, especially in a country like South Africa, which is marked by extreme disparity and poverty.     

Between Decisiveness and Credibility: Transforming the Securities Industry in Singapore and Thailand

This article suggests a political party-centred explanation of economic policy reforms that differs significantly from the standard theoretical models that emphasise social coalitions, government systems, regime types or electoral cycles. The explanatory approach advanced here focuses on inter-party and intra-party organisational dimensions within an integrated analytical framework as the major determinants of both the decisiveness of policy reforms and the credibility of such reforms. A comparative analysis of government efforts to transform the securities industry in Singapore and Thailand provides preliminary evidence with which to explore the proposed causal linkage between the patterns of stock market reforms and the changing configurations of political parties.     

The deep marketisation of development in Bangladesh

This article introduces the concept of ‘deep marketisation’ as a relatively new, contemporary phase of neoliberal development policy in Bangladesh. By looking into the development strategy of the country’s energy sector, the article shows how an emphasis on marketisation through public-private partnerships (PPPs) and other strategies advances a market fundamentalist agenda to strengthen the private sector and establish a world market. By drawing on interviews with development practitioners from various development organisations in Bangladesh, the article further reveals how development conceptualisations are shaped by the strategy of deep marketisation, leading to the impoverishment of development by constraining its field of actions to measures based on the primacy of economic growth and private sector-led economic development, at the same time leading to a re-legitimisation of flawed neoliberal development policies that result in further inequality, poverty and environmental degradation.     

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.     

The neoliberal discourse on corruption as a means of consent building: reflections from post-crisis Turkey

This article draws attention to the ideological role that the neoliberal discourse on corruption has fulfilled in the promotion of the second generation reforms in Southern countries since the 1997 East Asian financial crisis. This discourse is ahistoric insofar as it fails to recognise corruption as a problem of modernity; biased insofar as it associates corruption with Southern countries' historical and cultural specificities only; contradictory in terms of its counter-productive anti-corruption strategies; and politicised as it has redefined ‘corruption’ as ‘rent-seeking’. In the absence of alternative radical conceptualisations, this essentially competition-induced neoliberal orthodoxy on corruption has been easily articulated within morality-based popular concerns in domestic politics and hence acquired a hegemonic capability. The article substantiates these arguments by examining the trajectory of the neoliberal anti-corruption agenda in Turkey with a particular focus on the developments of the post-2001 financial crisis period.     

Beyond Impoverished Anti-poverty Paradigms

More subtle than the manifestations of poverty are the paradigmatic means of sustaining, deepening or lessening it. Indeed, dominant knowledge structures are insinuated in policy making and conventional anti-poverty measures, some of which reflect the poverty of the intellect. Ensconced in distinctive contexts, poverty itself is shaped by the template of neoliberal globalisation. This paradigm promises that economic gain will benefit all who are faithful to its principles. It evokes a vision not only of economic well-being but also of distributive justice, including poverty reduction. In its centrist and reformist guises, the orthodox anti-poverty paradigm may be best understood as a chain of relationships: neoliberal concepts, a preoccupation with methods for measuring results, a loathness to tackle underlying factors that generate widespread privation, gender ideology, and the delinking of economic reform and social policy. On the rise, too, is growing resistance to this consensual thinking, mainly from transnational civil society organisations and allied intellectuals. Six priorities are suggested as the basis for forming multiple, decentred paradigms to expunge poverty. The challenge is to produce homegrown knowledge structures that open to learning from other experiences.     

Psy-expertise,therapeutic culture and the politics of the personal in development

Expertise stemming from the psy disciplines is increasingly and explicitly shaping international development policy and practice. Whilst some policy makers see the use of psy expertise as a new way to reduce poverty, increase economic efficiency, and promote wellbeing, others raise concerns that psychocentric development promotes individual over structural change, pathologises poverty, and depoliticises development. This paper specifically analyses four aspects of psy knowledge used in contemporary development policy: child development/developmental psychology, behavioural economics, positive psychology, and global mental health. This analysis illuminates the co-constitutive intellectual and colonial histories of development and psy-expertise: a connection that complicates claims that development has been psychologized; the uses and coloniality of both within a neoliberal project; and the potential for psychopolitics to inform 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.