Neoinstitutionalism: Still no intellectual hegemony?

Despite its greater realism, neoinstitutionalism has not been able to rival neoliberal approaches in the minds of many public‐policy communities. This article suggests four reasons why this is the case: the way that neoliberalism appears to be rooted in the strong paradigms of neoclassical economics, the related simple appeal of marketization as a solution to policy problems, the dominance of short‐term calculation in financial markets as the apparently most successful form of economic activity, and the role of corporate actors as public‐policy insiders. It is argued that an essential solution to the problem is a rapprochement between neoinstitutionalism and neoclassical economics, which is itself not necessarily wedded to neoliberalism.     

Appropriating Nature in Crisis-ridden Greece: The Rationale of Capitalist Restructuring,Part 1

The ongoing crisis in Greece constitutes an emblematic case of repressive capitalist restructuring. In this first part of a two-paper series, we argue that public debt is used as a vehicle for furthering the neoliberal transformation of Greek society with serious implications for the appropriation of nature. We present theoretical considerations about nature in capitalism, the rationale of neoliberal capitalist restructuring, as well as the relation between nature and neoliberalism. We finally present the timeline of the Greek crisis, as well as how the three structural adjustment programs wrought a severe capitalist restructuring upon Greece.     

Another Opportunity Lost? Victorian Labor's Enactment of Sustainability, 1999–2010

‘Sustainability’ provides the dominant frame for environmental policy debate, even though there is considerable debate to as to what sustainability is, why is it needed, and how can it be progressed. From 1999 through to 2010, Victoria was governed by Australian Labor Party (ALP) led governments that, at times, actively pursued the goal of sustainable development. This culminated in the stated ambition for Victoria to be ‘world leaders in environmental sustainability debate and practice’. This paper explores the way in which sustainability was enacted by Victorian Labor while in government. The evidence indicates that the potential of Victorian Labor's vision was never realized, and that it failed to significantly reform the neoliberal policy settings it inherited.     

From Reagan to Trump: The Origins of US Neoliberal Protectionism

Donald Trump is often seen as a radical departure from the neoliberalism that has shaped recent American history and, at first glance, nowhere does this seem truer than on trade. Trump’s support for protectionism certainly seems to depart from neoliberalism, which we are used to thinking of as involving unqualified support for free trade. But should this really be seen as a departure? This paper argues that, instead, Trump’s trade policy should be seen a kind of ‘neoliberal protectionism’, which seeks to use the coercive power of the state to force other nations to conform to a market‐based economic logic. The origins of this neoliberal protectionism can be traced back to the 1980s when debates about foreign industrial policies first caused the United States to adopt a more aggressive approach to trade. From this perspective, Trump’s trade policy represents not a rejection of neoliberalism but an extreme articulation of it.     

From ‘There is No Alternative’ to ‘Maybe There are Alternatives’: five Challenges to Economic Orthodoxy after the Crash

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, politicians famously told the public and themselves that ‘there is no alternative’ to a neoliberal economic paradigm. Fast‐forward to 2019 and there is, instead, the sense that ‘maybe there are alternatives’. However, when many observers and commentators look back to the 2008 crisis, they see a general continuity with what went before. In order to gain a better understanding of this ‘interregnum’, we map five sets of ideas and practices that challenge the policies, ideas, and conventions of pre‐crash orthodoxy. In doing so, we argue that there has been a fundamental transformation in legitimate public discourse about the economy since 2008: ideas and practices that were previously unimaginable or illegitimate in mainstream economic debate are now commonplace. Although this does not represent a ‘paradigm shift’, it represents significant political change that is important to understand and interrogate on its own terms.     

The Club Rules in Global Financial Governance

Though the list of reforms following the onset of the financial crisis is long, we should resist the temptation to view the emerging regulatory framework in terms of a paradigm shift. Many key features of the system, including the privileged position of financial institutions, remain unchanged. This is not merely due to obstruction or capacity shortcomings but can be explained by considering the sources of ideas and the governance setting. Ideas and policy programmes for reform were generated by a policy community also responsible for shaping the pre‐crisis governance framework. Moreover, the ideas and preferences of these players are moulded by their transnational interactions and the club‐like mechanisms in place for determining what (and who) is to be included in discussions. These settings have produced policy programmes that helped address the immediate, ‘fast‐burning’ elements of the crisis, but have so far failed to put together a comprehensive reform programme.     

Crisis for the State or Crisis of the State?

The Conservative‐Liberal Democrat government's policy risks turning the financial crisis into a crisis of the state. This article argues that the current trajectory of the British state risks exacerbating the very social antagonisms which it has fought so hard to contain in recent years. It contends that the crisis (2007–09) was a crisis of neoliberalism and yet, paradoxically, neoliberalism—in the form of further depoliticisation and a new politics of debt—is being re‐invoked to deal with the post‐apocalyptic condition of the British economy. The article suggests that the state lacks the necessary political discourse to secure popular consent and—as a result—is resorting to a more coercive form of political management; and that the effects of austerity are being offset through an increased indebtedness of the British public. Both risk igniting social conflict. In the conclusion several points are indicated for an alternative political agenda.     

Appropriating Nature in Crisis-ridden Greece: Deepening Neoliberal Capitalism,Part 2

This is the second paper in a two-paper series in which we present how the ongoing crisis in Greece has been used to accelerate the neoliberal restructuring of Greece with serious implications for the appropriation of nature. In this paper we focus specifically on particular aspects of the austerity programs that relate to natural resources and natural conditions. We examine changes to the business environment and ongoing privatization schemes to show how the Greek austerity programs benefited private capital with significant concessions of natural resources. By discussing relevant specific cases, we concretely show how austerity programs have had far-reaching adverse consequences for the living conditions of working people and their access to natural resources.     

The European Commission and fiscal governance reform: a strategic actor?

The intensification of the financial and economic crisis in Europe has added a new impetus to the debate over the possibilities for securing supranational fiscal integration within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Since the literature on the European Union’s response to the crisis is dominated by the study of intergovernmental politics, this article considers the previously neglected role of the Commission. A framing analysis of the Commission’s crisis discourse is operationalised here, which is supplemented by interviews with senior officials located in the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) during key phases of the crisis. It is found that a supranational reform agenda was never internalised by the Commission. Instead, the Commission acted strategically by framing the crisis around intergovernmental fiscal discipline. These findings suggest that, in line with the ‘new intergovernmentalist’ thesis, supranational institutions themselves may not be as ‘hard-wired’ towards supranationalism as is often assumed.     

Proving,Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British Politics

Expressions of disaffection with politics are often connected with criticism of the ways in which contemporary politicians speak and communicate. In this article I show how political speech is in part a product of the way in which a society organises and arranges communication institutionally, technologically and aesthetically. The art of rhetoric is most fundamentally concerned with how, in the midst of political dispute and contestation, political arguments may be made persuasive through their connection with the ‘common sense’ of audiences. This process enables a people to reflect on its beliefs and values and to assess their adequacy in particular circumstances. Decline in this art may be attributed to social and technological change but also, and above all, to the dominance of ideologies hostile to the concepts of ‘common sense’ and ‘common good’, and which privilege the arts of behaviour change and choice management over those of argument, debate and persuasion.     

Duty calls but not for all: The policy involvement of cabinet ministers during crisis

During a crisis, the public expects the government to handle the situation. In parliamentary democracies, these expectations are directed to the cabinet and its ministers. Cabinet ministers are expected to be highly involved in policy making under their jurisdiction and in general. During periods of politics as usual, ministers differ in their policy involvement. This paper asks whether that changes during a crisis. Based on an analysis of cabinet ministers in Israel during the first wave of the COVID19 crisis, this paper finds that ministers’ policy involvement during a crisis is relatively low. Most ministers are little involved in issues outside their jurisdiction. Ministers less central to the crisis management are also little involved in issues under their jurisdiction. Ministers central to the crisis management are highly involved in introducing decisions on issues under their jurisdiction, but not necessarily in other aspects of policy making. These findings have implications for issues of accountability and trust.     

Austerity or welfare state transformation? Examining the impact of economic crises on social regulation in Europe

This article provides an encompassing analysis of how economic crises affect social regulation. The analysis is based on an innovative dataset that covers policy output changes in 13 European countries over a period of 34 years (1980–2013) in the areas of pensions, unemployment, and child benefits. By performing a negative binomial regression analysis, we show that economic crises do matter for social policymaking. Our main empirical finding is that crises impinge on social regulation by opening a window of opportunity that facilitates the dismantling of social policy standards. Yet crisis‐induced policy dismantling is restricted to adjustments based on existing policy instruments. We do not find significant variation in policymaking patterns across different macroeconomic conditions for the more structural elements of social policy portfolios, such as the envisaged social policy targets or the policy instruments applied. This suggests that economic crises do not lead to a profound transformation of the welfare state but to austerity.     

Fiscal Policy Learning from Crisis: Comparative Analysis of the Baltic Countries

The experience of a major crisis is often expected to lead to policy learning but the empirical evidence about this is limited. The goal of the paper is to explore comparatively whether the crisis of 2008–2010 has led to fiscal policy learning by civil servants in the three Baltic countries. Despite some differences in the crisis experience, the finance ministry officials in all three countries have identified the same lesson from the crisis: fiscal policy should be counter-cyclical and help to stabilize the economy. The paper also discusses how various factors have influenced policy learning, including the acknowledgment of failure, blame shifting, and analytical tractability.     

Topologies and topographies of Ireland's neoliberal crisis

In this paper, we explore successive waves of neoliberalization in Ireland. We contend that neoliberalization remained largely “invisible” during the Celtic Tiger because a property bubble permitted a period of debt-driven growth, but was revealed and politicized by the crisis. Mobilizing the ideas of topology and topography, we explore the relationships which unfolded between the “financialization” of the global economy and the two twin pillars of the Irish crisis narrative: property and debt. We conclude that there is a need for future studies to consider how neoliberalism, financialization and uneven development are being reshaped by geographically situated responses to the crisis.     

Cross-national convergence in times of crisis? Integration policies before,during and after the refugee crisis

This article analyses if, how and why Scandinavian integration policies converged as a result of the refugee crisis in 2015, studying policies of permanent residence, citizenship, family reunification and access to social benefits. The analysis of policy processes finds that a logic of regulatory competition led to goal convergence, as all three countries explicitly adapted their policies relative to other countries’ policies. Nonetheless, when comparing the configuration of policy instruments and their settings, the cross-national gap persists as all three countries took restrictive steps, thus showing traits of path dependency. The conclusion discusses a severe challenge in the current policy convergence debate in the integration literature: how an insufficient level of precision (1) concerning different dimensions of the policies and (2) concerning how to assess convergence could lead to inaccurate and even opposite conclusions when interpreting empirical analyses.     

Austerity and niche parties: The electoral consequences of fiscal reforms

Austerity policies — policies of sharp reductions of a government's budget deficint involving spending cuts and tax increases — are claimed to boost support for radical political parties. We argue, counter to popular claims, that austerity measures actually reduce support for radical and niche parties. Austerity policies force traditional left-right politics to the forefront of political debate with the traditional mainstream parties having a stronger ownership over those issues. We systematically explore the impact of austerity measures on the electoral fortunes of niche parties in 16 developed countries over a 35-year period, while controlling for a number of socio-economic variables. We find that austerity policies that rely on tax increases affect radical parties on the left and the right in different ways than fiscal adjustments based on spending cuts.     

The Welfare Conventions Approach: A Comparative Perspective on Social Impact Bonds

Abstract

The Social Impact Bond (SIB) is a new funding mechanism for welfare programs. It is supposed to create savings for the public sector from which private returns can be deducted. Presented as a purely technical solution, SIBs discard their political morality. The Welfare Convention Approach (WCA) is designed for studying SIBs as disputed and versatile welfare apparatuses. It is claimed that elements from diverse historical welfare conventions (the philanthropic, communitarian, civic, market, full employment, entrepreneurial, financial, and behavioral) reveal the diverse institutional conflicts and compromises of SIBs at the time they are implemented. In so doing, the WCA informs comparative research on SIBs.     

Framing PIGS: patterns of racism and neocolonialism in the Euro crisis

Van Vossole's article explores the racist framing of the peripheral member states of the European Union, the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland (and/or Italy), Greece and Spain). It demonstrates a strong connection between the processes of racialization and depoliticization, as well as the return of colonial dynamics in the Eurozone. Side-stepping political economy and history, the culturalization of politics perfectly complements the ‘post-political’ neoliberal hegemony. Political and media discourses reproduce it in both populist and corporate interests. The culturalization of politics reduces the differences between centre and periphery to certain ‘cultural characteristics and habits’, as reflected in stereotypes of laziness, non-productivity, corruption, wasteful spending and lying. These make it possible to blame the PIGS for the current crisis, legitimizing drastic austerity measures and a loss of sovereignty. The loss of sovereignty shows remarkable similarities with what Kwame Nkrumah defined as neocolonialism: the continuation of colonial power relations through processes of economic dependence, conditional aid and cultural hegemony. While this problematic only resurfaced during the recent Euro crisis, Van Vossole discusses how today's racist discourses and neocolonial politics have their roots in the past, particularly in anti-Irish and anti-Mediterranean racism and in the (semi-)colonial position of the PIGS in the British and Ottoman empires. Besides structural violence against the periphery, a major consequence of this racialization is that it jeopardizes any possibility of further democratic political integration on the basis of a common European identity.