Abstract
Neoliberalism and authoritarianism are intimately connected, as is demonstrated by the existence of a growing body of literature on ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’. This article provides a taxonomy of authoritarian neoliberalism and claims that it appears in three varieties – technocracy, populist nationalism, and traditional authoritarianism. Also, it proposes both an overview of the varieties and an analysis of three states as case studies. States are investigated as actors which strongly contribute to the neoliberal project amidst a more complex process of multilocalized and variegated neoliberalizations, which have to be incorporated into the comparative research. First, Italy is studied as a consolidated Western democracy which has been often governed by technocrats, independent, non-party professionals who have recurrently been in power since the 1990s, and within the frame of an increasingly technocratic European Union. Second, the paper concentrates on Hungary, a semi-peripheral Central European country which has become an epitome of a populist nationalism with increasingly authoritarian traits. Third, the paper focuses on Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Union republic with no significant experience of liberal democracy before independence, and a key example of the ‘traditional authoritarian’ variety. The three varieties, however, are sometimes combined and coexisting, and their evolution will be decisive for the future of capitalism and liberal democracy.
Highlights
Chicago-style economics was first adopted by Pinochet’s Chile and the neoliberalism–authoritarianism nexus has been exposed by Harvey (2007) with reference to Russia, East Asia, Africa, Mexico in the 1990s
While nationalist-neoliberal experiences are often characterized by authoritarian traits, in some cases neoliberalism has combined with traditional authoritarian regimes, giving way to the third and more autocratic variety, of which key examples are Russia and China (Harvey, 2007)
The Great Recession has not been a clear watershed, yet it triggered an intensification of the authoritarian–neoliberal nexus
Summary
The connections between neoliberalism and authoritarianism have attracted growing scholarly attention. Bruff (2012, 2014; Bruff and Tansel, 2019) has developed the concept of ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ and re-assessed the legacy of Poulantzas and Hall, who studied authoritarian tendencies in 1970s and 1980s Western capitalism. Jessop (2019) has explored such tendencies in the West; others have researched the neoliberal/authoritarian nexus in Southeast Asia (Springer, 2017), Turkey (Tansel, 2017), China (Sum, 2019) and developing countries (Fabry and Sandbeck, 2019). Giroux (2017) has documented authoritarian neoliberalism’s rise in US culture and education.An ‘authoritarian–neoliberal’ state is not a new phenomenon (Ryan, 2019). Is studied as a core European democracy with an advanced market economy; more than any other Western country, it has been often governed by technocrats (independent, non-party professionals), sometimes in combination with populist and nationalist forces.
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