Neoliberal Economic Model Research Articles

Flexibility Without Security and Deconstruction of Collective Bargaining: The New Paradigm of Labor Law in Greece

Greece’s accession to the financial support mechanism of the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission in May 2010 led to severe austerity measures radically affecting the whole range of labor legislation. An intense legislative activity was manifest between 2010 and 2013, aiming at a labor cost reduction and a labor rights’ restriction. The purpose of this Article is to offer a critical overview of the most crucial reforms that have taken place in the Greek labor legislation after the Memoranda and to demonstrate how they affected the foundations, the sources, the principles and the functions of the Greek labor law. The Article attempts to demonstrate that the Greek example reveals the paradigm shift in labor law that gradually expands across the Europe, consisting into the replacement of the after war humanitarian labor law model with a neoliberal economic model of market supremacy over labor rights. The Article argues that this paradigm shift is in line with the new economic governance structure at European level laying on the neoliberal dogma of deregulation, liberalization, and removal of collective regulation constraints over employment relationship.

The Special Period’s New Hombre Nuevo and the Collapse of Anti-Capitalist Space: Achy Obejas’s Ruins

ACHY Obejas's 2009 novel Ruins was published in the same year as the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and at a time when, either by necessity or by choice, Cuba seemed to teeter ever closer to embarking on significant economic reform. With the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States in 2008 and the transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul in 2006, Cuba appeared poised for a transition to a free market system that had begun as a consequence of the entrepreneurial spirit unchained during the heightened by both the slight loosening of state control of the economy and the influence of remittances and family visits by the Cuban diaspora. Much as Guillermo Cabrera Infante's 1965 novel Tres tristes tigres describes a world that is about to end, namely pre-revolutionary late 1950s Havana nightlife, Obejas's Ruins captures the spirit and malaise of Havana in the early '90s at a moment when the social achievements of the Revolution are called into question by the everyday economic hardships faced by the Cuban people. Written years after the Special Period, Ruins documents this time of transition when larger changes could be on the horizon. Set in Havana during the grim times of the Special Period, Ruins captures the desperation and creativity of the protagonist ideologue, Usnavy, named by his Cuban mother after the U.S. Navy warships coming and going from the nearby base. Usnavy tries desperately to keep his family and home in La Habana Vieja from literally and figuratively falling to pieces under the strain of economic hardship and urban decay. With the discovery of a priceless pre-revolutionary Tiffany chandelier in his home and numerous, valuable lamps in the ruins of crumbling buildings in his neighborhood, Usnavy finds a way to put food on the table by participating in Havana's black market and improvised, informal economy. By going outside of the Revolutionary system for which he had toiled for decades, Usnavy compromises his ideals and adopts capitalist behaviors in order to survive. The ideological shift experienced by the novel's protagonist reflects the sporadic and uneven reintegration of Cuba into the world capitalistic system in the final years of the Castro regimes. Unlike Fidel Castro's decades of strict adherence to an anti-capitalistic economic model, his successor and brother, Raul, has accelerated the pace of market reform and the opening of the Cuban economic system to both foreign investment and local entrepreneurship. Cuba's nascent capitalist spirit has caught the attention of the rest of the neoliberal world, as seen by the publication of a special issue of the magazine The Economist in 2012, analyzing the recent economic, social, and political changes on the island. When looking at the totality of Cuba's economic history, however, one can consider Cuba's recent reintegration into the global economic system to be both a return to previous models of economic dependency, as well as a first step in following the lead of the rest of Latin America in the embracing of neoliberal economic policy. Through a close reading of Obejas's Ruins, this paper will examine the conflict within Usnavy that pits his socialist ideals against a capitalist pragmatism that engages the neoliberal economic model. Through the protagonist, Obejas illustrates both the contradictions of everyday Cubans struggling in a period of transition and change, and the ideological compromises that supporters of the Revolution must make in order to survive. The resulting friction that Usnavy experiences within himself and with family and friends demonstrates a reluctant transformation from an hombre nuevo of the Revolution to a capitalist scavenger searching for a way to transcend material hardship among the rubble of a lost era. With its focus on the economic struggles of everyday habaneros, Obejas's Ruins represents a departure from the themes more widely examined in her previous works. …

Breaking the Bounds of Rationality: Values, Relationships, and Decision-making in Mexican Fishing Communities

In fishing communities in Baja California Sur, Mexico, fisheries management is heavily influenced by models of individual economic rationality held by biologists and others involved in management, in which fishermen 'choose' to overfish because they are motivated by selfish individual rationality. Yet there is much that is neglected by these models, including the pressures of economic markets, family and community expectations, and cultural and personal value systems. Actual decisions about fishing and resource management rarely match the expectations of classical or neoliberal economic models of individual behaviour. I argue here that rational choice theory is a historically and culturally constructed discourse that becomes a taken-for-granted lens for viewing behaviour around the world. The effects of this discourse can be seen in the policies that are derived from them, as shown through this case study.

The increase of economic inequalities as a security challenge

The functioning of the global economy in the early 21st century and its impact on daily life requires a scientific approach and analytical insight. The world system is polarized into a small number of successful countries and a large number of unsuccessful ones. In practice, numerous and contradictory tendencies have been demonstrated in the functioning of the market principle of economy without state intervention in the economic sphere, as well as the acceptance of ready-made recipes that are treated as universal for the implementation of the reforms set forth by international organizations, which have led to an increase in economic inequalities. Economic inequalities were increased during the period of neoliberal capitalism and continue to multiply. Economic inequalities lead to unequal conditions of living, threatening the safety of a large number of people and producing social problems, which are usually expressed in an increase of poverty and unemployment. The increase of economic inequalities and the polarization between rich and poor, with a gradual decrease in the number of members of the middle class, is particularly important to be looked at in the USA, as the cradle of the neoliberal economic model. Economic inequalities have increased also in other developed countries, as well as in most of the less developed countries. The paper analyzes the impact of the increase in economic inequalities on human security, which multiplies the population living below the poverty threshold. Poverty is a major challenge and risk to the security of an individual, because it is a multiplier of other risks. Security challenges, as well as potential forms of jeopardy, obtain a negative sign and increase the possibility to turn into more direct forms of jeopardy - risks and threats.

Reestructuración del sector agrario en Chile 1975-2010: entre el proteccionismo del Estado y el modelo económico neoliberal

Entre 1975-2010, el modelo de desarrollo de la agricultura chilena ha sido un caso paradigmático de crecimiento basado en un cambio importante de las orientaciones productivas, donde se produce una reorientación hacia aquellas producciones no tradicionales para la exportación como motor de crecimiento económico. La reestructuración económica de mediados de los setenta impuso un modelo económico neoliberal donde se fomentaron aquellas actividades productivas que poseían capacidades para comercializar productos en los mercados internacionales. Especialmente se hace referencia a productos agrarios no tradicionales (sector frutícola y la industria forestal - madera y celulosa principalmente). El paradigma exportador chileno funcionó basado en un alto nivel de endeudamiento con bancos y una excesiva concentración en grandes poderes compradores (especialmente mercados estadounidenses). El modelo fue exitoso mientras las rentabilidades fueron altas y los costos eran controlados, sin embargo, en los últimos años los márgenes de rentabilidad han disminuido cuestionando la continuidad de este modelo agroexportador. En este sentido, el sector se encuentra en una importante encrucijada que exige replantear las bases bajo las cuales se ha sustentado. Esta investigación utiliza la Nueva economía política de la agricultura, los Regímenes Alimentarios y el Estructuralismo económico como herramientas teórico-metodológicas para analizar los procesos antes mencionados.

Europe's Crisis without End: The Consequences of Neoliberalism

This paper argues that the eurozone crisis is the product of a toxic neoliberal economic policy cocktail. The mixing of that cocktail traces all the way back to the early 1980s when Europe embraced the neoliberal economic model that undermined the income- and demand-generation process via wage stagnation and widened income inequality. Stagnation was serially postponed by a number of developments, including the stimulus from German re-unification and the low interest rate convergence produced by creation of the euro. The latter prompted a 10-year credit and asset price bubble that created fictitious prosperity. Postponing stagnation in this fashion has had costs because it worsened the ultimate stagnation by creating large build-ups of debt. Additionally, the creation of the euro ensconced a flawed monetary system that fosters public debt crisis and the political economy of fiscal austerity. Lastly, during this period of postponement, Germany sought to avoid stagnation via export-led growth based on wage repression. That has created an internal balance of payments problem within the eurozone, which is a further impediment to resolving the crisis. There is a way out of the crisis. It requires replacing the neoliberal economic model with a structural Keynesian model; remaking the European Central Bank so that it acts as a government banker; having Germany replace its export-led growth wage suppression model with a domestic demand-led growth model; and creating a pan-European model of wage and fiscal policy coordination that blocks race to the bottom tendencies within Europe. Countries, particularly Germany, can implement some of this agenda on their own. However, much of the agenda must be implemented collectively, which makes change enormously difficult. Moreover, the war of ideas in favor of such reforms has yet to be won. Consequently, both politics and the ruling intellectual climate make success unlikely and augur a troubled future.

Working in the ‘Bleak House’ – an autoethnographic study of ethnic segmentation, precarization and informalization in the London hotel industry

Abstract During the past three decades, the traditional model of the welfare state in advanced economies has been replaced successively by the neo-liberal economic and political model. As a result, global labour markets today are extensively characterized by precariousness, instability, insecurity, vulnerability, risk and, of course, increased exploitation. However, these processes have not affected all segments of the population or all sectors of the economy equally severely. Some groups and individuals, and certain sectors, have been affected worse and earlier than others. This article attempts to demonstrate this through a case study of labour conditions in the London hotel industry in the mid-1980s. Using the author’s personal experience as an empirical point of departure, the article demonstrates how the precarious nature of the work, ethnic segmentation and informal economic arrangements that dominated the London hotel industry at that time were early signs of what were going to become the key characteristics of most economic sectors not only in London and the United Kingdom, but – today – globally.

Revitalization and tugurization in the historical centre of Santiago de Chile

In Latin America, globalization started first in Chile, around the shift to the neoliberal economic model in 1974. It has manifested itself in various structural changes in the Chilean capital Santiago. Privatization of public space, accelerated socio-spatial segregation, the privatization of services and especially education, plus foreign immigration, led to urban renewal and functional revitalization on the one hand, to tugurization and ghettoization trends on the other. The result is a fragmented urban fabric, characterized by islands of wealth and poverty within the traditional urban structure.

Climate change and energy policy in Chile: Up in smoke?

This paper provides an ex-post assessment of the climate and energy policy developments in Chile emerging from a neoliberal economic model, during the period 1971–2007. First, correlation and regression analyses were performed to analyse historical CO2 emissions as a product of demographic, economic and energy-wide drivers. Then I estimate indicators related to CO2 emissions, energy use and economic activity. In the light of empirical results, I identify policy instruments and structural issues. Finally, I present a comparative analysis of Chile and other Latin American countries. Statistical tests show that variability of CO2 emissions is explained mostly by GDP per capita (‘affluence’) than any other tested variable. Indicators show that the diversification and decarbonisation of the energy mix has been a major policy challenge. With two notable exceptions (hydro and natural gas), the CO2 intensity of the energy supply mix suggests no effective policies, while energy security crises triggered negative carbon effects and increased prices. No clear policies to promote energy efficiency can be identified until 2005. Explicit policy instruments to promote renewable energy are only recognised after 2004. The results strongly suggest that Chile lacked of policies to effectively decarbonise its energy–economy system.

Democracia vs neoliberalismo económico. Condicionantes ideológicos de las preferencias políticas y económicas en la ciudad de Lima

Este estudio analiza la influencia de la ideología política sobre tres actitudes sociopolíticas: el apoyo al modelo económico neoliberal, el apoyo al sistema político democrático y el desinterés por la política, en una muestra de adultos jóvenes de la ciudad de Lima (<em>N = 279</em>). Como medidas de ideología política se utilizaron escalas de autoritarismo de ala derecha (RWA), orientación hacia la dominancia social (SDO), orientación política de derecha y justificación de la inequidad. Se contrastaron tres modelos de ecuaciones estructurales. Los dos modelos finales presentaron buenos indicadores de ajuste. Ambos modelos proponen que, mientras el RWA, la SDO y la orientación política de derecha ejercen influencia directa sobre el apoyo al modelo económico neoliberal, la SDO influye de manera inversa sobre el apoyo al sistema democrático. El modelo que presentó el mejor grado de ajuste propone además, que el desinterés por la política influye directamente sobre el apoyo al modelo económico neoliberal. Se discute finalmente acerca de la relación entre conservadurismo político, neoliberalismo económico y el concepto de apatía política.

The City at Night: The Celluloidal Sensibility of Juan José Saer’s La pesquisa

<title/>A significant aspect of Juan José Saer’s La pesquisa is its filmically charged ‘noir’ style which seems to disclose a distinct preoccupation with space. In other words, through its simulation of some of the more structural components of ‘noir’ cinema such as disorienting camera angles and vertiginous frame compositions, the novel is able to create a geography of unease. Indeed, one could go as far as to posit the noir aesthetic as a kind of spatial anxiety that reacts to the topographical power relations and modes of domination within a particular historical context. With the case of Saer, such an aesthetic seems to be grounded upon Argentina’s own immediate history — namely, the 1976-83 dictatorship and the subsequent implementation of a neo-liberal economic model, both of which, I contend, create a free-floating tension that indelibly translates onto the written page. As such, the goal of this essay will be to elucidate Saer’s specifically cinematic use of ‘noir’ in La pesquisa in order to show how said style or code functions to map the spatial anxieties of modern Argentine society.Un aspecto significativo de la novela La pesquisa, escrita por Juan José Saer, es su simulación de una cinematografía noir que parece demostrar una preocupación por el espacio. Dicho de otra forma, a través del empleo de ciertos componentes estructurales del cine negro como, por ejemplo, los ángulos desorientadores de cámara o las composiciones visuales vertiginosas, la novela logra crear una geografía de inquietud. En realidad, se puede plantear la estética ‘noir’ como una ansiedad espacial que parece ser una reacción a una topografía de poder y dominación de un contexto histórico específico. En el caso de Saer, tal estética parece fundarse en la historia reciente de Argentina — sobre todo, en la dictadura y la subsecuente implementación de un modelo económico neo-liberal, los cuales dan pie a una tensión flotante que se traduce a la novela. Como tal, la meta de este ensayo será dilucidar el uso cinemático del ‘noir’ en La pesquisa para ver cómo tal estilo o código sirve para proponer una cartografía de las ansiedades espaciales de la sociedad argentina moderna.

Psychoanalytic listening to socially excluded young people

Individuals excluded from ‘the social contract’ are subject to a certain irruption of the traumatic, understood as subjective disorganization resulting from the emergence of that which is outside sense and outside signification. Such subjects experience the loss of a discourse of belonging and of being afforded a place in society. The lack of narcissistic gratification, along with the exclusion from group ideals and values, foster a fragmentation of social ties and produce disruptive effects in subjectivity. This paper discusses the possibilities afforded by psychoanalytic listening to subjects who have experienced social exclusion as traumatic: those who suffer extreme poverty and social exclusion within neoliberal economic models. Examples are drawn from clinical work with young people who live on the outskirts of the city of Sao Paulo and who have had the experience of living in the streets. Rather than attuning to this sort of listening, it is not rare for those in some social agencies and in some forms of psychotherapy to mistake apathy, loneliness and muting for structural characteristics of the subject rather than as the effects of exclusion and the reproduction of a form of social violence. This misrecognition precludes the creation of a symbolic elaboration that could provide a symptomatic shape to that which is experienced as traumatic. This paper argues for the possibility of listening to subjects silenced by exclusion.

The End of ‘Cosmopolitan’ Capitalism? Reflections on Nations, Models and Brands in the Global Economic Crisis

This article reflects on the philosophical implications of the crisis for the nation-state and culture in relation to business and management. The global triumph of the neo-liberal economic model in the 1990s and early 2000s brought with it an ontological re-conception of the nation-state in its relationship to business, the market and regulation: the nation was viewed as a ‘brand-state’ analogous to a company. Much of the successful appeal of the ‘brand-state’ was based on its annexation of the Enlightenment discourse of ‘cosmopolitanism’: it appeared that a world consisting of interlinked economies represented a fulfilment of the Kantian utopian project of detachment and perpetual peace. The economic crisis has brought this discourse into question. The article assesses whether lessons learnt from the crisis contain prospects for a post-teleological re-conceptualisation of the nation-state beyond the ‘brand-state’ towards a ‘cosmopolitan solidarity’ in which nation-states co-operate to ameliorate its worst effects.

Neoliberalism and Postmodern Cultures of Aging

Chuck Longino and this author began writing together about the benefits and risks of a postmodern perspective on the aging experience more than 9 years ago. Chuck Longino and this author contrasted a progressive strand of postmodernism based on the blended values of individual empowerment and collective responsibility for economic security with a neoliberal strand based on individualism and the free market as the ultimate arbiter of value, arguing that neoliberal postmodernism threatened the economic and psychological security of older people. Here the author summarizes the previous arguments by Chuck Longino and himself, then comment on events that have occurred since their last published collaboration, especially the collapse of the neoliberal economic model.

Gestión del urbanismo y administración urbana: los pies de barro en el despliegue territorial del neoliberalismo en Chile

Management of urbanism and urban administration. The Mud Feet in the Territorial Deployment of the Neoliberalism in Chile.In Chile, the efficient boarding of the urban problems requires to face a central but left behind subject of the impelled processes of modernization in the frame of the effective neoliberal economic model: inefficiency in the administration and management of the territorial development. Both constitute ballasts that affect the performance of the economic system and the profit of the objectives of the country in quality of life for the people. I articulate looks for to release, to review the state-of-the-art and to propose lines of work towards solutions.

The Great Danes: Cultural Values and Neoliberal Reforms

The paper examines the relationship between civic values and neoliberal reforms. It shows that countries with more idealistic (or civic-minded) cultural attitudes also have more neoliberal economic policies. In addition, countries with more idealistic cultural values moved most rapidly toward market reforms after 1980. In less civic-minded cultures, rent-seeking special interest groups blocked reform, even as the superiority of the neoliberal economic model became increasingly apparent.

México, crisis económica y financiera

Esta colaboración sostiene la idea de que la inestabilidad económica y financiera es intrínseca al modelo económico neoliberal. Este modelo ha transformado radicalmente a la economía y a la sociedad mexicana, la capacidad endógena de crecimiento, la posibilidad de conducción de las políticas públicas, las instituciones y organización social, pero también la conformación y relaciones en el bloque en el poder. En la primera parte se exponen las condiciones en que se desenvolvieron las anteriores crisis financieras en México, insistiendo que en la de 1982, como la de 1994 fueron crisis que proceden de procesos de apertura y desregulación económica y financiera. En la segunda parte se examinan las condiciones en que se desempeña la actual crisis económica y financiera global en México. La tercera parte se exponen las condiciones en que la economía y las finanzas se organizan en una economía subsidiaria, ampliamente generadora de rentas para la distribución financiera local y fuera de las fronteras, bajo un modelo económico fracasado. Finalmente se examinan las limitaciones de las políticas contra-cíclicas.

Why Health Advocates Must Get Involved in Development Economics: The Case of the International Monetary Fund

International health advocates have traditionally focused on calling for external strategies for achieving health goals in developing countries, such as more foreign aid, foreign direct investment, loans, and debt cancellation, as opposed to internal approaches, such as building domestic productive capacity and accumulating capital. They have largely neglected questions of development economics, particularly the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the currently dominant neoliberal development model promoted by the rich countries and aid agencies for poor countries. While critics have been correct to blame the International Monetary Fund for its policies curtailing public health spending in developing countries, their analysis generally neglects the underlying issue of why developing countries are seemingly unable to build their domestic tax base on which health budgets depend. International health advocates should engage with such macroeconomic questions and challenge the failures of the dominant neoliberal economic model that blocks countries from industrializing and building their own productive capacities with which to generate their own resources for financing their health budgets over time.

Inequality and the commodification of urban life: challenges to sustainable development in contemporary Brazil

This paper presents a discussion about the unequal nature of the transformations in urban living conditions resulting from the prevailing neoliberal economic model in Brazil. In a historical perspective, it suggests that the social organisation in urban areas has been increasingly subordinated to the logic of the financial capital. As a result, housing markets and infrastructure services have been completely transformed into a locus of money and land commodification. In the current process of urban expansion, inequalities have been strengthened within cities overwhelmed by violence.

Agua, Poder y Discursos: Conflictos Socio-territoriales por la construcción de centrales hidroeléctricas en la Patagonia Chilena

Chile is going to celebrate soon two hundred years of republican life and thirty five years of the application of a neoliberal economic model, in respect of which there are a lot of conflicts related with the land/capital dicotomy and water like a main resource. One of these conflicts is currently taking place in Chilean Patagonia, where, as a direct result of water privatization, a large hydropower project, supported by transnational companies collisions with traditional production and highly environmental quality landscapes.