Neoliberal Governance Research Articles

Communal self-governance as an alternative to neoliberal governance: proposing a post-development approach to EU resilience-building in Central Asia

ABSTRACT In the European Union’s (EU) new Strategy for Central Asia, which was launched in May 2019, boosting the resilience of Central Asian societies is singled out as a key priority. Drawing on post-development thinking, this article argues that if the EU is serious about promoting resilience to empower ‘the local’ and contribute towards a truly sustainable future for the societies of Central Asian countries, then the EU will need to embrace a de-centred, post-neoliberal approach to resilience. This implies that the EU would have to accept ‘the other’ – in this case, the Central Asian societies – for what they are and advocate home-grown self-organization based on a deep understanding of the local meaning of good life and local knowledge about the available resources. Empirical illustrations to substantiate this claim are drawn from a concrete case, namely the mahalla in Uzbekistan.

Respectable outness: Examining the coming-out narratives of Latin American Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual YouTube celebrity vloggers

Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual YouTube celebrities have come to the limelight of popular media culture. This article explores how 10 of the most popular and influential YouTubers from three Latin American countries (Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico) have come to occupy lesbian, gay, and bisexual subject positions in their coming out vlogs. We argue that through the entwinement of YouTube’s political economy of celebrity and performances of respectability, these vloggers were able to turn their coming-outs into a form of emotional labor that positions them as exemplary models of queer success within the neoliberal economy and cultural regime.

Citizen science and environmental justice: exploring contradictory outcomes through a case study of air quality monitoring in Dublin

ABSTRACT Citizen science is advocated as a response to a broad range of contemporary societal and ecological challenges. However, there are widely varying models of citizen science which may either challenge or reinforce existing knowledge paradigms and associated power dynamics. This paper explores different approaches to citizen science in the context of air quality monitoring in terms of their implications for environmental justice. This is achieved through a case study of air quality management in Dublin which focuses on the role of citizen science in this context. The evidence shows that the dominant interpretation of citizen science in Dublin is that it provides a means to promote awareness and behaviour change rather than to generate knowledge and inform new regulations or policies. This is linked to an overall context of technocratic governance and the exclusion of non-experts from decision-making. It is further closely linked to neoliberal governance imperatives to individualise responsibility and promote market-based solutions to environmental challenges. Last, the evidence highlights that this model of citizen science risks compounding inequalities by transferring responsibility and blame for air pollution to those who have limited resources to address it. Overall, the paper highlights the need for critical analysis of the implications of citizen science in different instances and for alternative models of citizen science whereby communities would contribute to setting objectives and determining how their data is used.

Interpreting crises through narratives: the construction of a COVID-19 policy narrative by Canada’s political parties

ABSTRACT As an unprecedent global crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic required policy actors to make sense of the event while simultaneously constructing an effective policy response. In this article, we focus on the onset of the crisis in Canada and ask: how was a crisis narrative constructed and to what extent did the features of the emergent narrative vary across political elites? We bring together the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) with Foucault’s ‘biopolitics of population’ to explain the construction of an initial crisis narrative that is consistent with the economic rationale of neoliberal governmentalities. Using an original collection of 1,331 Hansard statements from Canadian Members of Parliament during the first wave (March to June 2020), we employ inductive content analysis to assess elements of narrative form. This article contributes to broader work seeking to understand how various actors construct narratives around the crisis and the consequences of such narrativization for policy responses.

Cash Transfers, International Finance and Neoliberal Debt Relations: The Case of Post‐apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACTThis article situates South Africa's cash transfer programme within the country's financialized neoliberal regime. The adoption of economic liberalization by the African National Congress in the aftermath of the democratic transition has raised the profile of international investors in the domestic bond market. It is argued that this development, in the context of rising public debt and stagnating economic growth, has facilitated the financialization of the post‐apartheid state and has linked the sustainability of fiscal policy, and hence state‐led redistributive measures, to deepening debt relations with global asset managers. Additionally, a cluster of orthodox economic measures, such as inflation targeting and reserve accumulation, have served to thwart the potential for industrial upgrading. Moreover, it is posited that financial liberalization has further strengthened the influence of the Treasury over heterodox bureaucratic centres such as the Department of Trade and Industry, thereby serving to lock in the post‐transition neoliberal programme. Finally, the article argues that the integration of cash transfer recipients into the circuits of debt and finance is an outgrowth of the limitations of the social welfare programme and the broader financialization of the state. Overall, the analysis offered here serves as a counter‐argument to the notion that South Africa's cash transfer programme could offer a progressive alternative to market orthodoxy.

The use of recovery model in forensic psychiatric settings: A Foucauldian critique.

Recovery, a model of care aimed at patient-led nursing practice emphasizing autonomy, hope and self-determination, has in recent years been adapted for the secure forensic psychiatric setting. Often referred to as 'secure recovery', this model suggests the aims of recovery are achievable even in highly restrictive settings. This paper will adopt a Foucauldian perspective to offer a critical analysis of recovery in forensic settings. In providing recovery-oriented care, nurses utilize pastoral power in guiding patients to institutionally preferred outcomes. Akin to Christian religious conversion, nurses engage in a neo-religious conversion of patients to a neoliberal subjectivity of homo-economicus. This path of recovery is grounded in an ethos of personal responsibility and self-government, inseparable from the greater context of neoliberal governmentality. Despite attempts at transforming forensic nursing practice into more egalitarian directions, recovery remains a coercive practice, and fails to meet the overall goals of this paradigm in secure settings.

Mahaul and Mazboori: educational aspirations and realities of Dalit youth in Delhi

This paper examines the predicament of the Dalit youth in their pursuit of higher education through a qualitative study in a low-income locality of Delhi. In absence of control over material resources historically, education offered promise in liberating socially excluded groups for its instrumental link with modern occupational structure. The policy of universal public education backed up with affirmative action in India has formally aided its access across sections. Even as the participation of the hitherto marginalized groups has been increasing manifold, privatization and marketisation in the education sector under the neo-liberal regime have transformed the educational landscape. Dalit youth is largely segregated into low-quality distance and social sciences education. The paper discusses various constraining and motivating factors embedded within and outside the neighbourhood and educational institutions which shape their educational interests, choices, and decisions. It elaborates on how cumulative socio-cultural, spatial, and historical disadvantages continue to shape the process of educational exclusion, even when these groups live in a metropolitan city amidst educational institutions. However, we also stress that the state policies, informed mentors, shared aspirations, and diversity in socio-cultural interactions hold the potential to alter and widen educational aspirations, access, and outcomes.

“Hasta tomar el cielo por asalto”: Competing Historical Moods in Patricio Pron’s "El espíritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia"

Patricio Pron’s "El espíritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia" is among the many twenty-first century Argentine novels that grapple with the historical events of the 1960s and 70s and their ongoing repercussions in the present. Based on the title of Pron’s work, one might assume that the text would be focused on the spirit of possibility that characterized his parents’ generation — the “spirit of hope for change” that John Beverley has identified as part of the cultural ethos of the armed struggle. However, Pron never provides a detailed account of his narrator’s parents’ activities as members of the Peronist organization Guardia de Hierro, nor does he offer a thorough depiction of the spirit of the era. This marked contradiction between what the title suggests the novel is about and what it actually addresses gestures to an alternate layer of meaning in the text, conveying the way in which the legacies of both the dictatorship and of neoliberal governance continue to overshadow memories and representations of the political movements that preceded the dictatorship and of the spirit of possibility that accompanied them. At the same time, the novel’s title and the passage from which it emerges also speak to a coexisting desire in twenty-first century Argentine literature to regain access to the spirit of possibility of the political movements of the 1960s and early 70s so as to be able to use it for the country’s future.

On Developments in Ethnographic Research: The Case of Two Swedish Universities

The past 40 years have formed a transitional period in Sweden’s education and political history. The social democratic reforms from the 1940s that aimed to create a centralised, expanded and integrated comprehensive education system came to an end. Decentralisation, neoliberal governance and the introduction of new public management with the creation of private schools and competition have shaped the policy regime since then. Ethnography emerged in Swedish educational research as a significant research methodology during this transitional period. Using a qualitative and quantitative investigation of research dissertations that classified and counted the use of ethnography as either classical (using core references and long-term participation research at one or a limited number of sites), or adapted (used within adaptations to other research methods), the present article explores these developments at two universities. It suggests that Swedish education ethnography has developed along similar kinds of historical trajectories to ethnography in other places, with roots similar to those in other European countries, though also with some variations. For instance, as elsewhere, ethnography needed a breakthrough point in Swedish education research. It got this in the 1980s. However, it quickly became an important part of educational research from the 1990s onwards and a strong quantitative take off early in the new millennium followed. Presently more than half of all PhD dissertations in Education at the two universities have some kind of participant observation, over half of which are also classically ethnographic. This leads us to conclude that education ethnography in Sweden has changed across its period of growth and that though configured in contemporary social science as having originated in anthropology as a methodology that employed long-term embedded participant observation, this does not limit the variations of ethnography’s development or its application.

Depoliticization, participation and social art practice: On the function of social art practice for politicization

The purpose of this article is to explore how the process of depoliticization occurs in neoliberal governance, with the aim of identifying approaches to counter its control over the way we live together. Depoliticization is a process of neoliberal political and social organization that undermines democracy. An instance of how depoliticization happens is through a lack of accountability in the way that government devolves responsibility through non-governmental agencies or quangos. Arts Council England is a quango with an increasingly instrumental policy agenda. Arts-based participation is being fostered through policy agendas; art projects that are funded in this arrangement are expected to promote social inclusion or audience engagement. While this is superficially laudable, a reduced gap between state policy objectives and commissioned artistic outcomes sees artworks utilized as interpretive publicity for policy objectives. In this way, the funding of the arts can be considered as part of the wider process of depoliticization. Yet, we argue, contra much of the depoliticization literature with its formalist understandings of power, that politics is not limited to the actions and non-actions of the state alone and can be radically understood as an everyday process. In this conception of politics, we conclude that certain forms of art practice, those that employ social praxis and critical citizenship through critical pedagogical and participatory methods, can perform a politicizing function and thus potentially reshape democracy in more emancipatory ways.

Presidential hairstyles: The politics of women political leaders’ appearance in the Korean media

ABSTRACT South Korea's 2016 and 2017 candlelight protests against the actions of President Park Geun-Hye were subjects of global news and portrayed as proof of democracy in action. During these protests, South Korean newspapers focused on the hairstyles of Park and acting Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Lee Jung-mi. This study traces how the appearance of Park and her hairstyle were represented by the media between the 1970s and 2017. In doing so, these reveal that not only the conservative but progressive media, too, limited its discussion on Park's neoliberal developmental femininity while talking about her seemingly anachronistic femininity, thus foreclosing further debate on the patriarchal basis of her femininity during democratic transformation. The study outcomes, wherein gender was not regarded as the main issue during South Korea’s transition to substantial democracy, imply that the coverage of Park's impeachment did not necessarily symbolize democracy in action. This study further contributes to feminist media and Asian women's studies by critically assessing how the South Korean media's gendered representation of these women's bodies and hairstyles reflects a legacy of developmentalism, a new neoliberal gender regime, and persistent misogyny.

Neoliberalism and Mental Health Care in Ontario: A Critique of Internet-Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy


 
 
 In this paper, I offer a critical analysis of Ontario’s mental health strategy, “Roadmap to Wellness,” and the government’s investment in internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) programs as a frontline strategy to address the province’s mental health crisis. Though I acknowledge that publicly funded mental health care is a step in the right direction, I argue that the choice to provide cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as the only form of publicly funded therapy indicates a problematic commitment to the maintenance of neoliberal governance. To argue this point, I use discourse analysis to explore the language present in Ontario’s two current iCBT programs – AbilitiCBT and Mindbeacon – and demonstrate the ways in which they reinforce a neoliberal discourse of mental health by emphasizing the values of 1) individual responsibility, 2) productivity, and 3) recovery. More broadly, I argue that neoliberal forms of governance ultimately produce the mental health crises that they seek to address through neglecting the social determinants of health and defunding of social services and assert that critiques of mental health care must address the socioeconomic conditions within which they are implemented, given the intimate relationship between neoliberalism, managerialism, and public policy.
 
 

‘The ones who die are lost and the survivors are what we have’: neoliberal governmentality and the governance of Covid-19 risk in social media posts in Turkey

This study focuses on understanding and explaining the technologies that affect the governance of the risk of Covid-19 in Turkey. To assess how this risk is governed by individuals, the study focuses on discussions around this disease within a Turkish Facebook group. The aim is to understand how individuals conduct themselves and establish norms of conduct against the risk of illness that, in this case of an infectious disease, involves governing the self while managing others. The results show that the discourse created around the governance of infection risk is very much in line with notions of neoliberal governmentality, individual responsibility, citizens as consumers, and individuals as entrepreneurs. Governing the risk of Covid-19 is related to prevalent ways of prioritising or recognising economic explanations, and cost calculation and assessment of successful governance using quantifiable variables, such as the number of new cases and deaths. Concepts like herd immunity and natural selection are open to discussion. Individuals who believe that the government is primarily responsible for risk governance assert that they are paying taxes and advocate that, disciplinary measures should be taken by the government, whereas the opposing view states that individuals are responsible for the governance of Covid-19 risk. We interpret both these opposing views as illustrating neoliberal governmentality and representing contractual and familial state–citizen relationships.

Privatizing the fisheries observer industry: Neoliberal science and policy in the U.S. West Coast fisheries

This article examines fisheries observation and monitoring programs as sites for the neoliberalization of science and the expansion of rights-based management. Rights-based management strategies are argued to avert the tragedy of the commons and yield sustainable commercial fisheries. Individual fishing quotas are a popular but contentious rights-based management tool, that is thought to privatize access to fisheries resources. For quotas to be effective, they require constant monitoring and surveillance to ensure compliance. The task of quota monitoring has fallen to fisheries observers––biologists that accompany commercial fishing trips and collect fisheries data. In this paper I draw from work in science and technology studies (STS) and political ecology, bridging scholarship on the neoliberalization of science and nature. Analyzing archival documents and interview data, I examine the history of the U.S. observer program then narrow focus to the U.S. West Coast Groundfish Observer Program as a case study. Through this analysis, I make two central arguments. First, fisheries observation and monitoring programs have undergone a shift to privatization and are thus important, and to-date understudied, sites of neoliberalization in fisheries science and management. Second, fisheries observation and monitoring programs have been restructured to resolve the inherent shortcomings of both capitalism and neoliberal fisheries policy. I highlight the impacts of restructuring on fishermen and the fisheries observation program more broadly, demonstrating that observation and data collection programs reproduce and reinforce neoliberal governance regimes. I conclude by discussing the ontological and epistemological implications of subsuming environmental monitoring and data collection under neoliberal governance.

Constructing Identity in the Time of Coronavirus: Reading as Recovery

ABSTRACT How does a beginning teacher go about constructing a teacherly identity in a pandemic? How does one reconcile what might be with what is, as dictated by the rhetoric of a neoliberal government, which prizes the individual mind over the collective one, the product over the process, and results over relationships? This essay explores these questions through the experience of reading Jane Eyre with a Year 9 English class. Personal and professional stories form the core of this investigation that explores the complexities of finding a teacherly identity; this is a discussion about aims and values and relationships, rather than just ‘effective’ teaching strategies.

On the possibility of a public regime in higher education: rethinking normative principles and policy frameworks

ABSTRACT The process of reversing a neoliberal regime in highly marketised higher education systems entails the discussion of such a regime’s normative principles and policy frameworks. Little has been said about what decommodification would involve or the implications of such a project for the constitution of a public regime in higher education. Two principles are discussed in this paper to delve into these concerns in detail: institutional diversity and autonomy. In addition, the role of quality policies is considered. In this respect, I critically analyse how the neoliberal regime in higher education has adopted these normative principles and policies. I claim that this regime has defined the content of the boundaries of such elements through a particular understanding of objectivity, neutrality and impartiality. Then, I discuss the plausibility of a public regime in higher education by rethinking these categories, which entails the reconsideration of the relationship between power, knowledge and subjectivity.

Digital labour platforms and neoliberal governmentality: the case of platform workers in Turkey

PurposeThe paper brings Foucauldian analysis of neoliberal governmentality in the discussion on the new forms of labour control within digital labour platforms. The aim of the paper is to reveal the effect of control mechanisms employed by platforms on “entrepreneurial self” within the context of work relations.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on in-depth interviews, conducted with workers under different service categories, the author undertook an extended case study of Armut.com, a digital labour platform operating in Turkey.FindingsThe study finds that competitive mechanisms employed by the platform have a considerable effect on worker self-commercialisation and self-rationalisation. This is dependent on different control mechanisms employed by the platform, based on different platform working models.Originality/valueThe research brings the worker subjectivities to the discussion of control within the scope of digital labour platforms. By undertaking a rare empirical study on this issue, it contributes to the theory of entrepreneurial self within the scope of work relations.

Bad for business: the construction of modern slavery and the reconfiguration of sovereignty

Abstract Although the UN calls on governments to end modern slavery, Walk Free, a private foundation connected to the faith-based abolitionist movement, leads the private-public network to eliminate slavery from transnational supply chains. Examining the network’s governance techniques reveals how scale and governance are reconfiguring sovereignty beyond the territory of the nation state and aligning it with neoliberal governmentality.

Citizen participation in the governance of nature‐based solutions

AbstractThe last half‐a‐century has seen a marked demand for authentic citizen participation in public policy‐and decision‐making, not least in the field of sustainability. The depth and forms of citizen engagement in nature‐based solutions (NBS), for example, and how such participation shapes their trajectories is gaining increasing attention. In this paper, we analyze current forms and implications of citizen participation in 58 NBS case studies conducted in 21 cities in the light of supporting wider sustainability goals. Our results show that while tokenistic forms dominate citizen participation across a variety of NBS contexts, collaborative multi‐stakeholder forms of engagement do not automatically lead to enhanced ecological functions. Deeper forms of engagement, however, strengthen and diversify both expected and unexpected social outcomes, including social learning, enhanced sense of belonging, environmental stewardship, and inclusiveness and equity, in general. Driven by neoliberal austerity logic governments often cede power to NBS promoters whose interests predefine an intervention's vision of nature. Deeper levels of participation are hence limited by inherent institutional structures, neoliberal regimes and the lack of trust among actors involved. These limitations can be partially bridged by strengthening relational and reflexive capacities of public institutions. Focusing on the process of citizen engagement and creating multiple arenas for discussion could bring out new voices and narratives and also transform the culture of participation.

Assessment as a Site of Anti/Oppressive Social Work Practice: Negotiating with Power and the De/Professionalisation of Social Work

Abstract Social work practice starts with an effort to understand clients-in-context, a task which involves a process of assessment. Whilst social workers often assess clients-in-systems, rarely do they consider the social worker-in-systems as part of the client’s context. Guided by Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary and biopolitical power and related constructs of ‘Panopticism’ and ‘homo oeconomicus’, this article interrogates how the social worker’s observational gaze in assessment has become veiled in practice. Using a critical review method, the author examines how Foucault’s notion of a ‘faceless gaze’ has been increasingly intensified by the use of information technology in ‘common assessment’, thereby transforming the fundamentals of assessment from understanding the client for ‘care’ to ‘managing risk’ in neoliberal governance. This article historicises and politicises temporal discourses of social work assessment and illustrates how the worker’s embodied knowledge of assessment as a governing apparatus may solidify and/or endanger the social work profession. Locating assessment as a site of social in/justice, this critical review on the inevitable workings of power in assessment invites social workers to re-think the boundaries of de/professionalisation and to critically reflect on and re-imagine everyday institutional practices in social work assessment.