Authoritarian Neoliberalism Research Articles

Institutionalizing authoritarian urbanism and the centralization of urban decision-making

ABSTRACT The changes in the global neoliberal order leading up to the 2008 financial crisis shaped individual countries’ political–administrative transformations. One of the most important trends in politics since then has been the (re)centralization of scalar politics. Urban financialization, which was proposed as a solution for the economic contraction in the post-crisis era, required fast and centralized decision-making without leaving much room for citizen participation and local variation. Turkey is a case in point for this global trend. Amid such rapid urban growth, we identify two parallel processes that weaken the local institutions and localized development in Turkey: the shifting of decision-making powers from municipalities to central state organs, especially with regard to the real estate industry; and the shifting of decision-making powers from the elected members of the city councils to the mayors themselves. We attempt to demonstrate the (re)centralization of urban decision-making process in Turkey by looking at the decisions and the processes within which those decisions were taken at Ankara Metropolitan Municipality City Council between 2014 and 2016. We argue that the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism is reinforced by the centralization of urban decision-making processes.

W. Bello. Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right W.I. Robinson. The Global Police State C.B. Tansel (ed.). States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order

W. Bello. Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right W.I. Robinson. The Global Police State C.B. Tansel (ed.). States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order

Authoritarian neoliberalism, crisis, and consolidation: the political economy of regime change in Turkey

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyze Turkey's recent authoritarian transformation from a critical political economy perspective and to examine the main determinants of, what we call, the ‘authoritarian consolidation attempt' of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). For that purpose, first, we sought answers to the following question: why did the AKP engage in a more authoritarian political agenda in the 2010s? We critically review the literature on the contemporary dynamics of authoritarianism, particularly focusing on two explanatory frameworks, competitive authoritarianism, and authoritarian neoliberalism. We argue that the crisis of authoritarian neoliberalism did not end up with democratization in Turkey in the 2010s, rather the power bloc initiated a strategy of the authoritarian fix as a reaction to the multiple crises that were a combination of the state crisis and the crisis of capital accumulation regime. Second, we analyzed how authoritarianism in Turkey is en route to consolidation in the aftermath of the transition to the Turkish presidential system in 2018, and what the fundamental factors of this consolidation are. We investigated the main features of Turkish presidentialism following the three-dimensional framework of authoritarian consolidation, including infrastructural, despotic, and discursive power analyses. As a result, we suggest a critical political economy account to unfold contemporary dynamics of authoritarianism based on the Turkish case.

Academic freedom between past and present: the birth of one-dimensional academia in Turkey

ABSTRACT In the context of the restructuring of Turkish academia, the concept of internationalisation has been affected by amendments to the Higher Education Law. Interviews with 12 academics who are currently working in Turkish academia demonstrate in particular the loss of internationalisation. This article has found that the authoritarian government aims to build up and create a new academia and new academics. Amendments following the post-2016 coup d’état and the recent Covid-19 pandemic demonstrate that President Erdoğan’s ‘New Turkey’ tries to deconstruct academia and therefore restructure a ‘new academia’ similar to his political system, based on the order and command chain, and homogeneity. Building upon Marcuse’s theory, the article shows that Turkish academia can be labelled as one-dimensional. The article seeks to unravel how Turkish neoliberal authoritarianism takes advantage of Covid-19 in order to re-establish a new academia. The author elaborates on some of the current changes in Turkish higher education as a result of the recent amendments made by the Higher Education Law in 2020, as well as how the effects of the new law were further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The “Legitimized Architecture” of Minsk World: Primitive Accumulation through Housing under Authoritarian Neoliberalism in Belarus

Analysing the contemporary housing development Minsk World as a paradigmatic case of the authoritarian neoliberal shift in housing delivery in Belarus, this paper focuses on the intersections of law, finance and architecture. This paper makes three contributions to the debate on the neoliberal shift in housing delivery and the role architecture plays within it. First, it challenges the widely held opinion that the neoliberal shift in housing delivery never happened in Belarus. Second, it explores how building codes and regulations governing certain aspects of housing delivery can be overcome through political intervention by an autocratic head of state. In so doing, the paper introduces the concept of “legitimized architecture” as a way of describing the spatial dimensions of laws, codes and regulations. Third, it highlights the role of architecture, as professional practice, in normalizing the legal reforms that have facilitated the commodification of urban housing in Belarus.

Global extractive imperative: from local resistance to unburnable fuels

Since the early 2000s, there has been an ‘extractive imperative’ in Latin America that made intensified extraction the policy solution to all socioeconomic challenges. More recently, a similar consensus has emerged in a diversity of political, economic and geographical contexts - such as Turkey, India and the United States - that makes it possible to speak of a ‘global extractive imperative’. The imperative is especially evident in settings also characterised by authoritarian neoliberalism and the burden of resistance against extractivism is suffered overwhelmingly by marginalised communities at extractive frontiers. Emerging efforts to declare a share of existing reserves of fossil fuels ‘unburnable’ would not only help make progress towards tackling the climate crisis, it would also broaden the societal bases of societal struggles against capitalism’s extractive excesses.

Extrema-direita, xeno-populismo e colonialidade: discursos de ódio e colonização do imaginário no presente

The expansion of far-right movements constitutes a global phenomenon that has translated into the emergence and strengthening of numerous organizations, parties, and especially into the conquest of power in many countries in Europe, North America, and Latin America. In this article we will try to account for this phenomenon, first by presenting and reflecting on the different theoretical conceptions that have been held about it, namely the different related concepts used by academia, such as populism, fascism, extreme right or authoritarian neoliberalism. On a second level, we will focus our attention on Poland and Portugal. In the case of Poland, for its admittedly populist conjunctural character, ruled since2015 by the Law and Justice Party. In the case of Portugal, for its opposite character, under the management of the Socialist Party, recently reelected with 60% of the votes, but which also experiences the strengthening of extreme right-wing movements. Respecting the sociocultural and historical particularities of each, in both countries these movements are expressed both in civil society and in political society. These experiences reveal counterfaces that, despite their differences, signal approximations with the xeno-populist perspective and can shed light on the understanding of these processes. In the Polish scenario, the adoption of institutional policies and legislation against migrants, LGBTQIA+ and other minorities are notable, as well as growing manifestations of far-right movements, both based on hate speech. On the other hand, the Portuguese context, although governed by an opposite political spectrum, also experiences recent processes of strengthening of the far right. In fact, the far-right "Chega" party won third place in a recent election marked by tensions involving hate speech, xenophobia and nationalist perspectives

From Belarus to Black Lives Matter: Rethinking protests in Belarus through a transnational feminist perspective

This article examines the lack of solidarity between the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. and the anti-authoritarian uprising in Belarus in 2020. Specifically, I explore how distant geographies and feminist communities can relate to each other and thus challenge the rise of right-wing conservatism, white supremacy, and neoliberal authoritarianism. This article relies on auto-ethnography and the exploration of public media, political essays, and scholarly contributions discussing the meanings of the BLM and Belarusian protests. Through critical self-reflection and by deploying the concepts of ‘exile’ and ‘transnational feminist solidarity,’ this article suggests a possibility for alternative transnational feminist connections attentive to the complexities of global power relations and uneven east/west interconnections. Rethinking the current possibilities for solidarities may lead to seeing how the uprising in Belarus and the BLM protests have points of connection on the grounds of state-sanctioned violence, neoliberal enclosures, suppression of political dissent, and their racialized/colonial roots. However, forging transnational solidarities also requires a certain work of reflection on how political protests may uphold global racial/colonial logic and overshadow racial violence. Therefore, in this article, I foreground how post-Soviet vulnerability may help disrupt the status quo or the privilege of whiteness instead of reinforcing it.

Anti-Corruption and Democracy: Neo-Liberal Authoritarianism in Brazil

Anti-Corruption and Democracy: Neo-Liberal Authoritarianism in Brazil

University Embodied

This essay explores the embodied forms of power and struggle that are manifest in the Boğaziçi University protests against the authoritarian offensive of the Turkish government. By focusing on the student and faculty protests, especially, the daily gowned performances, it suggests that Boğaziçi protests could be seen as part of the making of a counter or dissident body politic, which seeks to rethink and revitalize, at this conjuncture of neoliberal authoritarianism, the university as a critical social institution and as an arena of democratic struggle interconnected to other social struggles for equality and liberty in Turkey and beyond. Drawing on the collective history of struggles and different forms and scales of action, this making of the dissident body politic weaves together embodied public performances; mediatized communicative labor, including online forums, commissions, media commentaries, and productions; and formal institutional resistance and legal action. Altogether, Boğaziçi protests highlight, or, better, flesh out, the importance of university autonomy and democracy, reposing the question, What is a university? at this critical moment when public life and institutions have been violently targeted by the apparatuses of the state and capital.

From Brexit to COVID-19: The Johnson Government, Executive Centralisation and Authoritarian Populism

Many commentators have suggested that the first 18 months of the Johnson government were characterised by a propensity to centralise power. However, few accounts have situated the administration in the historical context of the British state or systematically examined these centralising tendencies. This article attempts to address these omissions. First, through a critical assessment of the literature on authoritarian neoliberalism, the concept of ‘executive centralisation’ is developed within the context of the British state. Second, the article applies this revised framework to the early stages of the Johnson government. While a dominant executive is a long-standing feature of the British political system, it is argued that Johnson has pursued a multifaceted centralisation strategy facilitated by the context of Brexit and COVID-19. In identifying the role of consent in this process, the article augments scholarship on ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ as a moment in neoliberal governance characterised by the ascendance of coercive governing strategies.

Fascists, Freedom, and the Anti-State State

Abstract Most theorisations of fascism, Marxist and otherwise, have taken for granted its idolatry of the state and phobia of freedom. This analytical common sense has also inhibited the identification of continuities with contemporary movements of the far Right, with their libertarian and anti-statist affectations, not to mention their embeddedness in neoliberal policies and subjectivities. Drawing on a range of diverse sources – from Johann Chapoutot’s histories of Nazi intellectuals to Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s theorisation of the anti-state state, and from Marcuse’s explorations of fascist competitive individualism to debates on neoliberal authoritarianism – this essay sketches the counter-intuitive but disturbingly timely image of a fascism enamoured of freedom and at odds with the state.

Family Debilitation: Migrant Child Detention and the Aesthetic Regime of Neoliberal Authoritarianism

This paper proposes the term “family debilitation” to point to the ways that institutionalized child abuse operates to perversely generate biopolitical authority, a strategy of negative biopolitics that is integral to the aesthetic regimes of settler colonialism and neoliberal authoritarianism. The paper attends to two scenes of child detention in the US: Scene 1 US/Mexico Border 2017 concerns migrant children caught up in the bordering regimes of Donald Trump’s America; Scene 2 Pennsylvania 1879 concerns indigenous children caught up in the disciplinary regimes of “civilizing” education. As we attend to the connections between these scenes an argument emerges that situates racialized child detention and abuse within the aesthetic technologies biopolitical sovereignty. The “problem” to which these practices serve as a kind of technical answer is not any kind of problem with migrant and indigenous families themselves but rather is a problem of government—specifically the legitimacy deficit that exists where biopolitical states openly participate in dispossession and the destruction of life.

Academia and authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey: the embodied consequences of the ‘peace petition’

ABSTRACT In January 2016, 2212 academics have signed a petition to criticise human rights violations in Kurdish cities, and faced grave consequences as a result. By presenting the experiences of six dismissed signatory academics, this article aims to show the effects of authoritarian neoliberal policies on higher education institutions. After demonstrating the AKP government’s response to the petition, it accounts for the ways in which authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey responds to its critics, the strategies that it employs to discipline critical academics, and its effects on these individuals and on the Turkish academia as a whole.

Statecraft on cement: The politics of land-based accumulation in Erdoğan’s Turkey

This article contributes to the literature on the role of the state in land-based accumulation by presenting an explanatory framework on the case of contemporary Turkey, a case marked by an unprecedented construction boom that carries the distinct mark of the ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party). Land-based accumulation has constituted a defining aspect of the political economic setting of the AKP era. An investigation of the motivations behind this strategy reveals that it has been instrumental for the ruling party’s political agendas. Through land-based accumulation, the AKP has been able to cultivate a new generation of firms in the construction industry with connections to the party, consolidate its power among domestic capital and develop new mechanisms to finance party politics. Furthermore, symbolic and material manifestations of land-based accumulation have been abundantly used in the party’s propaganda machinery to provide ideological legitimation. Overall, the AKP’s authoritarian grip on power has been forged through the political-ideological resources provided by land-based accumulation. Contrary to the widespread narratives of weakening, passive or merely facilitating states, the case of Turkey brings to the fore an instance of boosting state agendas through land-based accumulation. My findings underline the need to combine capital-switch arguments with a Gramscian political conjunctural analysis for a fuller understanding of the role of the state in land-based accumulation, and point to the urban roots of neoliberal authoritarianism.

Populist authoritarian neoliberalism in Brazil: making sense of Bolsonaro's anti-environment agenda

In Brazil, the looming threat of mass extinction has prompted increasingly exceptional measures to protect sensitive biomes. At the same time, such measures threaten to curtail capitalist expansion and thus Brazil's neoliberal model of economic development. Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 presidential campaign responded to these threats by fueling anti-environment sentiments and anti-environmentalist enmity. Once inaugurated, he immediately began the work of dismantling national environmental governance structures. Yet his strategies for doing so are often masked by what this article describes as a 'firehouse effect', where his tactics appear chaotic, confused, and lacking any particular goal. The article uses a combination of interviews with 35 environmental experts, participant observation, and a review of secondary sources to zoom in on Bolsonaro's anti-environmentalism within the context of the contemporary turn toward populist authoritarian neoliberalism. By focusing on how Bolsonaro's policies serve to weaken protective environmental measures that limit capitalist extraction, the article unearths the major anti-environment strategies of the Bolsonaro administration. This framework thus allows us to see through the 'firehouse effect' to make some sense of Bolsonaro's methods, further building on emerging research on the political ecologies of the contemporary populist authoritarian neoliberal turn. Moreover, the article shows the utility of applying a generalized populist authoritarian neoliberal framework to a particular context in order to identify its local processes and specificities.

Trustees Instead of Elected Mayors: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Removal of Kurdish Mayors in Turkey

AbstractThis article examines the Turkish State’s recent practice of removing pro-Kurdish mayors and appointing trustees in their place without holding new elections. By comparing previous cases of removals of pro-Kurdish mayors to post-2016 practices, it argues that the discursive shift in legitimizing recent anti-democratic governmental practices should be read in relation to authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey. To this end, it analyzes a Twitter account dedicated to promoting public services of trustee-ran municipalities (oluyor.net) and 89 YouTube videos that feature the trustees themselves. By demonstrating the ways in which the trustees themselves promote their work in Kurdish-populated cities, it underlines the dangers of authoritarian neoliberalism in subordinating democratic mechanisms to economic development and providing better public services. However, by studying the results of the following 2019 local elections in these 89 trustee-appointed municipalities, this article shows that the local people mostly continue supporting democratic mechanisms by electing pro-Kurdish candidates even in unfair electoral conditions.

Three varieties of Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Rule by the experts, the people, the leader

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.

Land financialisation, planning informalisation and gentrification as statecraft in Antwerp

This article offers insight into the role of the state in land financialisation through a reading of urban hegemony. This offers the basis for a conjunctural analysis of the politics of planning within a context in which authoritarian neoliberalism is ascendant across Europe. I explore this through the case of Antwerp as it underwent a hegemonic shift in which the nationalist neoliberal party the New Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-VA) ended 70 years of Socialist Party rule and deregulated the city’s technocratic planning system. However, this unbridling of the free market has led to the creation of high-margin investment products rather than suitable housing for the middle classes, raising concerns about the city’s gentrification strategy. The consequent, politicisation of the city’s planning system led to controversy over clientelism which threatened to undermine the N-VA’s wider hegemonic project. In response, the city has sought to roll out a more formalised system of negotiated developer obligations, so embedding transactional, market-oriented informal governance networks at the centre of the planning system. This article highlights how the literature on land financialisation may incorporate conjunctural analysis, in the process situating recent trends towards the use of land value capture mechanisms within the contradictions and statecraft of contemporary neoliberal urbanism.

Trump’s authoritarian neoliberal governance and the US-Mexican border

ABSTRACT This article considers how US border policy and the rhetorical use of the construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico expands our understanding of the authoritarian neoliberal reorganization of the state and processes of capitalist accumulation during the Trump Presidency. Our argument makes an important contribution to the literature by examining how Trump's Border Wall project is an advanced mode of authoritarian neoliberalism. To do so, the article focuses on how the border wall, as an unfinished project that has resulted in the Trump administration invoking eminent domain to take property for dubious “public good” uses related to border wall construction, expands, deepens and reinforces notions of political and economic disciplining of border populations including migrants and refugees in particular ways such as through the use of child separation and “Remain in Mexico” policies. The article situates the border wall project within a continuum of using border imaginary not just as a frontier but as a key node within the global economy. This article argues that the construction of the border wall, as a key issue in the political agenda combined with an aggressive anti-immigration policy, has been an effective populist mechanism to further insulate the deepening of a neoliberal agenda.