Neoliberal Forms Of Governance Research Articles

Sustainable Construction through the Lens of Neoliberal Governance: The Case of Vernacular Building Systems in Catalonia, Spain

This paper asserts that neoliberal forms of governance are increasingly found in construction systems in Spain, a fact which becomes especially problematic when considering vernacular construction systems. Technological management and policy are both becoming more focussed on the promotion and consolidation of ‘expert systems’ at the expense of ‘different’ (and in particular) vernacular systems, which are processes which influence minds, and fundamentally shape subsequent actions. This paper adopts an ethnographic approach, undertaking investigation into the complexity of commonly found building systems, based upon empirical evidence gathered in the region of Catalonia. Focussing research on local vernacular construction systems reveals the extent to which the operation of distinct sets of managing ‘technologies’—embedded in specific practices such as auditing—becomes instrumental in shaping local construction practices. Currently, locally distinctive practices are deeply impacted by social influences generated far away, which have the consequences of significantly influencing, diluting, or even erasing vernacular building systems, even where these represent an important source of sustainable building techniques.

The Dutch see Red: (in)formal science advisory bodies during the COVID-19 pandemic

We analyse the roles, dynamics and logic of science advice in structuring the Dutch response to the COVID-19 pandemic, from January 2020 to December 2020. We address how the Dutch government responded by paying attention to styles of governance and expert advice. We argue that the Dutch response was shaped by the interplay of corporatist, deliberative and neoliberal forms of governance, in particular, how early corporatist tendencies seemed to create consensus during the first phase of the pandemic but quickly led to criticism and tension, most visibly at the onset of the second wave, as corporatist and neoliberal responses conflicted with deliberative and pluralist political engagement. Situating different science advisory bodies in this dynamic, we highlight how science–policy interactions and conflicts that evolved with the dynamics of the pandemic can be understood within this triad and as reflective broadly of the endurance of the Dutch model of polder governance.

Smart City Toronto: Extraction, Enclosure, Rentier Capitalism

Background: The failure of Sidewalk Labs’ smart city initiative in Toronto provides insight into the imperatives and contradictions of platform capitalism. Analysis: A political economy analysis reveals why this Alphabet subsidiary sought to expand the project beyond the parameters of the initial plan, stepping into a vacuum created by neoliberal forms of governance. Ultimately, the company’s expansionism resulted in a political backlash that scuttled the plan. Conclusion and implications: This case study highlights the political contradictions of platform capitalism, emphasizing the diversification of corporate strategies characterized by the extraction of data, enclosure of platforms, and accumulation of rentier profits.

Labouring for inclusion: debating immigrant contributions to Chile

ABSTRACT Over the last three decades, Chile has experienced transformative migratory flows, becoming more diverse in the process. As migrants from Latin American and Caribbean countries settle in Chile, they often face stereotypes laminating race, ethnicity, and nationality and shape paths toward inclusion through the job market. Amid the implementation of visa restrictions and the rollout of a new migration law, current debates over migration foreground ideas about which groups productively contribute to the nation’s development – discourses often linked to labour. Government rhetoric and policy debates frame a broader discussion of the role of migration in Chile, with both Chileans and migrants alike employing discourses of hard work and discipline to dialectically define what it takes to be a “contributing migrant”. Drawing on ethnographic data, I illustrate how migrants make claims to inclusion through their labour, thus engaging with a coercive form of neoliberal governance proffering only conditional recognition.

Foucault against the Foucauldians? On the problem of the neoliberal state

The survival of neoliberal forms of governance after their apparent repudiation during the Global Financial Crisis is a problem that continues to generate significant scholarly controversy. One of the most influential accounts of the survival of neoliberalism in the crisis draws on Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics to claim that states intervening to support financial markets during the crisis was simply the neoliberal system working as expected. Returning to Foucault’s original text, I argue this account constitutes a systematic misreading because it treats Foucault as having developed an instrumentalist theory of the neoliberal state, a possibility Foucault explicitly rejected. I suggest that the reasons that led Foucault to reject an instrumentalist theory of the state remain just as relevant today, and accordingly argue for a return to Foucault’s methodological decision to treat neoliberalism not as a theory of state but as a discourse which constructs a novel bio-political governmentality.

Social Work With Criminalized Women: Governance or Resistance in the Carceral State?

Drawing on findings from a Foucauldian-inspired critical discourse analysis, this article examines the hegemonic ways in which social work engages with criminalized women. Utilizing the analytic of governmentality, I explore the construction of criminalized women in contemporary social work discourse and ask how those constructions support and shape practice with criminalized women. Results show that knowledge production in social work serves as a significant site through which the profession draws on, but also resists, carceral logics. I begin by discussing contemporary social work as a form of neoliberal governance. Specifically, I illuminate the ways in which social work is implicated in surveillance and control and how this involvement is obscured under the framework of helping. I then describe how bold counter discourses, such as those offered by abolitionist and anti-carceral thought foster spaces of resistance within the profession. I argue that social work should claim a stance of radical imagination in which we take seriously the calls to abolish the varying manifestations of the carceral state.

Flexible Selves in Flexible Times? Yoga and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Istanbul

This article adds to contemporary analyses of neoliberal subjectivities by focusing on middle-class yoga practitioners in Istanbul, Turkey. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it questions the dominant interpretation of yoga as a form of neoliberal governance and suggests that within the nexus of neoliberal globalisation, autocratisation and precarisation, practices that are often labeled ‘lifestyle consumption’ might provide individuals with the discursive tools to question entrepreneurial norms. Expanding the geographical scope of existing research as well as providing a theoretically informed analysis of empirical data, the article makes an original contribution to understandings of neoliberal subjectivities by bridging work on neoliberal subjectivities and lifestyle politics.

Degrowth and the Blue Belt: Rethinking marine conservation in the British Overseas Territories

The UK Government has developed a ‘Blue Belt’, a network of large Marine Protected Areas involving seven British Overseas Territories. The Blue Belt is now one of the world's largest enclosures of space for conservation, enclosing four million km2 of ocean in some of the most remote spaces on earth. To be economically feasible, the UK's bold conservation targets are integrated with wider tourism, fishing, and economic growth-motivated governance agendas. This commentary argues for a degrowth alternative to the Blue Belt's development. The goal of degrowth is not to prevent increases in Gross Domestic Product, nor is degrowth the equivalent to recession in a growth economy. Sustainable degrowth provides a conservation framework for ensuring a just transition from neoliberal forms of governance that places local well-being and welfare needs above the interests of state actors, private investors, and holiday makers. In the current context of the Blue Belt, the commentary considers three nascent degrowth concepts for improving things: 1) blue degrowth, 2) degrowth tourism, and 3) degrowth environmental governance. The paper argues that instead of separating the UK from other spaces where biodiversity targets are realised, these targets should be used as opportunities to reconcile the UK's colonial relationships with the territories, to build local capacity, and resilience.

Exposing children to pornography: How competing constructions of childhood shape state regulation of online pornographic material

This article discusses policy debates in the United Kingdom and Australia concerning the regulation of online pornographic content as it relates to children. Through a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with key stakeholders at the negotiation table, we find that rather than positivist notions of the ‘developing’ and ‘vulnerable’ child dominating policy discourse, post-modern representations of the ‘savvy’ and ‘agentic’ child have come to dominate policy culture and outcomes. In this scenario, the regulatory role of states in providing media protection is diminished, while neoliberal forms of governance that emphasise the responsibility of individuals, including parents and children, have come to dominate the emerging policy landscape.

Governing pluralistic liberal democratic societies and metis knowledge: The problem of Indigenous unemployment

High rates of unemployment among Indigenous Australians in comparison to non-Indigenous Australians have been rendered a public policy problem by successive Australian governments. The solutions are often coercive forms of neoliberal governance. However, where Indigenous people are driven by different motivations, ideas and aspirations in relation to work, Indigenous employment policies face the issue of epistemological dissonance. This article aims to contribute to understandings of unsuccessful Indigenous employment policy outcomes by introducing a new conceptualisation of policy and governance limitations and social action. An overview of governmentality literature is coupled with a review of the concept of metis knowledge – a form of know-how that comes from contextualised, practical experience – and its role in limiting the aims of governance. Indigenous employment policy that governs through pedagogical technologies applied to the Indigenous workforce demonstrates this limitation through its assumptions that the metis knowledge required to become ‘work-ready’ can be transferred unproblematically.

Politics after National Development: Explaining the Populist Rise under Late Capitalism

Ten years after the global financial crisis, the world is living through times of great political uncertainty and turbulence. While the current historical juncture has presented renewed opportunities for progressive articulations against marketisation and the individualisation of risk (i.e. neoliberalism), more prominently it has awoken the ghosts of nationalism and various reactionary forms of populism. This article’s contribution is in contextualising this novel momentum within late capitalism. We argue that the combination of techno-logistical transformations in production and pro-market policy sets that facilitated the globalisation of capital, and which dealt a death blow to national development strategies, was met by elites with intensified efforts to dislocate politics from society through processes of ‘depoliticisation’ that in turn allowed for further marketising efforts. However, this dislocation has dovetailed with a formidable social crisis characterised by unprecedented levels of inequality and vulnerability amid immense wealth, calling into question the elite consensus around neoliberalism. While the leaders of the current political reawakening often distinguish themselves against post-political forms of neoliberal governance, they remain confronted by powerful interests and significant structural constraints as they promote solutions for global problems within the anachronistic confines of the nation-state.

Political ecology III

Different intellectual strands within political ecology have analyzed changing forms of property institutions and the commons in particular. While engaging these topics from a number of different perspectives, they share common understandings of property rights as relational, contested, and shaped by broader political economies. What is less acknowledged is that political ecologists have, in different ways, studied the hybrid and mixed forms of property institutions that are often concealed or ignored in the tripartite division of private, common, and national properties that dominates institutionalist literatures. These theoretical commitments and research experiences are well-suited for understanding the proliferation of hybrid property institutions associated with neoliberal forms of governance. By briefly reviewing their synergies, this report seeks to bring these diverse strands in conversation. It concludes by highlighting useful avenues of political ecological research and practice that are raised by commoning scholarship and activism.

A Discussion of Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

A Discussion of Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

A Discussion of Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

A Discussion of Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

A Discussion of Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

A Discussion of Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

From deinstitutionalisation to consumer empowerment: mental health policy, neoliberal restructuring and the closure of the ‘Big bins’ in Victoria

ABSTRACTThe paper presents an historical critical policy analysis of deinstitutionalisation and the introduction of neoliberal forms of governance in mental health policy. It focuses particularly on a major period of policy reform in the 1980s and 1990s in Victoria, Australia. Many of the particularities of the Victorian experience can be generally observed with deinstitutionalisation throughout the world. In particular, the policy discourse of rights and entitlements, consumer choice and empowerment, at times stood in tension with the service void created by the transition from large, stand-alone psychiatric institutions, to dispersed forms of service provision outside the hospital. Further, certain policy features could be seen to perpetuate patterns of coercion, abuse and neglect. This article offers a number of potential lessons for mental health law, policy and practice today, which is poised for further advances of neoliberal governance, including through the policy of personalised services, individualised disability funding and human rights-based reform.

Debtfarism and the Violence of Financial Inclusion: The Case of the Payday Lending Industry

The official development literature is replete with studies about the alleged benefits of financial inclusion in reducing poverty in the global South. Few analyses have sought to critically explore advanced forms of financial inclusion in the global North, particularly with regard to the highly lucrative and controversial payday lending industry in the USA. This article fills this void by examining the political economic landscape of payday lending in Ohio. In contrast to the mainstream literature, our analysis suggests that the payday lending industry is not a natural feature of the market that has led to universal benefits for all. Instead, we argue that payday lending not only benefits private creditors at the expense of the working poor, but also that the latter have been made to rely on these expensive loans to meet basic subsistence needs largely through the structural violence of labor market restructuring and neoliberal forms of governance, such as workfarism and ‘debtfarism.’