Neoliberal Model Of Governance Research Articles

Can Russian Research Policy be Called Neoliberal? A Study in the Comparative Sociology of Quantification

National research evaluation systems that use metrics for the assessment of academic institutions are usually regarded as exemplifying the same neoliberal model of governance that, with minor variations, is implemented worldwide. This essay argues, however, that despite apparent similarities, metrics are used for different aims in different national cases. It compares the use of figures in the UK RAE/REF, a prototypical neoliberal framework, with various schemas of assessment that have been used to evaluate Russian universities in recent decades. It argues that in the RAE/REF, the principal role of statistics is to solve ‘the lazy agent’ problem by creating a prisoner's dilemma for academic institutions, while in the Russian case, statistics serve to solve ‘the corrupt knower’ problem, preventing collusion between the assessor and the assessed. The essay concludes by putting forward some hypotheses on the origins of different approaches to quantification.

The Current State and Trends in the Management of the Socio-Economic Development of Russia

The author supports the opinion of a number of well-known domestic and Western economists and political strategists that there is a crisis in the world order, which manifests itself in the growing contradictions between the declared globalism and the hegemony of the United States, and the current model of capitalism does not ensure economic growth not only in satellite countries and developing countries, but also in the United States. The article examined the results and possible consequences of the application of the neoliberal model of governance and preservation of power by the current comprador bourgeoisie in Russia. As the analysis showed, their implementation is based on such postulates and mechanisms as denationalization of the economy, solving budget deficit problem by selling state assets to foreigners, and the reduction of the functions of the central bank to the functions of a branch of the US Reserve System and a currency exchange office. The study showed that it is dead-end road inevitably leading to a gradual loss of the country's economic and political sovereignty. To overcome negative trends, the authors proposed a number of measures to restore an integral mechanism for managing socio-economic development, including those related to the creation of an appropriate institutional environment, formation of new management structures and restructuring of the management mechanism itself.

Different Professional Ideal Types in the Inter-sectoral Management of Psychiatric Healthcare Trajectories

Aim: To investigate how differences in types of professions and rationalities affect the management of inter-sectoral trajectories in psychiatric health care in the Capital Region of Denmark.
 Background: Some psychiatry users experience a lack of coherence between the mental health care treatment provided at hospitals and run by the regions, and that provided at residential psychiatric units run by municipalities. The literature points to various challenges in this field of research, related to transitions that need rethinking and further examination.
 Method: The approach is an eclectic use of theory and methods in a theory-governed analysis of empirical data built up from focus group interviews with professionals in mental health care centres and social psychiatric residencies. We classify the positions from the data using a theoretical framework based on Max Weber's theory of ideal types and from Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus. Our analysis outlines a theory about the practice of transitions in inter-sectoral trajectories in psychiatric health care. 
 Results: From the empirical material, we were able to construct different professional ideal types related to mental health care psychiatry and social psychiatry. The construction points to differences in the habitual basis of action that maintains institutional distinctions.
 Discussion: Differences in ideal types are connected to the prevailing positions of the two sectors, in which management in health care centres follows a dominant medical rationality, and management in residencies draws on a social and social educational legitimacy.
 Conclusion: We find differences between the rationalities and habitus of staff at regional hospitals and municipal residencies that enable us to explain how management contributes to trajectories in psychiatric health care. Choices concerning trajectory transitions relate to a combination of habitual professional inclinations and the management of trajectories streamlined through illness classification based on a neoliberal governance model. Future management must be aware of the different rationalities linked to professional and institutional logics when planning; and this requires reflexivity and awareness of the management of intersectoral collaboration.

‘Fat cat’ lawyers and ‘illegal’ migrants: the impact of intersecting hostilities and toxic narratives on access to justice

ABSTRACT This article examines how three spheres of hostility intersect to prevent effective access to justice for those living with insecure immigration status. The neoliberal governance model, the barren justice landscape and the hostile environment are supported by the cynical construction of the ‘fat cat’ lawyer and the toxic ‘folk devil’ narrative of the ‘bogus’ asylum seeker. To the extent that the judiciary have frustrated the more obvious, ideologically driven, attempts to restrict access to justice for migrants, the austerity predicated measures pursuant to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) have completely altered the legal landscape. The analysis is informed by the findings of the ‘Legal advice and support for persons with insecure status’ project (hereafter LAPIS) in Nottingham which explores the challenges faced by service providers and the lived experiences of those with insecurity of status. It is clear that access to justice is a passport to the realisation of other rights, yet participants struggled to access a remedy because legal advice is too often out of reach.

Redefining land’s investability: towards a neo-nationalization of resources in Australia?

ABSTRACT Between 2010 and 2015, the Australian government revised its legal regime for foreign investment in Australian farmland. As part of a broader public debate surrounding what some considered to be the ‘selling out’ of Australian farmland to foreigners, this revision has been a contentious political process revolving around Australia’s ‘national interest’ and a recurring quest for transparency regarding the governmental screening process of foreign investments in Australian land. By examining the governmental debate surrounding the appropriate treatment of land within the country’s legal framework, this paper first reveals the endogenous role of the state in redefining what we term the ‘investability’ of land – the multidimensional elements that shape investment parameters and their assessment by stakeholders. Second, we argue that these debates show a clear reinvigoration of the national significance of land, which in turn challenges Australia’s longstanding political position that being ‘open for business’ is best for its national interests. This paper demonstrates the frictions that emerged as a neoliberal governance model – responding to foreign interests in land – became infused with elements of resource nationalism. We suggest that this conflation of neoliberalism and resource nationalism can be interpreted as a ‘neo-nationalization’ of resources.

СОЦИАЛЬНО-ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКИЕ КОНФЛИКТЫ В РАМКАХ «КАПИТАЛИЗМА ПЛАТФОРМ»

The article is devoted to the analysis of the structure, the peculiarities of functioning and the socio-economic and political effects of the «platform capitalism». The basis of this model is the network effects produced by the integrated information and communication infrastructure, which contribute to the monopolization and the constant expansion of platform companies into new areas. The principle of functioning of this infrastructure is the continuous collection and further monetization of data extracted from the interactions of individuals among themselves or with one of the elements of a digitalized economy or government structures. Such an infrastructure — forms a potential threat of strengthening state and corporate control over citizens. In addition, the activities of platform companies produce negative effects on the labor market, reinforcing the process of precarization of employment. The integrated information and communication infrastructure of platform companies form a system of a kind of «digital Taylorism», which deprives the employee of autonomy and privacy in the workplace. The influence of digitalization, subjected to the technocratic logic of the neoliberal model of governance in democratic countries, strengthens the de-politicization of relations between the citizen and the state and further changes the balance of power between labor and capital in favor of the latter. Large-scale protests of the last years against the companies of “capitalism of platforms” demonstrated the structural contradictions of this model and formed new forms of organization and actions of grassroots workers of the “digital economy”.

Be free? The European Union’s post-Arab Spring women’s empowerment as neoliberal governmentality

This article analyses post-Arab Spring EU initiatives to promote women’s empowerment in the Southern Mediterranean region. Inspired by the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, it investigates empowerment as a technology of biopolitics that is central to the European neoliberal model of governance. In contrast to dominant images such as normative power Europe that present the EU as a norm-guided actor promoting political liberation, the article argues that the EU deploys a concept of functional freedom meant to facilitate its vision of economic development. As a consequence, the alleged empowerment of women based on the self-optimisation of individuals and the statistical control of the female population is a form of biopower. In this regard, empowerment works as a governmental technology of power instead of offering a measure to foster fundamental structural change in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) societies. The EU therefore fails in presenting and promoting an alternative normative political vision distinct from the incorporation of women into the hierarchy of the existing market society.

Planning's “Failure” to Ensure Efficient Market Delivery: A Lacanian Deconstruction of this Neoliberal Scapegoating Fantasy

Our neoliberal governance model places a burden on planning to often take “responsibility” for the failure of market-lead governance to deliver its policy promises of betterment, security and future enjoyment. These include promised, but often-unachievable policies, such as those of increased global competitiveness for areas of structural economic decline; or housing affordability in areas of population growth and constrained land availability. Resultant policy failures then result in a scapegoating response where planning is held responsible. Examples include that economic development, or housing affordability, is obstructed by planning impediments, such as regulatory controls or process delays, which are claimed to hamper efficient market delivery. To deconstruct this neoliberal fantasy that planning often impedes policies for market-lead success, the article will first document exemplars of this scapegoating process. It will then explore the role of fantasy and ideology in governance policy formulation and, from a Lacanian perspective, the theorization that underlies this process. Then, it will investigate the role of the “scapegoat” for public policy facilitation so as to explain why planning is often placed in this role, and why this role is often ideologically necessary, at least for neoliberal governance, when planning undertaking its statutory responsibility of facilitating the public interest.

The Law and Its Illicit Desires: Transversing Free Market Claustrophobia and the Zombie Imaginary in Dredd 3-D

With the rise of biopolitical modernity, states justify both the existence of zombies and their monopoly on coercive violence via an imperative to care for the populations within their purview. But biopolitics' intrinsic link to the rise of a neoliberal model of governance, demonstrated by Foucault (2008), places a contradiction at the heart of the entire project: The exploitation inherent to capitalistic accumulation runs counter to the interests of the subjects from whom the system extracts surplus value. This article examines how the zombie imaginary and free market claustrophobia reinforce each other, bolstering confidence in state-supported and often racialized forms of violence despite mounting evidence that the socioeconomic system itself is a primary source of social ills. A recent science-fiction (sci-fi) film, though not a zombie narrative in the strict sense, nevertheless provides a telling example of the generic pattern at play. By evoking the vocabulary of chronic social crisis, the sci-fi film 3-D (released in 2012, hereafter called Dredd) addresses issues regarding the policing of cultural difference that beset Western nations struggling to maintain a position of dominance in a shifting geo-politics. Rather than directing critique toward the structural determinates of this ongoing crisis (such as the role played by Western nations as the police force for a capitalist marketplace that produces the very crises it purports to manage), Dredd recuperates potentially dissenting energies back toward support of the system itself, displacing what should be a political-economic critique onto specific racialized and gendered subjects. These discriminatory, racist imperatives are hidden behind a superficial commitment to diversity and a more humane police force. Language: en

Victims, civil society and transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The role of victim organizations in the transitional justice process is examined in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). These organizations emerged in the context of the top-down accountability agenda driven by the international crisis intervention in the Balkan wars and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). By contrast, in Latin America victim organizations emerged as a self-conscious movements of individuals galvanized by their traumatic experience of state repression and demanding accountability from the bottom-up. In BiH accountability became a condition for re-establishing state political and legal authority but also international financing for reconstruction and progress towards EU accession. Victim organizations were part of the NGO sector which grew rapidly in response to the neoliberal governance model of selforganizing civil society to transform post-socialist and postwar BiH. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), run largely by professional middle class displaced from careers in the downsized state bureaucracy, became intermediaries between external donors and war affected populations. Victim organizations participated in the transitional justice process by supporting victims/witnesses in international and national prosecutions, tracing the missing persons and supporting the right of return of displaced populations. In BiH, victims’ organizations did not emerge as social movements advocating for citizenship and social justice, but became incorporated in the neoliberal governance model, sponsored by international agendas for stabilization, democratization and EU accession.

Devolution and the Politics of Development in Northern Ireland

The reintroduction of devolution in Northern Ireland is widely interpreted as the working out of the Belfast Agreement (1998) which aimed to embed political consensus in shared institutions of the state. However, such analysis tends to be limited with regard to wider political economy readings of the devolution project and historic struggles to find an appropriate institutional fix to manage different forms of crisis. Peace and stability have, it is argued, permitted Northern Ireland's reentry to global markets and circuits of capital with new governance structures being assembled to reconfigure ‘post-conflict’ economic space. We argue that the onset of devolution has promoted a mix between ethnosectarian resource competition and a constantly expanding neoliberal model of governance. Devolved neoliberal structures that sustain social polarisation may perpetuate strategies of resistance that could cut across and challenge ethnosectarian politics and deepening social segregation.

Using the Master's Tools? Neoliberal Conservation and the Evasion of Inequality

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's HouseAudre Lorde (1983)ABSTRACT Recently, a number of prominent conservationists have declared the last quarter century of global efforts to unite conservation and development through so‐called integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) an overwhelming failure, asserting that there are likely to be irreconcilable trade‐offs between environmental preservation and enhancing human well‐being that future policy will have to take into account. I suggest, however, that such trade‐offs may be less an inherent feature of the world than an artefact of the neoliberal governance model upon which the global conservation movement increasingly relies, as embodied in the ICDP approach. In eschewing questions of resource redistribution and instead depending on economic growth to address social inequality, neoliberal conservation strategies often paradoxically force into opposition the very conservation and development interests they ostensibly seek to reconcile. This thesis is illustrated through discussion of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, a celebrated biodiversity hotspot where conservation interventions increasingly emphasize neoliberal market mechanisms designed to incentivize preservation by demonstrating the economic value ofin situnatural resources.