Neoliberalization of the state

Global city discourses rearticulate the relationships between the state, urban space and the global economy. At the local level, global city reconfigurations stamp the mark of a global economic order onto local citizenship practices. Public housing is a legacy of specific national (welfare) states where citizenship rights arose from territorially bound constitutional discourses, and is incompatible in its current form with the consumer-based rights and responsibilities of a global economic order. At the same time, property markets in high-value areas of cities like Sydney, Australia, see not only increasing presence of international investment but fundamental changes in planning and governance processes in order to facilitate it. Global market-oriented discourses of urban governance promote consumer “performances of citizenship” and a graduated approach to the distribution of rights, including the right to housing. In this article we explore what is new about neoliberal approaches to public and social housing policy, and how public tenants respond to and negotiate it. In Australia tenants’ right to participate in local-level democracy, and in housing management, must be reconsidered in light of the broader discourses of consumer citizenship that are now enforced on tenants as a set of “responsibilities” to the market and state.

The article describes the type and form of entreprising that characterised Soviet rural inhabitants and proposes that the definition of entrepreneurship in common and academic use contrasts the Soviet and neoliberal, post-Soviet circumstances. As a result, significant changes to organise the society according to neoliberal techniques become hidden. Further, the article demonstrates that the rural regions in Estonia do not offer a classic example of dispossession where people lose their means of production by which they become subjugated to the capitalist oppression. Instead, some of the "dispossessed" may well have acquired land and means of production during post-socialism. However, this may not necessarily empower people. Ownership does not convert directly into subsistence and stability. Yet, it does generate inequalities in access and social value. Estonian example allows unraveling how dispossession is propelled in neoliberal contexts. Inequalities, coupled with rolled back, yet nationalistically supported state, the ideal of entrepreneurial self-sufficiency and the distrust of social solidarity have triggered a remarkable fragmentation of social fabric. The article proposes that it is the post-soviet social dispossession in the form of disintegration and separation from one's fellows have made entrepreneurial opportunities no more than objects of desire and disappointment. The latter triggers further withdrawal from the social networks, as blame for failure is laid upon non-entrepreneurial selves, rather than take the form of critique of the system that has led to such dispossession.

Abstract:  The onset of the global financial crisis in 2008 has been widely interpreted as a fundamental challenge to, if not crisis of, neoliberal governance. Here, we explore some of the near-term and longer-run consequences of the economic crisis for processes of neoliberalization, asking whether we have been witnessing the terminal unraveling of neoliberalism as a form of social, political, and economic regulation. In many ways a creature of crisis, could neoliberalism now be falling to a crisis of its own making? Answering this question is impossible, we argue, without an adequate understanding of the nature of neoliberalization and its evolving sociospatial manifestations. These are more than definitional niceties. The prospects and potential of efforts to move genuinely beyond neoliberalism must also be considered in this light.

While some types of democracy can sustain ethnic and cultural diversity, others can clearly undermine it. In The Dark Side of Democracy, Michael Mann argues that extreme crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing tend to occur, or at least be legitimized, within a majoritarian democracy framework. This article broadens Mann’s approach in two directions: first, it confirms that majoritarian democracy in plural societies can provide the pre-existing institutional context where conflict, nationalism and exclusion can thrive, eventually degenerating into self-destruction. Second, it focuses on the tendency by some governments to turn to patriotism and populism as sources of legitimacy at a time when the latter appears to be crumbling. In addition, the article questions both the ‘democratic peace’ and the ‘failed democratization’ approaches for their reliance on an ideal type and fixed notion of democracy, arguing that the latter has been weakened by neoliberal globalization, particularly as it interacts with the legacy of pre-existing forms of majoritarianism. The article concludes that these forces need to be studied simultaneously in order to have a broader picture of the contemporary weakening of democratic practices and institutions within some nation-states.

On the morning of 30 June, BBC reporter Aleem Maqbool reports from Cairo, “what is today going to be remembered for? What is the 30th June going to be remembered for? Is it going to be the turning point in Egyptian politics or is it going to be remembered for violence?” But what if violence constitutes an integral, even inevitable, component of a democratic struggle? Considering the radical political transformations of the Arab world in the past two years, we cannot help but notice that, from the outset, they were attended by varying degrees of violence. In the case of Egypt, for instance, where non-violence was figuratively symbolic of the 2011 revolution, such a varnished perspective does not go without challenge. Philip Rizk pointed out that “despite the glorification of an eighteen-day revolution as non-violent, violence has been a part of this revolution since the first stone was thrown on 25 January 2011–followed three days later by the torching of police stations on the Friday of Rage–and until today.”

Feminist Theory and Structuralist Analysis is used to problematize the issue of the UN response to sexual violence in conflict, with particular attention placed on women. Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are the foci for my two core case studies, however I consider the problems I raise to be experienced universally/globally, which is demonstrated with reference to other case studies and conflicts. It is my belief that the UN resolution is inadequate in addressing the multi-layered problems women in conflict and post-conflict situations face daily. Since the resolution does not exist in a vacuum I have considered the department which created the resolution as well as other actors involved in the implementation of such resolutions. The themes within this book include not only sexual violence, women, the UN & International Law but also structural problems related to poverty & the global political economy. This work demonstrates the universal nature of the structural problems, as well as the connections between poverty, regional destabilization and sexual violence (against women). Scholars of IR, Gender & Development will find this book most useful and interesting.