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- Convenor:
-
Murat Arsel
(International Institute of Social Studies - Erasmus University Rotterdam)
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- Location:
- C9 (Richmond building)
- Start time:
- 8 September, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel interrogates authoritarian neoliberal developmentalism and its manifestations in various contexts, its impact on different socioeconomic, political and ecological processes, and emerging societal responses to its claim to hegemony.
Long Abstract:
While Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis was commonly accepted as far-fetched, the march of liberal democracy as a political economic model seemed as a universal (and universalizing) process. Its progress was always going to be circuitous but dramatic reversals came to be seen as unlikely.
However, in the wake of recent global and regional crises of capitalism, this simplistic and teleological narrative has become increasingly untenable. A spate of authoritarian leaders have come to power in diverse settings such as Turkey, India, Philippines, and Ecuador to implement policies that challenge and complicate the inevitable forward march of political and economic liberalization. One way to describe this trend would be as neodevelopmentalism, where the state seeks to choose winners while orchestrating the structural transformation of the national economy. A less charitable narrative would see these states as embodying crony neoliberalism where the operation of market relations are organized in such a way to benefit a select few. In fact, these are better seen as complementary rather than competing narratives. Another dimension of this still coalescing development model is the criticism that its leaders are following populist policies or policy making styles.
The aim of this panel is to trace these developments and their variants across the globe. In doing so, the panel hopes to critically interrogate authoritarian neoliberal developmentalism and its manifestations in various contexts, its impact on different socioeconomic, political and ecological processes, and emerging societal responses to its claim to hegemony.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Murat Arsel (International Institute of Social Studies - Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Paper short abstract:
This paper interrogates the connections between authoritarianism and (neoliberal) capitalism, arguing that both are predicated upon a shared teleological vision of progress that seeks to annihilate societal dissent and difference.
Paper long abstract:
A recent statement by an Ecuadorian indigenous leader that he'd prefer 'the banker' over 'the dictator' in the presidential elections was highly controversial. The controversy did not emerge from his characterization of the aptly-named left-wing candidate Lenin Moreno (or the outgoing president, Correa) as 'the dictator'. The controversy was that an indigenous activist would make common cause with the country's business elite and urban affluent classes to vote for Lasso, 'the banker', who promised to undo many of the policies of the Correa administration that sought to create a post-neoliberal development model.
This discursive alliance was in keeping with recent geographies of resistance in Ecuador in which Amazonian indigenous communities and environmentalists have provided active support to right-wing detractors of Correa's Allianza Pais movement. By focusing on the 'Yasunidos' movement that continues to resist the abandonment of Ecuador's proposal to 'leave the oil in the soil', the paper investigates the potential of such cross-class alliances to contest authoritarian developmentalism on the basis of an appeal to shared ecological interests. Building on Raymond Williams' recognition that state hegemony over society cannot be separated from the hegemony of dominant classes over nature, it also explores the potential of cross-class alliances to enact transformative environmental practices such as the one promised by the Yasuni-ITT initiative. Ultimately, by probing the agency of cross-class alliances, the paper interrogates the connections between authoritarianism and (neoliberal) capitalism, arguing that both are predicated upon a shared teleological vision of progress that seeks to annihilate societal dissent and difference.
Victoria Araj (University of Bradford) Yagmur Savran (University of Bradford)
Paper short abstract:
Based on Sara Roy's de-development theory, the paper explores the reasons for, and an analysis of, the shift from authoritarian development to de-development in Turkey's periphery.
Paper long abstract:
Critical scholarship on Turkey's socio-economic development during the Islamic-rooted AKP government's reign has largely focused on the lags of development processes and uneven development. As the neoliberal hegemony consolidates its power through the rule of the AKP, its socio-economic relations with society have been rapidly shifting from authoritarian development to deliberate de-development of specific economic sectors and geo-political localities; as a final act to crush, alienate and break the agency of the counterhegemony. As Sara Roy explains, de-development "not only distorts the development process but undermines it entirely". State tactics include: population displacements, the 'de-skilling' and underuse of an ethnic/gender labour force, the disintegration of the economic sector in the periphery, the infringement of cultural land and water sources, the 'proletarianization' of the labour force and the purposeful "denial of access to the means of production as a form of collective punishment". In the case of Turkey, the de-development process has seen the closure and ban of Kurdish and other non-state social-welfare providers, mass purges and arrests of school teachers and academics, the degradation of the cultural and rural economic landscape of the southeast, the gentrification and commodification of neighbourhoods such as Istanbul's Tarlabaşı and green spaces such as Gezi Park, the criminalisation of non-AKP affiliated trade unions, the military blockades on Kurdish and minority economic centres, and the attempts at the elimination of Kurdish grassroots activities. These are deliberate strategies to shrink productivity and deny agency in the periphery and cannot be attributed to uneven economic development.
Pritish Behuria (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the Rwandan government's use of neoliberal and developmentalist policies amid its rapid economic recovery since the 1994 genocide.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will examine whether Rwanda can be classified as a Developmental State, showcasing the similarities and differences with the experiences of East Asian late developers. The term - Developmental State - was coined by Chalmers Johnson (1981) when he studied Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry enterprises. Through developing detailed case studies, a new group of scholars (Amsden 1989, Wade 1990, Woo-Cumings 1991) argued that latecomers in East Asia, including South Korea and Taiwan, embraced state intervention as they caught up with the industrialised West. Successful examples in East Asia showed that there could be several "pathways from the periphery" (Haggard 1990) but that developmental states shared characteristics as they tackled late development.
Several scholars (Booth & Golooba-Mutebi 2012; Mann & Berry 2015) have classified the Rwandan Patriotic Front's (RPF) government as a developmental state. However, there have been few systematic comparisons of Rwanda with the East Asian developmental states. The Rwandan government actually differs from East Asian developmental states in two important respects: it has had very limited manufacturing sector growth and it has pursued market-led policies to a much greater extent. However, the government has one crucial similarity with previous developmental states - the capacity to adapt to the concerns of different constituencies (donors, domestic elites and the population). Rwandan development has been a product of the demands of these constituencies and has taken a different form when compared to developmental states of the past.