Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Towards a New Research Agenda

Cemal Burak Tansel

For a brief period in the aftermath of the political and financial turmoil of the 2007–2008 economic crisis, the established patterns of global economic governance seemed exceptionally vulnerable to increased critical scrutiny. The crisis seemed to have undermined the legitimacy of the policies that are grouped under the rubric of 'neoliberalism' as the ultimate template of economic management for a world that had ostensibly reached the end of its history. Sanguine critics firmly pronounced the demise of neoliberalism by stating that 'the neoliberal era lasted until August 2008 when the liberalized system of global financial markets imploded' (Altvater 2009: 75), and its imminent disintegration was cautiously heralded as signalling 'a transition to a new social order, a new phase of modern capitalism beyond neoliberalism' (Duménil and Lévy 2011: 326). For some, the crisis fulfilled the crucial function of accelerating an extant push — especially in the global South — towards 'postneoliberal' models. The resultant post-crisis image of neoliberalism as a mode of economic governance in its dying moments was augmented by the budding crisis of its political counterpart. Political parties that have stood at the forefront of neoliberal restructuring over the last three to four decades faced a continuous haemorrhaging of their voter base, while the authoritarian regimes with kindred neoliberal credentials were confronted by popular upheavals — often provoked by the questions of social reproduction, that is, the crises of household, employment, indebtedness and access to services and public spaces (Schäfer and Streeck 2013: 17–23; Hanieh 2013). Yet despite the severity of the crisis of social reproduction and the widespread aversion towards austerity policies which have been unleashed by fiscally disciplined governments across the heartlands of neoliberalism it is difficult to maintain that neoliberalism has lost its position as the dominant blueprint of global economic governance. As Miguel Centeno and Joseph Cohen stipulated in the aftermath of the financial meltdown, 'The crisis and ensuing Great Recession may have shaken neoliberalism's supremacy, but it remains unchallenged by serious alternatives and continues to shape post-2008 policy' (2012: 312; Crouch 2011). Given the extent and scope of popular protests against the variegated products of neoliberalism as well as the rapid rise of anti-austerity parties and movements, the enduring hegemonic position of neoliberalism leaves us with a rather curious puzzle. While, as Nancy Fraser recently put it, the key political and economic 'institutions face legitimation deficits at every scale' (2015: 181), efforts to challenge and reform those institutions, as well as the broader ideas and practices that underpin them, seem to be facing insurmountable difficulties. This picture forces us to reconsider the strengths and weaknesses of neoliberalism and to take seriously the wide range of economic and political tools at the disposal of those who are committed to the survival of capital accumulation. In short, we need to revisit two fundamental questions: (1) What makes neoliberalism such a resilient mode of economic and political governance? (2) What are the mechanisms and processes with which the core components of neoliberalism effectively reproduce themselves in the face of popular opposition? In the light of the increasing recognition of the failure of neoliberal model of governance since the crisis — even by those responsible for the diffusion of neoliberal policies (Ostry, Loungani and Furceri 2016) — we also have to explore at which sites and areas neoliberalism is most fraught with contradictions, cracks and fissures.

This book responds to these questions by reasserting the exigency of understanding neoliberalism as a regime of capital accumulation and of recognizing the key role that states play in its protection and reproduction. Accordingly, we interrogate and unpack the modalities of 'authoritarian neoliberalism', a set of state strategies with which the variegated processes of neoliberalism are maintained and shielded from popular pressure. We argue that contemporary neoliberalism reinforces and increasingly relies upon (1) coercive state practices that discipline, marginalize and criminalize oppositional social forces and (2) the judicial and administrative state apparatuses which limit the avenues in which neoliberal policies can be challenged. This argument should not be read to the effect that the deployment of coercive state apparatuses for the protection of the circuits of capital accumulation is a new phenomenon, nor should it lead to the assumption that the pre-crisis trajectories of neoliberalization have been exclusively consensual. In advancing the analytical utility of authoritarian neoliberalism, we are not asserting that the violent, disciplinary and anti-democratic means with which the capitalist states remove the barriers to accumulation should be understood as an innovation of neoliberalism. Not only are authoritarian forms of governance and neoliberal management compatible, but, as Wendy Brown has asserted, neoliberalism is 'even productive of, authoritarian, despotic, paramilitaristic, and corrupt state forms as well as agents within civil society' (2005: 38, emphasis added). We begin our exploration by recognizing the various ways in which the 'so-called free-market reforms and globalisation' have been 'accompanied by political repression' (Mitchell 1999: 465) and emphasize the immanent tendency of the capitalist state to deploy its coercive, legal and economic power if/when 'strategies for the reproduction of capital-in-general are being challenged in significant ways' (Ayers and Saad-Filho 2014: 4). While acknowledging these important criteria, we underscore two qualifiers of 'authoritarian neoliberalism' which highlight how its tendencies and techniques of governance represent (1) a transformation of the 'normal' operation of the capitalist state (cf. Poulantzas 1978/2014: 80) and (2) a qualitative shift from the intrinsic 'illiberal' propensities of neoliberalism. Accordingly, we posit that authoritarian neoliberalisms

1. operate through a preemptive discipline which simultaneously insulates neoliberal policies through a set of administrative, legal and coercive mechanisms and limits the spaces of popular resistance against neoliberalism (Bruff 2014: 116);

2. are...