Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance: A State–Theoretical Perspective

This paper discusses the recurrence and the recurrent limitations of liberalism as a general discourse, strategy, and regime. It then establishes a continuum of neoliberalism ranging from a project for radical system transformation from state socialism to market capitalism, through a basic regime shift within capitalism, to more limited policy adjustments intended to maintain another type of accumulation regime and its mode of regulation. These last two forms of neoliberalism are then related to a broader typology of approaches to the restructuring, rescaling, and reordering of accumulation and regulation in advanced capitalist societies: neoliberalism, neocorporatism, neostatism, and neocommunitarianism. These arguments are illustrated in the final part of the paper through a critique of the World Report on the Urban Future 21 (World Commission 2000), both as an explicit attempt to promote flanking and supporting measures to sustain the neoliberal project on the urban scale and as an implicit attempt to naturalize that project on a global scale.     

Challenges to Neoliberal Hegemony in Bolivia

Since 1985, Bolivia has undergone three phases of the imposition of and popular resistance to neoliberal policies. This article charts the uneven course of neoliberal hegemony beginning with the structural adjustment program in the mid‐1980s through popular uprisings between 2000 and 2003 that ousted the national government. Even though the current administration may be unable to resist World Bank and IMF pressure to continue neoliberal policies, powerful and diverse popular movements will certainly continue to contest them. This article makes two contributions to discussions of neoliberalism as a hegemonic system: it identifies problems of scale in maintaining neoliberalism, and it reminds us of the importance of coercion in maintaining hegemony.     

Urban Governance Under Neoliberalism: New Labour and the Restructuring of State‐Space

Abstract: In the UK there has been a proliferation of agencies at differing regulatory scales as part of the rescaling and restructuring of the state by New Labour, following the neoliberal policies of previous Conservative governments. This raises questions concerning the extent to which New Labour's urban state restructuring is embedded within neoliberalism, and the local tensions and contradictions arising from emergent New Labour urban state restructuring. This paper examines these questions through the analysis of key policy features of New Labour, and the in‐depth exploration of two programmes that are reshaping urban governance arrangements, namely Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes. We conclude that New Labour's restructuring is best understood in terms of the extended reproduction (roll‐out) of neoliberalism. While these “new institutional fixes” are only weakly established and exhibit internal contradictions and tensions, these have not led to a broader contestation of neoliberalism.     

Neoliberalism,Authoritarian Politics and Social Policy in China

This article explores the relationships among neoliberalism, social policy expansion and authoritarian politics in contemporary China. It argues that in the era of neoliberalism, rising new right and authoritarian governments, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to retain power by shifting politically to the right and promoting neoliberal-looking economic policies. These policies have raised average living standards but also increased insecurity for most of the Chinese population, while new social policies have facilitated marketization. Social policy expansion includes minimal cash transfers as well as social old-age and health insurance for hitherto excluded sections of the population. These policies have begun to erode long-standing urban–rural segregation, but they have added new, underfunded, social programmes rather than widening participation in existing ones, re-segregating provision so that urban elites and formal sector workers enjoy much more generous provisions than many people working informally and those without work. These social policies’ most significant dark sides thus include compounded income inequalities and the segmentation and stigmatization of the poorest. Authoritarian controls have enabled the Communist Party to avoid redistributive policies that would undermine its urban support, so that politics in China differ from the right-wing populism of new, anti-establishment authoritarian regimes.     

Making Space for “Neo‐communitarianism”? The Third Sector,State and Civil Society in the UK

During the 1990s the urban became an important "institutional laboratory" for state‐initiated policy experiments to address the social costs and political repercussions of economic polarisation and social exclusion associated with neo‐liberalism. One such policy experiment has been neo‐communitarianism, emphasising the contribution of the "third sector" to improving social welfare and reinvigorating a sense of civil society. Focusing on the UK, I examine the background to and implications of the emergence of a neo‐communitarian strategy under the "new" Labour government, which came to power in 1997. First, I consider the repositioning of the third sector within contemporary policy discourse as a result of the Labour government's programme of welfare reforms and Prime Minister Blair's "Third Way" political philosophy, which attempts to combine neo‐liberalism with a neo‐communitarian stance of stressing the importance of civil society for social cohesion. Then, I draw on Foucauldian notions of governmentality to examine how Labour's neo‐communitarian agenda has involved a fundamental reconfiguration of the governance of the third sector, centred on the creation of government–voluntary sector "compacts" at national and local levels. These compacts are of strategic importance for the restructuring of the UK third sector and so the local implications of such restructuring are then considered. In particular, case study evidence from Glasgow is used to critically evaluate government claims that the third sector can contribute to the "reinvigoration of civic life" by highlighting the importance of the internal characteristics and political environment of local third sector organisations for the differential development of social capital and citizenship.     

Authoritarian Neoliberalism,Radical Conservatism and Social Policy within the European Union: Croatia,Hungary and Poland

Exploring political and social policy developments in Croatia, Hungary and Poland, three EU member states, this article addresses the hegemonic position of authoritarianism, populism, conservatism and neoliberalism, albeit articulated differently in each state. All three countries are marked by modes of governmentality that combine heteronormative familialism, repatriarchialization, nationalism, ethnicized demographic renewal and anti-immigrant sentiments. In each, a kind of layered social divestment is occurring, delivering a radical new vision of social reproduction and fundamental differentiations in terms of access to social citizenship between those seen as ‘deserving’ of support and those who are not, who are increasingly subjected to disciplinary measures. Although the degree of welfare retrenchment varies across the cases, the radical nature of restructuring, breaking down traditional notions of left and right on welfare, is suggestive of longer-term restructurings not reliant on individual politicians or parties.     

THE SPATIALITIES OF ACTUALLY EXISTING NEOLIBERALISM IN GLASGOW, 1977 TO PRESENT

Resisting the temptation to view the neoliberalization of urban policy as unidirectional, pure and hegemonic, this article sets out to make sense of the biography of the process in one city in particular, Glasgow. It attempts to organize, marshall and discipline existing literature on the city's local economic, planning and welfare policies, so as to offer a longitudinal reading of Glasgow's encounter with neoliberal reform across the period 1977 to the present. The article questions whether Glasgow's new political‐economic dispensation is capable of stabilizing local capitalist social relations and securing a new local growth trajectory. Space emerges as a critical part of the story. Neoliberalism has interlaced with historical structures, ideologies and policies to produce a range of new hybrid and mutant socio‐spatial formations and because it does not amount to a pure and coordinated project these socio‐spatial formations contradict and collide as often as they reinforce. Precisely because of the contingent and complicated spatialities it deposits, neoliberalism will continue to struggle to secure a regulatory framework capable of stabilizing local accumulation indefinitely.     

Stabilizing neoliberalism in Bolivia: popular participation and privatization

Neoliberal theorists and development practitioners contend that economic liberalization and privatization lead to increased private sector productivity and decentralization accompanied by administrative reforms lead to greater democracy, more efficient public sector investment, and faster local development. Examination of the Bolivian case, which has been promoted as a global model for neoliberal restructuring, presents a different picture. There, economic restructuring and privatization have led to a decline in government revenues and a continuing economic crisis. Privatization of public services has led to rate hikes, which, in turn, have generated massive social protests. Political restructuring through decentralization has as often resulted in the entrenchment of local elites as in increases in truly democratic control of resources and social investments. This economic and political restructuring has also served to territorialize opposition to privatization and neoliberal economic policies and, in some areas, reinforce regional social movements. When examined together, it becomes clear how economic and administrative restructuring has sought to provide transnational firms both access to Bolivian natural resources as well as the social stability necessary in which to operate. As privatization through the Law of Capitalization further opened the country’s borders to global capital, the decentralization program through the Law of Popular Participation served to focus the attention of popular movements from national to local arenas. While foreign investment has increased, the lack of benefits for the majority of the country has led to mounting regional social protests in the face of reduced government spending on social programs and increased prices for basic services.     

英美医疗史研究综述

医疗史作为社会史研究的一个重要领域,在西方的研究已经非常成熟,欧美学者已经出版了大量的相关著作。对医疗史的研究不但涉及医疗行业本身,也涉及社会保障、社会福利、政府职能、国民收入分配、社会价值观等广泛而复杂的社会问题。由于国内关于西方医疗社会史的研究基本上还是空白,为引起学者对这一领域的重视,并方便有志人士的研究,本文对西方这一学科研究的基本情况,尤其是英美有关研究机构和研究成果做简单介绍。     

"Common–Sense" Neoliberalism: Progressive Conservative Urbanism in Toronto, Canada

This paper argues that urban neoliberalism can best be understood as a contradictory re–regulation of urban everyday life. Based on an analysis of neoliberalism as a new political economy and as a new set of technologies of power, the paper argues that the urban everyday is the site and product of the neoliberal transformation. Governments and corporations play a key role in redefining the conditions of everyday life through neoliberal policies and business practices. Part of this reorientation of everydayness, however, involves new forms of resistance and opposition, which include the kernel of a possible alternative urbanism. The epochal shift from a Keynesian–Fordist–welfarist to a post–Fordist–workfarist society is reflected in a marked restructuring of everyday life. The shift changes the socioeconomic conditions in cities. It also includes a reorientation of identities, social conflicts, and ideologies towards a more explicitly culturalist differentiation. Social difference does not disappear, but actually becomes more pronounced; however, it gets articulated in or obscured by cultural terms of reference. The paper looks specifically at Toronto, Ontario, as a case study. An analysis of the explicitly neoliberal politics of the province’s Progressive Conservative (Tory) government under Mike Harris, first elected in 1995, demonstrates the pervasive re–regulation of everyday life affecting a wide variety of people in Toronto and elsewhere. Much of this process is directly attributable to provincial policies, a consequence of Canada’s constitutional system, which does not give municipalities autonomy but makes them “creatures of provinces.” However, the paper also argues that Toronto’s elites have aided and abetted the provincial “Common–Sense” Revolution through neoliberal policies and actions on their own. The paper concludes by outlining the emergence of new instances of resistance to the politics of hegemony and catastrophe of urban neoliberalism.     

Post/neo/liberalism in relational perspective

Within a decade of the new millennium new left governments in many countries across Latin America developed new constitutions that bespeak a new, postneoliberal era, supplanting neoliberal hegemony. Debates about postneoliberalism-as-governance or as a discourse lack resolution. Drawing from Foucault's lecture series The Birth of Biopolitics, which engages the relation between neoliberalism and liberalism, as well as from his general analytic approach, we cast postneoliberalism, neoliberalism, and liberalism in relational terms relative to principles not time periods, and offer precision on how different discourses co-exist and become mutually entangled and politicized in the context of neoliberal practices. We reference points in our argument with empirical research in various Latin American contexts, and in the penultimate section we thread the argument through current dynamics in one context, Nicaragua. Although overall we concur with the critical literature about the neoliberal character of pink-tide governments in practice, in the final section we depart from the prevailing approach that focuses on formal government as the bellwether of change and conclude by drawing attention to prospects for postneoliberal practices in the microspaces of daily life. Drawing from Foucault's late scholarship on ethics and mindful of the longstanding role of informality in Latin American political economy, we clarify how postneoliberal values can materialize in everyday life while formal governmental actions and policies persist as neoliberal amid liberal, postneoliberal, as well as socialist discourses.     

The economic consequences of economists

During 1991, disquiet with the policy recommendations and ultimate economic effects of economists began to feature in debates over economic policy in Australia. One example was the emergence of a conservative critique of economic liberalism; another was the publication of Michael Pusey's research showing that ‘econocrats’, notably those in the federal bureaucracy, have distinctive, politically significant attitudes to the role of government. This paper considers the influence of economic orthodoxy as part of a broader phenomenon—the peculiarity and underdevelopment of our public institutional framework. In Australia, forms of intervention required for full employment simply do not exist. This partially explains both our comparatively poor macroeconomic performance since the 1970s and the propensity of government to embrace policies that abrogate social democratic commitments while economic conditions worsen.     

The Problem of Slums: Shifting Methods of Neoliberal Urban Government in Morocco

This article puts forward two main arguments. First, it highlights the relationship between different phases of neoliberalism in Morocco together with the specific methods and techniques of urban government that were deployed in an effort to govern the slums and their populations. A period of ‘roll back neoliberalism’ during the 1980s generated reforms that tried to increase government control over the urban territory to compensate for the negative social outcomes of structural adjustment. The subsequent period of ‘roll out neoliberalism’ coincided with the attempt to manage and regulate the slum population through new modalities of state intervention. Second, while evolutions in neoliberal government reflected a gradual process, this transition in Morocco was accelerated by security concerns following two moments of serious urban violence: the 1981 riots and the 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca. Therefore, Morocco's recent political transformations cannot be understood in terms provided by the mainstream narrative linking economic liberalization to democratization. Rather, they reflect a profound shift towards intrinsically authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government which are clearly revealed at the urban scale.     

Community asset transfer and strategies of local accumulation

Community asset transfer enables local groups to own or manage a government-owned facility and related services. For critics, it is merely an extension of rollback neoliberalism, permitting the state to withdraw from welfare and transfer risk from local government to ill-defined communities. The paper uses quantitative and case-study data from Northern Ireland to demonstrate its transformative potential by challenging the notion of private property rights, enabling communities to accumulate and creating local consumption circuits. It suggests that asset-led social enterprises are entangled in a mix of pro-market and alternative economic strategies which are necessarily traded off each other in the reproduction of social value. There is not an ethically pure form of asset transfer but the tactical adaptation of different modes of working, including the enhancement of state services as well as more independent forms of economic and social organisation. However, the analysis points to the political weaknesses of three specific projects and in particular, the lack of corporate working that has limited their reformist potential. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for more progressive forms of social economics and the skills, finance and practices that facilitate local accumulation strategies.     

A Powerhouse Reform: Conversion from the Ministry of Electric Power to the State Power Corporation of China

This paper examines the relationship between economic reform and government restructuring in China by examining the reform in the power industry in general and the conversion of the Ministry of Electric Power to the State Power Corporation of China in particular. It shows two distinct features of this relationship. One is that political and economic reforms must proceed in tandem. That is, economic reform requires ideological shifts by the Party and changes in government policies, which in turn propel changes both in government structures and in the economic structure of industries. The other is the combination of top-led and bottom-driven reform. Changes in government policies and ideological guidelines encourage and promote economic reforms in power plants in provinces and regions. Reforms adopted and confirmed from the bottom-up demand and drive political restructuring in the central government.     

Housing in the face of crisis: The influence of Israel's 2011 protest on housing policy

Do social protests affect government housing-related decisions? If so, in what way? To answer this question this study examines the influence of Israel's 2011 social protest on the government's housing policy, using an empirical cumulative-aggregative analysis of housing-related decisions over the past two decades. The empirical analysis is based on two generic classifications of government interventions commonly used in housing literature: first, decisions aimed at increasing the housing stock (supply-side), as opposed to policies aimed at augmenting consumers' financial capacity to obtain adequate housing (demand-side); and second, decisions that encourage homeownership as opposed to those that promote rental housing. The research findings show that the 2011 social protest definitely affected Israel's housing policy, because it prompted the government to engage in housing. However, the interventions introduced focused largely on increasing the inventory of housing units (supply-side) for homeownership and benefited mainly members of the middle class who qualify for mortgages and investors. Thus, despite the increase in government involvement in the post-protest period, Israel's housing policy has remained neoliberal, though in an advanced form of neoliberalism that combines market-oriented policies with centralized tendencies, which we call “centralized neoliberalism.” The study discusses the findings and their implications for various population groups. Given the current global affordable-housing crisis, the findings are relevant to many countries whose existing neoliberal housing policy is failing to address housing-market problems and challenges.     

LOCAL ECONOMIC POLICIES AND SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP IN SPANISH CITIES

This paper examines the restructuring of the local economy in Spain's largest cities, particularly Barcelona, but also Madrid and Seville, in relation to the main changes that have taken place in the urban environment since local democracy was re-established after the elections of 1979. This involves an analysis of the real capacity and impact of local council intervention in the economy and in the extension of the social dimension of citizenship. Despite their relatively small resources, local administrations have in the last few years attempted to create a more dynamic approach of leading, or at least collaborating in, economic and social reconstruction. The increasing role of localities in the economy has been particularly important since, in addition to counteracting a strong centralist tradition, it has coincided with the emergence of a new urban democratic arena which permits more social participation. However, the restructuring of state political and administrative power remains problematic at the local level due not only to the historical will of central government to apply a homogeneous pattern to heterogeneous urban realities, but also to the control that new regional governments seek to exercise over cities.     

Effects of Economic and Environmental Reform on the Diffusion of Cleaner Coal Technology in China

Despite the urgent need to address severe air pollution problems caused by China's coal consumption, diffusion of cleaner coal technologies (CCTs) has been slow. This contribution utilizes the fragmented authoritarianism model to explain this slow diffusion by examining the structure of bureaucratic decision making and changes in incentives that have accompanied fiscal decentralization and enterprise deregulation. Case studies on the diffusion of two CCTs — flue gas desulphurization (FGD) and coal washing — highlight challenges of environmental policy design and implementation during the economic reforms of the past decade. Enterprises had little incentive to adopt FGD when central government agencies disagreed on promoting the technology and local agencies did not rigorously enforce national air pollution control policies. For washed coal, production slowed when coal pricing reform and coal industry restructuring were not co‐ordinated with environmental policies. Further promotion of CCTs in China requires changes in incentive structures for local governments and enterprises, as well as enhanced policy co‐ordination among central government agencies.     

民族主义内在的困境——陈独秀国家观从民族主义到自由主义的转变

在近代中国思想史上,陈独秀堪称思想历程最为曲折的人物之一.早年他服膺民族主义,后来转奉自由主义(民主主义),又转而信仰社会主义(共产主义),晚年他的思想走向社会主义、自由主义和民族主义的大综合.本文所考察的,是陈独秀从民族主义到自由主义的转变,以及这次转变所呈现的民族主义的内在困境.     

ELECTRIFYING AFRICA: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY WITH POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The European Union anticipates alleviating future energy shortages and fulfilling renewable energy mandates by importing “green” electricity from Africa. Historical precedent and environmental consequences have largely been ignored. This article presents an environmental history of African electricity generation at a continental scale, tracing its parallel developments with colonialism, as well as its pursuit in the independence eras of development assistance and neoliberalism. Initially electricity served European interests. Independent governments' development policies involved electrification primarily for industrial development; in North Africa, universal access was also a priority. Recurrent themes and cycles of environmental constraint, environmental disruption, and displacement of consequences from one ecosystem to another are addressed. Highlighted are inter‐relationships among electricity generation, fuel supplies, ecosystems, and water cycles. Late twentieth century technologies and globalized markets re‐valued African rivers and deserts as potential energy sources. Mega‐engineering projects were rejuvenated or proposed. Rural electrification was labelled uneconomic social welfare unrelated to economic development policies of selling power through national, regional, continental and intercontinental interconnections. Historical analysis suggests new areas of research for sustainable development and alternatives to declensionist narratives. Decentralized, small‐scale plants offer models of electricity supply for industrial and domestic needs, while investment in rural electrification produced measureable economic benefit at national levels. Will the EU renewable energy mandate simply displace Europe's environmental problems to Africa? Can Africa afford another water‐intensive export commodity? Will the New African Century follow well‐established patterns of exploitation, or take new, sustainable directions?