Doing Away with the Sovereign: Neoliberalism and the Promotion of Market Discipline in European Economic Governance

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a critical reading of market discipline and its limitations as a mechanism in European economic governance. Consistent with neoliberal beliefs about market-based governance, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is premised on the functioning of the government bond market as a fiscal-policy discipliner. However, the operation of market discipline requires that neither governments nor their private creditors can rely on an authority to bail them out. It, therefore, precludes the kinds of intervention by Eurozone’s supranational institutions witnessed during the euro crisis. In the post-crisis context, efforts to strengthen market discipline continue to be frustrated by the growing reliance of financial institutions on government bond markets as well as the European Central Bank’s (ECB) active participation in those markets. Having undermined the credibility of the market as an autonomous and apolitical mechanism of discipline, European economic governance struggles to come to terms with the rise of a supranational ‘economic sovereign’ in the Eurozone.     

The Managerial Lineages of Neoliberalism

Managerialism is often depicted as a key practice of neoliberalism yet relatively little has been written by scholars of neoliberalism about the actual relationship between managerialism and neoliberalism. Usually subsumed under a functional reading of neoliberalism, managerialism has too often been understood simply as a means for neoliberal ends (i.e. to promote market rule or competition). This paper challenges this perspective on the grounds that it conflates practices that stem from two different historical lineages. As we show, managerial governance not only has a very different history than neoliberal theory, but it also rests on different principles. Its development can be traced back to the US defence sector in the 1950s and the pivotal role of the RAND Corporation. On the basis of this historical perspective, we argue for the need to analyse managerialism on its own terms and make the case for considering the rise of managerial science as a paradigmatic shift in governance. In doing so, we show how managerial governance represented a radical rupture from previous management practices and show how it profoundly reshaped how we have come to understand governance.     

Recentralization as an Alternative to Urban Dispersion: Transformative Planning in a Neoliberal Societal Context

Growing dissatisfaction with the prevailing dispersed urban form and its generalized reliance on the automobile has resulted in the formulation of planning models seeking to substitute dispersed development with recentralization. A survey of 301 planning documents with a metropolitan focus, originating from the 58 US and Canadian urban regions with a population exceeding one million, reveals widespread support for urban recentralization. But interviews with 55 planners, involved in the preparation of these plans and/or the implementation of their proposals, highlight actual and foreseen barriers to the implementation of recentralization strategies. The article interprets the popularity of recentralization in planning documents as the outcome of planners' attempts to reconcile their commitment to sustainable development with societal factors affecting planning possibilities. Still, we anticipate serious problems in achieving large‐scale recentralization due to urban development path dependencies emanating from the prevailing urban form and dynamics, institutional structures, and from the limited urban transformative potential afforded by neoliberalism.     

经济全球化、企业全球化与新自由主义

经济全球化和企业全球化是20世纪90年代以来世界最重要的经济现象,而新自由主义是风靡全球的经济思想,三者都对人们的经济生活都产生深远的影响。将经济全球化的发展史、企业全球化的时间轨迹史和经济自由主义思想的发展史相比较,三者在时间发展轨迹上存在某种逻辑的一致性。经济全球化与企业全球化进程相互促进,相互发展。新自由主义是两者迅速发展的理论基础。新自由主义思想中的理论精髓符合跨国公司的根本利益,为经济全球化和企业全球化的迅猛发展提供理论武器。     

凯恩斯主义与新自由主义的“争”与“合”

20世纪30年代至今,凯恩斯主义与新自由主义一直处于针锋相对的状态。尽管两者的理论主张背道而驰,但都曾陷入无法挽救经济危机的窘境。在欧洲主权债务危机和国际金融危机爆发后的后危机时代,世界亟待构建新的理论框架,各国亟需择取有效的宏观经济政策,由此才能促进国家经济增长。将这两者有效结合将不失为一个明智之举。     

State privatization and the unrelenting expansion of neoliberalism: The case of the Greek financial crisis

The existing literature has identified two waves of reforms within the neoliberal agenda of state privatization, deregulation and new public management. This study examines what we call the third wave of neoliberal reforms of governmentality, in which members of central governments and public servants increasingly come to think and behave like business entrepreneurs. We address the matter through the lens of crises theoretically capable of undermining neoliberalism's legitimacy. Specifically, we aim to better understand the manufacturing of consent to the neoliberal agenda of state privatization. We study the falsification of Greek public accounts as revealed in 2010, relying on empirical material, such as journalistic statements and reports from international institutions. Our analysis indicates that, although the Greek crisis provided an opportunity to question key aspects of contemporary state management, including the practice by governments of creative finance, the main problematizing trajectories articulated in both the media and political arenas did not destabilize but consolidated neoliberalism. In particular, we illustrate how discursive activity favors the emergence of a collective interpretation of crises that perpetuates the hold of neoliberalism over the social and political realms. In the discussion, we reflect on the consequences that this has for democratic processes.     

行业体制改革的普适性新解：新自由主义的悖论

诚如弗朗西斯·福山所言2008年金融危机预示着新自由主义这服药剂的失效，以新自由主义为路径的行业体制改革在拉美和苏东的失败也说明：缺乏普适性的西式“休克疗法”并不能实现行业治理的“善治”；法德的混合模式和日本的M型战略也为后发展中国家提供了有益的借鉴。然而中西方的主流学者以新自由主义治理理论分析中国的行业改革成败，并根据行业化改革的失败和经济发展巨大成就这一“中国悖论”，呼吁建立英美“政府——行业组织——公民社会”三元共治的政治、经济、社会权力架构。因此，重新评估新自由主义路径的普适性，进而“缓慢刹车战略”，而又不贸然追求新自由主义形式的中国行业体制改革未尝不会成为一种新的范式。     

The anthropocenic imaginary: political ecologies of tourism in a geological epoch

Abstract

The Anthropocene is fundamentally a social imaginary that is both shaped by and is reshaping tourism practice. In this article, we enroll the concept of the anthropocenic imaginary to describe how the Anthropocene is symbolically and materially produced as well as the ways in which it draws on the historical separation of Humanity and Nature. As the structural roots from which the anthropocenic imaginary has grown, this binary co-produces new and old forms of political and ecological inclusion and exclusion. We demonstrate how core themes in tourism studies have fertilized the seeds from which the theoretical branches of post-humanist, capitalist and ecological imaginaries in tourism have taken shape. These anthropocenic imaginaries, we argue, are appropriated in market-based solutions to environmental degradation that emanate from neoliberal contexts internal to the problem. Thus, we question the reconciliation of capitalist accumulation and environmental limits in sustainable tourism. This article and the papers in this issue push forward emerging approaches in the political ecology of tourism that recognize the Anthropocene as both a geological epoch and conceptual regime. In doing so, the issue contributes to emerging conversations on the relationship between politics, ecology and tourism in the so-called recent age of man.