[...] Neoliberalism doesn’t
simply diminish the power of the state – it transforms the institutions through
which state power is exercised. This transformation involves not just a ‘hollowing-out’
of state capacity, but also a delegation of power ‘up’ to transnational institutions,
‘out’ to privatised but state-regulated bodies, and ‘down’ to local institutions
working within a strict, centrally-imposed budgetary framework.
So neoliberalism amounts
to more than just deregulation. It generates new forms of social regulation and
political control [...] a reconfiguration of state power according to what has been
termed “depoliticisation”: the attempt by politicians to create the impression that
economic policy is not under their control but rather governed by neutral, usually
technocratic, third parties. [...]
Depoliticisation demonstrates
that neoliberalism has in many ways enhanced rather than limited the power of the
state. It allows politicians to pursue policies in line with their chosen growth
strategy while dodging responsibility for unpopular decisions. There Is No Alternative,
leading politicians claim, having consciously created the regime which now constrains
them.
These institutional reforms
reinforce, and are reinforced by, a dominant ideology which limits the realm of
the possible and therefore of the political. [...]
There is a contradiction
here: what is often treated as necessary and unchangeable – part of the ‘natural
order of things’ – is in fact produced by conscious political action. Depoliticisation
doesn’t just subsume the political sphere into an instrumental pro-market logic
through institutional reform, it also colonises the public imagination, rendering
‘necessary’ in the minds of voters constraints which are in fact a matter of choice.
[...]
'New Labour and the Devolution of the Axe', Scott Lavery, Bellacaledonia, 6 May 2013
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