Toby Carroll and Darryl S.L. Jarvis, eds, Markets and Development: Civil Society, Citizens and the Politics of Neoliberalism, Routledge: London/New York, 2016. Hbk £105, pbk £36.99.
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RATING: 75
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The editors are right to claim that this very useful collection raises 'important and ongoing questions about the management of social conflict, the constitution of social relations and the distribution of economic wealth' (2). Originally published as Globalizations, 12, 3, 2015, it focuses on the overarching question of 'what roles various actors are playing within civil society under late capitalism in the underdeveloped world and how these roles relate to current efforts to establish and extend markets - and market society more broadly, analysing 'specific contexts that explore the contested nature of civil society in relation to the constitution of neoliberalism and the world market more generally' (1). The combination of a clear and original critical analytical framework and contemporary case studies - ranging from Southeast Asia (ASEAN, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia) to Eastern Central Europe, and from gender and migrant labour to mining, multinationals and international organisations - makes it a highly informative and innovative collection, if a rather glum one: many contributions 'highlight the integration of NGOs into the neoliberal project through the routinizing of neoliberal processes of "participation", transparency and accountability, and the degree to which neoliberalism and market discipline have been "normalized" as the legitimate means of forging the social reproduction of society' (1). The core dynamic the editors identify is simple but analytically productive - resistance to neoliberal development provokes responses that strengthen and transform it, but do not resolve its contradictions. Class struggle, in other words, but not perhaps as we would like it: 'specific class interests are reinforced by the extension of market rationality, development policy increasingly defined exclusively in relation to the logic of extending market relations, and the logic of neoliberal development practices increasingly legitimated as the singular set of policy options available for sustaining development and material accumulation' (6). The key concept here is 'deep marketisation', a step beyond the Washington consensus/post-Washington consensus 'which transforms social relations in emerging economies, re-configures local-domestic class structures and realigns their material interests with that of a broader neoliberal set of values premised on deepening engagement with global markets' (9). In other words, their sense of neoliberal development policy is that its fundamental purpose is to shape individuals and the societies in which they live to the needs of the world market.
Carroll and Jarvis argue that 'deep marketisation' furthers the interests of a 'neo-entrepreneurial comprador class' in developing states, and works not only in and through states, but also around them - through direct-to-sector finance, private finance initiatives, public-private partnerships, and 'rankings, scorecards, audits, ratings, and third party reputational indices in which countries and sectors are nominally assessed in terms of their attractiveness or risk to capital' (20). What they describe, of course, is nothing other than the active promotion of capitalism on a global scale, pursued in the context of multiple technological revolutions, rapid advances in the spatial and technical division of labour, and accelerating proletarianisation and commodification on all fronts, and working to drive them forward.
The great value of the collection, then, is that its successive case studies demonstrate the double-edged character of 'inclusive' and 'participatory' strategies that can be collectively understood as 'building markets' in various ways. Hannah Cross shows that new systems for the transfer of remittances by migrant workers (enabled by new technology and generally beneficial in terms of reduced transaction costs) constitute a 'project of financial incorporation' that displaces long-established networks based on trust, and deepens the 'entrenchment of the historical labour migration dynamic between sending communities and centres of capital' (30). Pascale Hatcher describes the World Bank group's 'social-development model' as applied to the mining sector in Laos as a 'strategy employed by pro-market interests to both contain and manage opposition to mining activities,' and thereby to 'mitigate political risk in order to facilitate capital accumulation' (46), introduced in conjunction with support from the Bank and in particular from its private sector arm, the IFC, for sweeping liberalisation of mining laws in particular and investment promotion in general. World Bank-supported investment goes ahead apace, even if the government shows little will or capacity to meet social and environmental standards, and Hatcher points to 'a certain hypocrisy in simultaneously promoting strong socio-environmental standards as well as active liberalisation of the sector to foreign investors then suggesting that any failures of the model should be blamed on the lack of a government's capacity' (61). In an exemplary contribution, Juanita Elias explores the complicity of civil society actors in the legitimation of Malaysian state practices aimed at boosting competitiveness, both through 'strengthening' the family and promoting women's entry into business roles, noting that such policies emphasise 'both the need to increase the productive capacity of women as workers and entrepreneurs in the market economy, and their socially reproductive roles as wives, mothers, and unpaid carers in the household' (70). The SMARTSTART programme devised to strengthen families by educating recently married couples in 'the importance of religious values in maintaining healthy and harmonious marriages and family life' (77) and the government-led campaign to achieve a target of 30 per cent women on corporate boards may seem at first to reflect antithetical objectives, but in the first case 'modern Islamic motherhood is conceptualised in terms of how women seek to find a balance between their working and their domestic lives' (78), while the increased presence of women on corporate boards is motivated in part at least by the idea that women will tend to challenge masculine 'groupthink', and eschew unnecessary risk-taking (81). There is continuity, in other words, in a distinctive liberal and moral 'market feminist' agenda promoted in culturally specific circumstances.
ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has generally concerned itself more with issues of regional security than with political economy. But along with a recent focus on economic integration and market-building reform has come a switch to a 'people-centred' approach that includes civil society organizations (subsequently down-graded though to 'people-oriented'). Kelly Gerard demonstrates that 'ASEAN's participatory mechanisms are structured to include particular interests amenable to its reform agenda and marginalise non-compatible groups' (90); ASEAN is late to this particular party, so the case study suggests that such mechanisms are ubiquitous across the universe of international and regional organisations. This is the only contribution in which realist, liberal and constructivist approaches are considered, though mercifully briefly, as a prelude to building on a political economy framework inspired by Jayasuriya and Rodan (2007), and focused on forms of participation that allow representation while discouraging contestation. In short, stringent conditions for affiliation make it all but impossible for civil society organisations to challenge ASEAN policy, and practically all activist organisations operate outside the formal affiliation mechanism. Ad-hoc consultations and annual forums on specific themes (such as Social Welfare and Development), the latter by invitation only, reflect a similar pattern.
The following paper, by Stuart Shields and Sara Wallin, moves the focus from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe, and in doing so meshes particularly well with Elias's contribution. Shields and Wallin, in a very different historical and cultural context to that of Malaysia, argue similarly that: 'By representing and promoting an idea of women as individualistic consumers and entrepreneurs and promoting specific reforms in social policy, the EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development] influences the negotiation of how social reproduction is mediated across state, market and household scales to ensure the intensification of exploitation' (107). The EBRD was silent on the issue of gender effects when wages and welfare were being slashed in the 1990s, but 'discovered' it as it moved towards the adoption of the politics of competitiveness. Its 2009 Gender Action Plan promoted gender equality on familiar lines, 'to better leverage the untapped potential of women in emerging markets' (114), noting the burden of care intensified by public expenditure cuts but offering no remedy; and subsequent refinements take a 'McKinsey' line that promotes the recruitment of women to managerial positions, and advocates 'improved infrastructure' as a means of reducing the amount of time women spend on unpaid work (117).
In the final paper, Jonathon Louth insists that while 'neoliberal constructions of space and capacity are replicated and reproduced in Cambodia by IFIs, the state, civil society groups, right down to local communes,' there is still scope for resistance (123). Here as elsewhere, the state pursues productive capacity and the financialisation of capitalist expansion (124); capacity-building is not a neutral term, but a political project, aimed at producing Cambodia as a neoliberal space. Louth uses a Lefebvrian framework to identify potential for resistance, in the only contribution in which the theoretical framework deployed tends to overwhelm the empirical material. As a result, the claim that 'the abstract cannot completely subsume the lived experience' is not convincingly illustrated.
Louth is not alone, however, in coming up with relatively little evidence of resistance, successful or otherwise, to neoliberal transformation. The collection as a whole provides an excellent snapshot of the extent and institutional and discursive diversity of strategies of deep marketisation, and the overwhelming impression is that the multiple mechanisms in operation across three continents that are normalizing neoliberalism and market discipline are succeeding very well - far more so, it might be added, than in the erstwhile centres of capitalist accumulation. This raises questions on a couple of issues. First, the 'neo-entrepreneurial comprador classes' identified by the editors might just be capitalist classes tout court, and it is perhaps high time to question the assumption that they are beholden or subordinated to, rather than integrated into, global circuits of capital. Second, the broad thesis is advanced at the outset 'that under late capitalism two ongoing meta crises - a crisis of accumulation and the persistent, though as yet not terminal, crisis of neoliberalism's legitimacy - have propelled a symbiotic arrangement that sees capital demanding new pools of cheap labour, new markets, and resources in order to sustain profits, which is in turn propelling the furtherance of neoliberalism and market-based policy prescriptions amid an ever-expanding meta-ideological fiat' (8). Three heretical responses suggest themselves. Capitalism has always demanded new pools of cheap labour, new markets, and resources, as Pradella reminds us; it may be better to speak of challenges or even processes of accumulation and legitimation rather than crises; and far from being late, global capitalism may just be getting into its stride.
Reference
Jayasuriya, Kanishka and Gary Rodan (2007), 'Beyond hybrid regimes: More participation, less contestation in Southeast Asia', Democratization, 14, 5, 773-794.
Carroll and Jarvis argue that 'deep marketisation' furthers the interests of a 'neo-entrepreneurial comprador class' in developing states, and works not only in and through states, but also around them - through direct-to-sector finance, private finance initiatives, public-private partnerships, and 'rankings, scorecards, audits, ratings, and third party reputational indices in which countries and sectors are nominally assessed in terms of their attractiveness or risk to capital' (20). What they describe, of course, is nothing other than the active promotion of capitalism on a global scale, pursued in the context of multiple technological revolutions, rapid advances in the spatial and technical division of labour, and accelerating proletarianisation and commodification on all fronts, and working to drive them forward.
The great value of the collection, then, is that its successive case studies demonstrate the double-edged character of 'inclusive' and 'participatory' strategies that can be collectively understood as 'building markets' in various ways. Hannah Cross shows that new systems for the transfer of remittances by migrant workers (enabled by new technology and generally beneficial in terms of reduced transaction costs) constitute a 'project of financial incorporation' that displaces long-established networks based on trust, and deepens the 'entrenchment of the historical labour migration dynamic between sending communities and centres of capital' (30). Pascale Hatcher describes the World Bank group's 'social-development model' as applied to the mining sector in Laos as a 'strategy employed by pro-market interests to both contain and manage opposition to mining activities,' and thereby to 'mitigate political risk in order to facilitate capital accumulation' (46), introduced in conjunction with support from the Bank and in particular from its private sector arm, the IFC, for sweeping liberalisation of mining laws in particular and investment promotion in general. World Bank-supported investment goes ahead apace, even if the government shows little will or capacity to meet social and environmental standards, and Hatcher points to 'a certain hypocrisy in simultaneously promoting strong socio-environmental standards as well as active liberalisation of the sector to foreign investors then suggesting that any failures of the model should be blamed on the lack of a government's capacity' (61). In an exemplary contribution, Juanita Elias explores the complicity of civil society actors in the legitimation of Malaysian state practices aimed at boosting competitiveness, both through 'strengthening' the family and promoting women's entry into business roles, noting that such policies emphasise 'both the need to increase the productive capacity of women as workers and entrepreneurs in the market economy, and their socially reproductive roles as wives, mothers, and unpaid carers in the household' (70). The SMARTSTART programme devised to strengthen families by educating recently married couples in 'the importance of religious values in maintaining healthy and harmonious marriages and family life' (77) and the government-led campaign to achieve a target of 30 per cent women on corporate boards may seem at first to reflect antithetical objectives, but in the first case 'modern Islamic motherhood is conceptualised in terms of how women seek to find a balance between their working and their domestic lives' (78), while the increased presence of women on corporate boards is motivated in part at least by the idea that women will tend to challenge masculine 'groupthink', and eschew unnecessary risk-taking (81). There is continuity, in other words, in a distinctive liberal and moral 'market feminist' agenda promoted in culturally specific circumstances.
ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has generally concerned itself more with issues of regional security than with political economy. But along with a recent focus on economic integration and market-building reform has come a switch to a 'people-centred' approach that includes civil society organizations (subsequently down-graded though to 'people-oriented'). Kelly Gerard demonstrates that 'ASEAN's participatory mechanisms are structured to include particular interests amenable to its reform agenda and marginalise non-compatible groups' (90); ASEAN is late to this particular party, so the case study suggests that such mechanisms are ubiquitous across the universe of international and regional organisations. This is the only contribution in which realist, liberal and constructivist approaches are considered, though mercifully briefly, as a prelude to building on a political economy framework inspired by Jayasuriya and Rodan (2007), and focused on forms of participation that allow representation while discouraging contestation. In short, stringent conditions for affiliation make it all but impossible for civil society organisations to challenge ASEAN policy, and practically all activist organisations operate outside the formal affiliation mechanism. Ad-hoc consultations and annual forums on specific themes (such as Social Welfare and Development), the latter by invitation only, reflect a similar pattern.
The following paper, by Stuart Shields and Sara Wallin, moves the focus from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe, and in doing so meshes particularly well with Elias's contribution. Shields and Wallin, in a very different historical and cultural context to that of Malaysia, argue similarly that: 'By representing and promoting an idea of women as individualistic consumers and entrepreneurs and promoting specific reforms in social policy, the EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development] influences the negotiation of how social reproduction is mediated across state, market and household scales to ensure the intensification of exploitation' (107). The EBRD was silent on the issue of gender effects when wages and welfare were being slashed in the 1990s, but 'discovered' it as it moved towards the adoption of the politics of competitiveness. Its 2009 Gender Action Plan promoted gender equality on familiar lines, 'to better leverage the untapped potential of women in emerging markets' (114), noting the burden of care intensified by public expenditure cuts but offering no remedy; and subsequent refinements take a 'McKinsey' line that promotes the recruitment of women to managerial positions, and advocates 'improved infrastructure' as a means of reducing the amount of time women spend on unpaid work (117).
In the final paper, Jonathon Louth insists that while 'neoliberal constructions of space and capacity are replicated and reproduced in Cambodia by IFIs, the state, civil society groups, right down to local communes,' there is still scope for resistance (123). Here as elsewhere, the state pursues productive capacity and the financialisation of capitalist expansion (124); capacity-building is not a neutral term, but a political project, aimed at producing Cambodia as a neoliberal space. Louth uses a Lefebvrian framework to identify potential for resistance, in the only contribution in which the theoretical framework deployed tends to overwhelm the empirical material. As a result, the claim that 'the abstract cannot completely subsume the lived experience' is not convincingly illustrated.
Louth is not alone, however, in coming up with relatively little evidence of resistance, successful or otherwise, to neoliberal transformation. The collection as a whole provides an excellent snapshot of the extent and institutional and discursive diversity of strategies of deep marketisation, and the overwhelming impression is that the multiple mechanisms in operation across three continents that are normalizing neoliberalism and market discipline are succeeding very well - far more so, it might be added, than in the erstwhile centres of capitalist accumulation. This raises questions on a couple of issues. First, the 'neo-entrepreneurial comprador classes' identified by the editors might just be capitalist classes tout court, and it is perhaps high time to question the assumption that they are beholden or subordinated to, rather than integrated into, global circuits of capital. Second, the broad thesis is advanced at the outset 'that under late capitalism two ongoing meta crises - a crisis of accumulation and the persistent, though as yet not terminal, crisis of neoliberalism's legitimacy - have propelled a symbiotic arrangement that sees capital demanding new pools of cheap labour, new markets, and resources in order to sustain profits, which is in turn propelling the furtherance of neoliberalism and market-based policy prescriptions amid an ever-expanding meta-ideological fiat' (8). Three heretical responses suggest themselves. Capitalism has always demanded new pools of cheap labour, new markets, and resources, as Pradella reminds us; it may be better to speak of challenges or even processes of accumulation and legitimation rather than crises; and far from being late, global capitalism may just be getting into its stride.
Reference
Jayasuriya, Kanishka and Gary Rodan (2007), 'Beyond hybrid regimes: More participation, less contestation in Southeast Asia', Democratization, 14, 5, 773-794.