Post-neoliberalism In Latin America: A Conceptual Review
Third World QuarterlyISSN: 0143-6597 (Print) 1360-2241 (Online) Journal homepage: alism in Latin America: a conceptualreviewArne Ruckert, Laura Macdonald & Kristina R. ProulxTo cite this article: Arne Ruckert, Laura Macdonald & Kristina R. Proulx (2016): Postneoliberalism in Latin America: a conceptual review, Third World Quarterly, DOI:10.1080/01436597.2016.1259558To link to this article: lished online: 20 Dec 2016.Submit your article to this journalArticle views: 103View related articlesView Crossmark dataFull Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found tion?journalCode ctwq20Download by: [University of Ottawa]Date: 04 January 2017, At: 06:28
Third World Quarterly, 8Post-neoliberalism in Latin America: a conceptual reviewArne Ruckerta, Laura Macdonaldb and Kristina R. ProulxaaGlobalization and Health Equity Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada;Department of Political Science and Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University, Ottawa, CanadabABSTRACTThe concept of post-neoliberalism has emerged in response to theelectoral victories of new left governments across Latin Americastarting in the late 1990s. Since then, it has been widely employedto understand the policy response of new left governments tothe neoliberal Washington Consensus. However, there is no clearconsensus on the utility of the concept and little effort has beenmade to systematically analyse policy and institutional trendsamongst countries pursuing post-neoliberal strategies, includingattention to variation in approaches to policy and underlyingtensions and contradictions of post-neoliberal policy development.We performed a critical literature review of post-neoliberalism and,based on this review, argue that the concept remains useful, but onlyif we understand it as a tendency to break with neoliberal policyprescriptions leading to a variety of distinct post-neoliberalisms.ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 2 May 2016Accepted 8 November 2016KEYWORDSPost-neoliberalismconceptual reviewsocial policyLatin AmericaIntroductionThe electoral victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998 launched a wave of victories byleft and centre-left governments in many Latin American countries (including Argentina,Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua). In many (although notall) of these countries, leftist political forces were swept to victory by popular discontentwith social, economic and political impacts of the neoliberal policies of the WashingtonConsensus era, leading to widespread social movement protests.1 While various terms havebeen used to categorise this phenomenon, one of the most common has been ‘post-neoliberalism’.2 However, the November 2015 victory of Mauricio Macri over Peronist CristinaFernandez de Kirchner, and the deep political crises in Venezuela and Brazil, have suggestedto some that this phase is nearing its end in the Latin American context. Even though thisjudgement may be premature, this seems an appropriate moment to review some of thethinking that has emerged in recent years about the nature of the post-neoliberal model,and some of the political, economic and social challenges faced by regimes that can begrouped under this banner.Whereas some academic scholarship has dismissed the on-going policy transformationsin Latin America as no more than ‘reconstituted neo-liberalism’3 or simply an intensificationCONTACT Arne Ruckertaruckert@uottawa.ca 2016 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com
2 A. RUCKERT ET ALof neoliberalisation rather than an emerging post-neoliberal trend,4 others have characterisedthe ‘post’ in post-neoliberalism as signifying an alternative which is inherently anti-neoliberal,5a ‘new historical movement’,6 or more specifically a ‘shift away from – though not necessarilya wholesale break with – the neoliberal tenets of privatisation, marketization, commodification,and deregulation’.7The main objective of this article is to perform a critical conceptual review of post-neoliberalism to find consensus and discord in the existing literature, in order to establish key policyand institutional trends amongst countries pursuing post-neoliberal strategies, and identifysome of the underlying tensions and contradictions of the post-neoliberal phenomenon. Weutilised both Google Scholar and EBSCOhost and identified 90 relevant articles, conferencepapers, books, and book chapters that discussed trends in post-neoliberalism. We also usedsnowball-sampling techniques to include literature mentioned in the articles identified viaour database search.8 Although our search was not limited to literature on any specific region,the overwhelming amount of research we encountered was focused on Latin America, withlittle material identified through the search on post-neoliberalism in Africa or Asia.We argue that despite the controversy attached to the term, the notion of post-neoliberalism remains useful if we understand it not as a complete break with neoliberalism, butrather as a tendency to break with certain aspects of neoliberal policy prescriptions, withoutrepresenting a set of strict policies or a clearly identifiable policy regime. In fact, the conceptual review reveals a variety of contradictions through which post-neoliberalism is unfolding, and varying degrees to which policy change has materialised along the following keypolicy dimensions: renationalisation of the economy; a new approach to trade policy withthe rise of new regional groupings; changes to revenue generation and taxation; socialspending and labour market policy; land reform; and gender. At the institutional level, theconceptual review focuses on: democratic reform efforts; citizen participation; the role ofindigenous peoples; the environment and neo-extractivism; and the role of social movements. These coding categories emerged inductively through open, axial and selective coding from our constant comparative analysis of the reviewed literature.The article starts with a brief review of competing definitions of post-neoliberalism. It nextassesses key policy changes under different post-neoliberal regimes, before turning toinstitutional transformations that are considered central in the reviewed literature to the postneoliberal reform trajectory. Finally, we engage with the dominant criticism of the concept ofpost-neoliberalism, before concluding that post-neoliberalism remains a useful analyticalconcept despite the various challenges that post-neoliberal governments are facing in theaftermath of the global financial crisis, and the analytical limitations inherent to the concept.Defining post-neoliberalismThere is no clear consensus on the characterisation and defining features of post-neoliberalism, suggesting that at its core post-neoliberalism is faced with a conceptual challenge.This is perhaps not surprising given the fact that the concept of neoliberalism is also contested. One of the most commonly accepted definitions is David Harvey’s:Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes thathuman well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms andskills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, freemarkets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional frameworkappropriate to such practices.9
THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY 3In developing countries, neoliberalism is more specifically associated with the policies promoted by international financial institutions beginning in the early 1980s, such as cutbacksin social spending, privatisation, deregulation, and promotion of free trade.Some of the literature suggests that the only thing post-neoliberal regimes have in common is that they each seek to break away from specific aspects of neoliberalism, thoughthese approaches differ greatly across regions, countries, and time.10 There is also a notionthat these strategies do not necessarily suggest a clear rupture from previous prevailingneoliberal policies, because decision-makers can choose to employ multiple strategies‘according to existing experiences, power relations and socio-ecological conditions’.11 Novo,12for example, identifies regimes as post-neoliberal solely on the basis that their current leadership was elected on political platforms that explicitly rejected neoliberalism, with no indication of how future policies would be redefined. There is even no consensus in the literatureon which term should be used to identify these shifts, with some of the scholarship referringto these new strategies as an emergence of the ‘New Left’13 ‘Pink Tide’ governments,14 ‘afterneoliberalism’,15 the ‘third way’,16 ‘not-quite-neoliberal’,17and ‘twenty-first-century socialism’.18Since post-neoliberalism lacks a powerful and wealthy sponsor like the United States or theInternational Monetary Fund, and is more strongly rooted in local politics and culture, it isprobably even more variegated than its neoliberal predecessor.Instead of trying to define a clear post-neoliberal essence, some of the literature placesan emphasis on the ‘post’ in post-neoliberalism. Bebbington and Bebbington19 use the example of extraction in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador to argue that, based on elements of macroeconomic policy and political style and practice in each country, it is necessary to identifyfurther substantive differences within the ‘post’ element of post-neoliberalism. To addressthis tension, Marston20 distinguishes between post-neoliberalism as a utopian-ideologicalproject (which seeks to achieve an after-neoliberalism state) and post-neoliberalism as anemerging set of policies and practices. In contrast, Springer21 underlines the notion thatneoliberalism is not a condition which states can entirely remove themselves from solely bydeclaring so, which is why many policies may appear to instead exemplify a neoliberal continuity in some aspects, but not others.Others identify these shifts as an anti-neoliberal alternative, suggesting that post-neoliberalism must entail an anti-neoliberal rhetoric, including an opposition to deregulation,financialisation, the weakening of labour relations, and ‘free trade’,22 which de Freitas, Marstonand Bakker23 propose can only be explicitly seen in the policies of Bolivia, Ecuador, andVenezuela. Some suggest that these changes can be seen as a replacement of the WashingtonConsensus, and both the neoliberal and market fundamentalist policies it has maintained.Katz,24 for example, posits that post-neoliberalism can be identified as a period occurringafter, as well as replacing, the Washington Consensus.25 Finally, Marston26 maintains thatpost-neoliberalism signifies a shift from the characteristics of neoliberalism, but does notnecessarily constitute a complete break with it.Post-neoliberal policies and their contradictionsIn order to develop greater clarity on these debates, some of the most important workattempts to identify the ways in which the general post-neoliberal trend manifests itself indifferent ways in different places. The following sections will outline some of the policiesand institutional approaches identified by various authors writing about post-neoliberalism,
4 A. RUCKERT ET ALfocusing on the six broad policy areas that emerged from our constant comparative analysisof the reviewed literature: (1) economic policy (including privatisation and nationalisation,insertion in the global economy and regional institutions, revenue and taxation), labourmarket, agriculture and land reform); (2) social policies; (3) gender and sexuality; (4) institutional reform (including civic engagement and democratic reform); (5) state–society relations(including social movements and indigenous peoples, and (6) approaches to the environment. In doing so, this paper hopes to illustrate some of the tensions and contradictionsinvolved in post-neoliberal states’ implementation of economic and social policies that gobeyond the standard package of neoliberal policies that have long predominated in LatinAmerica.Economic policyOne important dimension of post-neoliberalism that differentiates these regimes fromneoliberal ones is their recognition of the centrality of the state in economic processesand the quest for economic development. Costoya27 refers to the example of Bolivia,where ‘the return of the state is a necessary condition for the country’s development’,through what Merino Acuña28 has suggested was one of the main goals of the Moralesadministration (ie that of reshaping the relations between the state and the market).This is overwhelmingly apparent through the literature on post-neoliberalism, wheregovernments have considered the state to be the main and most necessary agent fordevelopment, in contrast to previous policies which sought out a removal of the statefrom the economic sphere.29 The state has been most central in mediating the deepenedrelationship between nature and the economy,30 leading to an increased dependenceof the state’s economy on extraction to secure surplus for redistribution, often referredto as neo-extractivism.31 Ecuador is also frequently cited, as the Correa government hassuccessfully changed the relationship between the state and the economy by allowingforeign companies to continue resource extraction activities but requiring them to provide the state with more than half of their profits to do so.32 The following sections layout some of the key dimensions of state economic policies identified in the literatureon post-neoliberal states.Privatisation and nationalisationBoth Bolivia and Ecuador have promoted the nationalisation of the hydrocarbon sector asa response to poor economic conditions from previous neoliberal policies and practices.33The literature questions, however, whether or not nationalisation occurred in the true sense,citing examples of how both of these countries still depend on the extractive industry andforeign capital. Veltmeyer34 highlights the ‘populist rhetoric of resource nationalism’, and theon-going discourse, which focuses on the notion that the country’s resources belong to thecountry’s people (despite the on-going presence of foreign companies in natural resourcemanagement). Yates and Bakker35 echo this claim, suggesting that both Morales and Correawere empowered by the wave of anti-neoliberal sentiment in Bolivia and Ecuador, and furtherempowered by their pledges to reverse privatisation and re-nationalise major extractiveindustries. In Bolivia, the events surrounding the Water Wars, which reversed the privatisationof the water supply, have been identified by several authors as the catalyst of Bolivia’spost-neoliberal shift.36
THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY 5Each of these countries has approached nationalisation in differing ways, such as the keyindustries and sectors, which have moved under state control. In Venezuela, the nationalisation of key industries (such as steel, electricity and telecommunications) were key toChávez’s new model.37 Bolivia instead underwent a campaign of nationalising the oil andgas industries, which has not involved outright state ownership, but has regardless resultedin massive revenue increases for the Morales government.38 Riggirozzi39 suggests that nationalisation ‘brought short-term benefits in terms of growth and social coverage, yet this is stillvolatile revenue, subject to the international mood and unaffected structure of productivity’.The overall trend across Latin American countries pursuing post-neoliberal strategies hasbeen the national management of key, strategic sectors of the economy (whether they behydrocarbons, mining, petroleum, etc.), the shift from corporate social responsibility towardsstronger state regulation, and the renegotiation of contracts with various transnational corporations as a strategy to attain both better terms and more financial independence.40However, as a caveat, Cisneros and Christel41 note how governments in both Argentina andEcuador still seem to be supportive of the logics of neoliberal corporate social responsibility,despite its limited effects in promoting broad-based social benefits. As well, it is importantto note that several post-neoliberal governments like those in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay(commonly seen as among the more moderate New Left regimes) did not engage in widespread privatisation and nationalisation policies, and retained a range of policies thatremained friendly to private investors.Insertion into the global economy and regional agreementsThe literature on post-neoliberal trade policies suggests not only a focus on trade regulationsand policies alone, but that those countries which have challenged neoliberalism ‘have produced a cumulative ideological effect that brings unity building at a national level to a moreregional level, even as global capital tries to suffocate the challenges’,42 as well as an emphasison independent foreign relations and advances in regional awareness.43 During theWashington Consensus era, various projects of regional integration emerged under theneoliberal banner of ‘open regionalism’, including Mercosur, the Andean Community (CAN),and the failed Washington-designed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) initiative.44Dello Buono45 suggests that in response, anti-neoliberal and radicalised states have beensuccessful in producing counter-initiatives such as the Bolivian Alternatives for the Americas(ALBA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The decline of US economic,geopolitical and military intervention in the region (particularly in South America) has produced something Riggirozzi and Tussie46 refer to as ‘post-hegemonic regionalism’, whichthey define as: ‘regional structures characterised by hybrid practices as a result of a partialdisplacement of dominant forms of US-led neoliberal governance in the acknowledgementof other political forms of organisation and economic management of regional (common)goods’. Brazil is sometimes seen as a sub-imperial power behind some of these initiatives,but Andrés Malamud47 describes Brazil as a ‘leader without followers’, since it lacks both themilitary and economic resources to impose its will on its neighbours, and has insteadattempted to use ideational resources to increase its global status.Efforts at regional integration have taken diverse forms. Riggirozzi and Tussie48 outlinethree types: first, ‘projects with a strong emphasis on commercial integration’, such asColombia, Mexico, Peru and Chile (this group has formed the Pacific Alliance, a regional tradeagreement based on strong neo-liberal principles); second, ‘projects that advance trade at
6 A. RUCKERT ET ALits core, deepening linkages with neighbouring countries, yet seeking alternative and autonomous post-trade political projects, such as the Central American Common Market, CARICOM,Mercosur, Andean Community, and UNASUR’; and, third, ‘a model that more radically emphasises political and social aspects of integration, with new economic and welfare commitments, reclaiming the principle of socialism in direct opposition to neoliberal globalisation’,such as Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).However, Peck, Theodore and Brenner49 question this understanding and suggest insteadthat post-neoliberal trade regimes are guided by short-term price competition, and in thelong-term will not be able to constitute a true shift away from neoliberalism. Such internalcontradictions in post-neoliberal trade strategies have been widely noted. For example,Mejido Costoya50 has recently described Bolivia’s trade strategy as ‘fundamentally inconsistent’, an attempt to ‘reap the benefits of the “spaghetti bowl” of trade agreements that havecome to the fore in a post-neoliber
neoliberalism in Latin America: a conceptual review, Third World Quarterly, DOI: . (including social movements and indigenous peoples, and (6) approaches to the environ-ment. In doing so, this .
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