*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Neo-Liberalism Impacts– Destabilizing
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- Neoliberalism leads to the security/insecurity paradox causing the US to implement imperialist, coercive militarist tactics.
Neo-Liberalism Impacts– DestabilizingPRIVATIZATION EFFORTS TO CONTROL CORRUPTION ARE DESTABILIZING Robin Theobald, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Polytechnic of Central London, 1990, Corruption, Development and Underdevelopment, p. 159-60 I mention but cannot explore here the technical difficulties of privatization: whether the institutional means for selling off state enterprises actually exist in the form of developed capital markets and so on; whether there will be enough buyers for what are usually inefficient and run-down undertakings; whether the sums realized represent an acceptable return in the light of the vast amounts of public money that have been invested in the state sector over the years? In addition the amount of time it will take to complete a privatization program (seldom less than five years) needs to be offset against the urgency of the problem of corruption (see Shackleton, 1986; and West Africa, 9 May 1988, p. 824). More seriously, if the argument outlined in Chapter 4 is accepted to the effect that politics in the UDCs – the politics of scarcity tends to take the form of a frenetic scramble to appropriate public resources, then a reduction in the supply of these resources is likely to screw up the intensity of the competition to a point where it has serious destabilizing consequences. An example of this is to be found in Nigeria where a drastic curtailment of public employment and contracts since the military coup of December 1983 has cut off a significant fraction of the bourgeoisie from its principal source of wealth and power. It seems certain that elements within the disaffected bourgeoisie – former regional “big men” –have recently played a key role in fomenting communal tensions, especially in the serious religious rioting in the North in March 1987. The fact that on the latter occasion large numbers of ordinary Nigerians were prepared to join in the looting and burning highlights another dimension of privatization. Where the state is a major employer cutbacks in the public sector must inevitably exacerbate already high levels of unemployment. In evaluating the seriousness of the consequences of such cutbacks we should be aware that a public servant’s salary in the third world will be supporting at least twice the number of people than is the case in developed countries. (see for example Morice, 1987.) Furthermore, since privatization is usually linked with de-regulating policies such as currency devaluation and the removal of subsidies on basic necessities, it also leads to a decline in levels of consumption. It is not therefore surprising that attempts to implement such structural adjustment programs have in various countries provoked serious civil disorder. Even when austerity has not unleashed a specific outburst, the long-term consequences of the resulting increases in poverty, disease, crime, and general demoralization are impossible to estimate (see for example, ‘The poor become poorer, admits IMF’, West Africa, 27 June 1988, p. 1172).
Susanne Soederberg, Associate Professor in Development Studies at Queen’s University, 2004 [Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 279–302, 2004] The outspoken proponent of neoliberalism, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s notion of the ‘golden straightjacket’ of globalisation seems to capture the rationale of the Washington consensus.16 According to Friedman, the straightjacket ‘will force contentious publics to understand the logic of globalisation is that of peace (since war would interrupt globalisation and therefore progress) and democracy (because new technologies increase individual autonomy and encourage initiative)’.17 What Friedman, as well as other neoliberals, fails to realise, however, is that the contradictions inherent in global capital accumulation inevitably create human insecurity. Neoliberal globalization describes the prioritisation of ‘economic growth and market logics over all other goals and institutions of governance and enforces on all national polities, with varying degrees of coercion, privatization, trade liberalization, the deregulation of capital, and the erosion of the public sector and of democratic control’.18 The reproduction of neoliberal globalisation is not a friction-free process, but fraught with contradictions. As Elmar Altvater reminds us, global capital accumulation is an historical system defined by the fact that it makes structurally central and primary the endless accumulation of capital. This implies that the institutions (eg IFIs, bilateral aid agencies, credit-rating agencies, private investors and creditors) that constitute its framework reward those who pursue the endless accumulation of capital and penalise those who don’t. Moreover, ‘these processes of profitmaking, accumulation, and institutional regulation, which give a degree of security to the system, simultaneously produce insecurity on all levels of social and individual life.’19 The latter may be regarded as the security/insecurity paradox of neoliberal globalisation. Since neoliberalism is a moment of global capitalism, it, too, is infused with the security/insecurity paradox, which the powerful social forces (transnational capital classes and political elites) within and outside the American state must strive to overcome. In the post-Bretton Woods era (1944–71), American-led imperialism has attempted to straddle the security/insecurity paradox vis-a`-vis the South largely through economic and physical (military) coercion, such as structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) of the IMF, and militarised postwar reconstruction efforts in, for example, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq. It is the attempts to deal with the security/insecurity paradox that drives the changing form of American empire in relation to excluded states. Put differently, as the USA seeks to respond to perceived threats to its imperial dominance, we see a shift in the form of official development agenda—or, and this amounts to the same thing, in the reproduction of its content in an increasingly coercive manner. As the next section demonstrates, neoliberal globalisation in the form of SAPs has allowed many capitals to reap the benefits of privatised state firms, and easier access to labour, and consumer and credit markets. However, the same modes of export-orientated accumulation and market-orientated forms of institutional regulation have led to increasing levels of insecurity, albeit in varying levels, in the South. Directory: assets assets -> Northern territory of australia assets -> Number: caveat in the [Will/Will and Codicil/Estate of] assets -> Invitation for Bid Calact/mbta for Standard Floor and Low Floor Rural Duty Vehicles ifb no. 12-03 November 14, 2012 assets -> 12 Step Retreats For Everyone in Twelve Step Recovery Ratner Fellowship assets -> 12 Step Retreats For Everyone in Twelve Step Recovery Ratner Fellowship assets -> Sigaccess annual Report assets -> Central Government is expected to ask the seventh pay commission to consider merging 50% dearness allowance assets -> List of accessible executive records assets -> Emergency telephone numbers Call toll-free from anywhere in France Download 2.51 Mb. Share with your friends:
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