Neoliberalism K—UMich 2013 neg 1NCs 1NC: Generic
Download 1.47 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- That aff’s promotion of market changes further neoliberal experimentation in Latin America
Link: GeneralAmerican economic engagement strategies are distinctly neoliberal and subscribe to exceptionalist theoriesGill, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University, 95 (Stephen, “Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism”, Millennium - Journal of International Studies 24:3, 1995, Sage Publications)//AS North American arrangements are more hierarchical and asymmetrical,understood both in inter-state terms and in terms of the class structures of eachnation. NAFTA is premised upon a low level of political institutionalisation anda hub-and-spoke configuration of power, with the United States at the centre ofa continentalised political economy. This is even more the case with theCaribbean Basin Initiative, which can be terminated unilaterally by the UnitedStates." The United States has negotiated the implicit right to monitor andcontrol large areas of Canadian political life in the US-Canada Free TradeAgreement. The US-Canada Agreement specifies that each side has to notify the other "˜party' by advanced warning, of intended federal or provincial government policy that might affect the other side's interests, as defined by the agreements Because of Canada's extensive economic integration with the United States, this situation necessarily affects the vast majority of Canadian economic activity, but not vice versa. Thus, Canadian governments no longer can contemplate an independent or interventionist economic strategy. In both NAFTA and the US-Canada Agreement there are no transnational citizenship rights other than those accorded to capital, and these are defined to favour US-registered companies. Finally, NAFTA can only be amended by agreement of all signatories. Whilst these arrangements place binding constraints on the policies of Canada and Mexico, to a certain degree, the United States retains constitutional autonomy and important prerogatives: its trade law is allowed to override treaty provisions, notwithstanding the rights of redress that are available to participants through the dispute settlement mechanisms." In other words, the US government is using access to its vast market as a lever of power, linked to a reshaping of the international business climate, by subjecting other nations to the disciplines of the new constitutionalism, whilst largely refusing to submit to them itself, partly for strategic reasons. Indeed, one of the arguments expressed by former European Union President Jacques Delors in favour of comprehensive West European economic and monetary union was strategic: to offset economic unilateralism from the United States, in matters of money and trade. Thus, an American-centred global neoliberalism _mandates a separation of politics and economics in ways that may narrow political representation and constrain democratic social choice in many parts of the world. New constitutionalism, which rarities this separation, may have become the de facto discourse of governance for most of the global political economy. This discourse involves a hierarchy of pressures and constraints on government autonomy that vary according to the size, economic strength, form of state and civil society, and prevailing national and regional institutional capabilities, as well as the degree of integration into global capital and money markets. That aff’s promotion of market changes further neoliberal experimentation in Latin AmericaLander, Professor of Social Sciences at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, Summer 1996 (Edgardo, “The Impact of Neoliberal Adjustment in Venezuela, 1989-1993,” Translated by Luis A. Fierro, Latin American Perspective, Vol. 23.3, 50-73. JSTOR)//SG Beyond the goals of reestablishing macroeconomic equilibria and structural reform of the Venezuelan economy,the economic policy we have been examining was part of the neoliberal/neoconservative political project. Neoliberal thought constitutes not only an economic theory but a normative political one-a concept of what the relationships between state and society as well as between the economy and the market should be (see Waligorski, 1990).Starting from a critique of the threats to the free operation of the market represented by Keynesianism, the social-democratic tradition and, the welfare state, the neoliberal/neoconservative economists assert a need to rescue democracy from itself through a radical limitation of the sphere of politics and of democratic decisions. They demand a fundamental transformation of contemporary political systems with the purpose of recovering the economy's autonomy and its separation from politics and limiting state action to guaranteeing the basic conditions for the operation of the market forces. "Thus they coincide with the conservative critics of the "excesses" of contemporary democracy in their advocacy of reducing its scope in order to guarantee the "governability" of modern societies (Crozier,Huntington, andWatanuki, 1975). In the core countries,no such "revolutionary" transformation of political systems has been possible despite the strength of neoliberal ideology and the efforts of conservative governments such as those of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which placed these goals at the center of their political agendas.'2The situation in Latin America is quite different. The debt burden, the deterioration of the state, the political parties, and the political system in general, and the association of businessmen, technocrats, and right-wing politicians with international financial capital and the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have so altered the correlation of social and political power in these societies that the continent has become an experimental laboratory for the neoliberal transformation. The declining legitimacy and organizational weakness of the traditional parties, labor unions, and organizations have left the popular sectors in many of the countries of the continent without an effective voice,allowing the advance of neoliberal neoconservative political proposals with only limited resistance. In Venezuela this political project has had its expression in the aforementioned agreements signed by the national government – behind the backs of Congress, the political parties, and public opinion – with the International Monetary Fund. Beyond its short-term macroeconomic goals, there was an attempt to redefine, in accordance with the neoliberal agenda, the basic relationships between the state and society and between politics, clienteles, populism, and inefficiency and corruption in state management, neoliberals seek solutions in the reduction of the role of politics. Thus, the role of the state is reduced and there is an attempt to depoliticize economic policymaking, isolating it from political debate and thus from populist and/or democratic temptations. From a radically reductionist concept of the social order according to which only the quantifiable macroeconomic variables are held to be true, a new economic policy is advocated as if it were exclusively a technical matter, without any attempt to create coalitions or consensus with regard to the proposed changes. Both the government bureaucrats and the advisers of international organizations present it as an objective requirement of national conditions and those of the international economy – a requirement that is beyond any possible debate about what type of country we desire. There seems to be confidence that the weakness and limited legitimacy of parties and labor unions and the precariousness of the popular grass-roots organizations will allow these transformations to take place without any resistance. In fact,the important labor conflicts during the development of the adjustment program have not proved capable of significantly influencing the general orientation of economic policy. The political parties, both in government and in the opposition, have confronted a systematic antipolitical and antiparty campaign charging them with corruption and narrow self-interest that has rendered them incapable of presenting a credible alternative to the government’s policies. In contrast to the situation in other countries of Latin America, where recent experience of military dictatorship, hyperinflation, or both has allowed the implementation of adjustment policies with relatively little resistance and without a loss of legitimacy,in Venezuela the adjustment has led to a deepening of the political crisis. With the institutional mechanisms for changing these policies constrained, the reactions and resistance have taken place at the margins of the formal political system. The social explosion of February 1989, the so-called Caracazo, was the first such extrainstitutional response. The broad (though passive) popular support for the attempted coup of February 1992 was also a clear expression of the increasing disintegration of a political system that once seemed exceptional for its stability. The 1AC uses neoliberalist policies to force their desired market on Latin America MacEwan, He has a PhD from Harvard University and is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston 1999 (Arthur, Neo-liberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets and Alternatives for the 21st CenturyPub. Zed Books in 1999 Page 4-5)//JS While the basic tenets of neo-liberalism operate in the rich countries, the policy plays its most powerful role in many of the low-income countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Within these countries, influential groups see their fortunes tied to neo-liberalism, but the conflict over economic policy is seldom confined within a nation’s borders. Officials from the international lending agencies, particularly the IMR and the World Bank, from the government of the economically advanced countries, particularly the United States, andfrom private internationally operating firms use their economy and political power to foist ‘market oriented’ policy on the peoples of the low-income countries. The use of the term ‘Washington Consensus’ to sum up the neo-liberal prescription underscores the role of the US government, the IMF and the World Bank in its premeditation, as well as the complementary role of the various US research and policy institutes in providing intellectual support. The 1AC’s attempts at positive globalization are backed by the drive to make a profit back home MacEwan, He has a PhD from Harvard University and is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston 1999 (Arthur, Neo-liberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets and Alternatives for the 21st CenturyPub. Zed Books in 1999 Page 6)//JS In large part, this claim that there is no alternative is based on the argument that the ‘globalization’ of economic affairs forces virtually all countries of the world to embrace the world market if they wish to achieve economic development. Globalization in the current era has involved, first of all, a progressive deregulation of the international movement of goods and capital. Also, globalization today is taking place in a world which is more and more uniformly capitalist. In this homogenized world economy, businesses can do the same things in the same ways at a great variety of locations, and, with the declining regulation of international commerce, they will accordingly continually relocate to the lowest cost production sites. Thus, the neo-liberals contend,, if the government of a particular country attempts to regulate private activity in order to achieve some desired social goal – great income equality or environmental preservation, for example – businesses will simply leave the country for higher profits elsewhere in the world. On the other hand, the argument continues, if a country eliminates both external and internal barriers to commerce, globalization will allow it to reap the benefits: low-cost goods from abroad, access to foreign markets for its own exports, and higher levels of investment by both foreign and domestic businesses. Download 1.47 Mb. Share with your friends:
|