Take it from the top (down)? Rethinking neoliberalism and political hierarchy in Mexico

Abstract

In this article, I unpack the relationship between neoliberalism as a policy framework and as a rationality of governance by examining the daily practices of Mexican technocrats with advanced academic degrees in neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics is implicitly regarded as the transparent technical mechanism through which neoliberal ideas are transmitted to policy. In contrast, I approach neoclassical economics as a system of knowledge for analyzing how markets work that is constituted and negotiated as it is applied to policy. Whereas existing accounts suggest that neoclassical economics effectively sanitizes politics by rendering the political technical, I argue that technical struggles are embedded in and prefigured by political struggles. I take the negotiations between political teams as a starting point from which to interrogate deep‐seated assumptions about the rigidity of neoclassical economics, and I emphasize the role of what I call “anticipatory knowledge,” knowledge marshaled by political teams in anticipation of the knowledge claims of rival teams. [neoliberalism, economics, governmentality, expert knowledge, Mexico, policy]

Discourse, Organization, and the Welfare State in the Former East Berlin

“…Wendy Larner (), for example, describes governmentality as an “interpretation” of neoliberalism—a turn of phrase that is difficult to comprehend. Building on Larner, Tara A. Schwegler makes the somewhat clearer claim, in regards to expert economic discourse in Mexico, that “neoliberalism denotes a rationality of governance” (:682). However, my argument here runs in the opposite direction from Schwegler's.…”

Regimes of spatial ordering in Brazil: Neoliberalism, leftist populism and modernist aesthetics in slum upgrading in Recife

“…It is not our aim here to shed light on yet another case that supports the ‘global creep of neoliberalism as a totalizing governmentality’ (Schwegler, 2008: 684), but, rather, to give an account of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002: 351) as manifested in a particular urban renewal project and experienced by the urban poor who are its alleged beneficiaries. Neoliberal policies are always ‘defined by the legacies of inherited institutional frameworks, policy regimes, regulatory practices, and political struggles’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002: 351), and because of this often lead to hybrid forms of neoliberalism (Peck & Tickell, 2007).…”

Anthropocenic Ecoauthority: The Winds of Oaxaca

“…As will be clear in what follows, local environmentally informed responses and those that purport to speak on behalf of a global scale are often conflicted, and their sources of knowledge disparate. What will also be readily apparent is that the politics of renewable energy in the Isthmus are steeped in neoliberal development logics, persuading government agencies and functionaries to align with the profit seeking interests of renewable energy corporations (Gledhill 1995, McDonald 1999, Ochoa 2001, Schwegler 2008. Rather than focusing attention on the political economy of energy transition, however, I want to signal the ways in which energy futures are profoundly shaped by discourses and practices that assert an ecological and environmental authority; these epistemological and ethical exercises suggest a symbiotic awareness, fundamentally founded in moral claims to protect the biosphere, including humans and other biotic life, now and in the future.…”